Adopted. (2019-12-29, Holy Family Sunday)

29 December 2019  -- Holy Family    • Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14  • Psalm 128 • Colossians 3:12-21 • + Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23  •

Title:  Adopted.

[__01__]     At Madison Square Garden and at the Prudential Center, after a period of play of ice hockey, they take out the Zamboni. The Zamboni comes out to re-surface the ice for the ice skaters of ice hockey … or for ice skating / figure skating competition, to make the ice perfectly smooth to the appearance and touch.

            From time to time, just to keep me humble and me from becoming too proud or self-absorbed or conceited, my mother will remind me of birth, when I was born. I was the first of four children in our family.

            And, I was – therefore – the first neo-natal newborn person my mother ever saw up close. And, so my mother tells me: “You were the ugliest baby I ever saw.” But, then, quickly admits that she had no perspective, no comparison and the labor and delivery team had not yet done their Zamboni resurfacing operation. I needed one of those.

            But, this is how – in appearance – it starts out with everyone. I must tell my siblings that are equal to me in this way. In any case, I do not doubt my mother’s or father’s love. I am blessed.

            This is Holy Family Sunday.

[__02__]     Nevertheless, I am not here to reflect on or compare notes on family functionality or dysfunctionality, whose family is better or worse…. but rather to say that it is… often by an apparent misunderstanding or miscomprehension that we come to greater understanding of what a family is and what love is.

            Father Ronald Knox wrote, for example, that we do not come to understand God as father strictly by noting what our fathers (dads) do or do not. Rather, we come to understand our fathers by worship and reflect on God’s love.  In this way, we also become fathers and mothers and even father-figures and mother-figures to others.

            [*** pause ***]

            While I do not like it when I did something to displease my parents (no one is the perfect child even in adulthood) – I can learn from these misunderstandings.

            We can learn that being a son – or being a daughter – in a family is a calling… it is a choice… it is love we choose to express, forgiveness we choose to share… it does not always come naturally or easily. Sometimes, it is not pretty. It may still be beautiful.

            It is a calling, something to which we are called.

            I’d like to give an example of this calling what this means for us, not just within our immediate family, but the whole family of disciples and being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

[_03_]     I’ll start with this story of a text message someone once received. I did not receive this message. I just heard about it.

            A brother sends a text message to his brother with some urgency. This is the TEXT:

Brother_1: “I have something important to tell you. Are you sitting down?”

B-2: “Yes, go ahead”

Brother-1: “I have to tell you. Mom and Dad just told me that you were adopted !  (Exclamation point).”

B-2: “Bro, I cannot believe you are texting this to me! (Exclamation point).”

Brother-1: “Oh, no, this phone and my spelling. We just heard from college-admissions – I meant “ACCEPTED” …and there’s financial aid.”

So, is it good news to be adopted? I say it is …

[__04__]     St. Paul writes this Holy Family Sunday that we are God’s chosen ones – we have been chosen, we have been adopted.

            In this regard, however we came into this world, however we may feel about our mothers and fathers, or own calling to be a mother / father, we are all ADOPTED, chosen by God.

            In 2^nd Corinthians, we read: “I will be a father to you and you will be my sons and daughters” (2 Corinthians 6:18)

            Now, if you have ever heard of or experienced the legal and real child adoption process directly or indirectly, you know that the process can be complicated, complex and confusing.

            And, this adoption process calls upon the adopting parents and the children being adopted to levels of forgiveness and understanding that are truly inspirations for us.   For example, in the case of the children or the parents - they may need to let go of past hurts, let go of why they were given up for adoption, or let go of what happened along the way to adoption.

            Adoption is a reality and loving reality in the structure of the family. It reminds us that we become part of God’s family – sacramentally – through adoption. We become part of God’s family, the Church, by adoption.

We are called to love each not because we know everyone’s story or history … or even because we “like” each other… we are called to love each other, because we know that God is love, and because God loves us.

It’s not easy. It’s a long drawn out process with heartbreak and confusion.

In this regard, Jesus does not simply invite his disciples to apply to his institute or college and then give them an acceptance letter with a scholarship for his classroom or webinar… rather he adopts them, he takes custody of them, and in the end, he lays down his life for them. His adoption is also not reversible, not revocable.  His adoption is our forgiveness, our hope.

[__05__]      In 2016, there was an Academy-Award nominated movie - non-fiction based-on-true-events movie – LION, based on the autobiography “A Long Way Home”.

            It is by written by a 34-year old Australian named: Saroo. Saroo was not born in Australia, but rather in India.  As a 5-year-old boy, Saroo wanders away from his elder brother at a train station, ends up on a train going 1,000-plus miles from his home and ends up in Kolkata (Calcutta).

            Saroo is 5 and does not speak the Bengali dialect of Kolkata in eastern India. He has no identification, no way to describe where he came from. It is truly an act of mercy that he is rescued by a kind stranger who brings him to the police station who transfer him to an orphanage. A remarkably devoted adoption agency director – Mrs. Sood – searches diligently for his family, but really has no way to communicate or interview Saroo. Saroo himself does not know where he came from.

            This happens in 1987 and Saroo is adopted by an Australian couple. He grows up Australian.

            What makes his biography so remarkable is his re-connection to his birthplace and birth-mother birth-family.  

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Saroo discovered – just like you discovered and I discovered – Google. Specifically, Google Earth satellite images. These satellites enable us to zero in on everything on the planet.

So, for years, Saroo stays up late, draws map, looks on Google Earth for his birthplace which he only knows by a vague phonetic pronunciation and not the exact spelling. And, because India is so large and densely populated, every images is a new haystack. And, his hometown is the needle. All he can reconstruct and remember is a water tower near a railway station and train platform. Since that is not very precise, it takes years of searching on Google Earth, but he does get there.

[__06__]        I could not help but notice that Saroo’s identity is defined by his ADOPTION.           

            His ADOPTION defines him. But he is not defined by this because of LUXURY …but by LOVE.  He knows that he is loved, that he is chosen.

            In a Christian sense and the sense our salvation, we also defined by an ADOPTION. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and took custody.

            Spoiler alert: yes Saroo does find his hometown and makes it back home.

The reunion with his mother is heartwarming ,  to say the least and Saroo is eager to help and be generous the mother of his birth; she lives an impoverished life.

            Yet, Saroo completely identifies with his own ADOPTED life in Australia,

            It is also noteworthy that as these Saroo re-connects with the family of this birth, the family of his birth and certainly not his birth mother, makes no advance, to take advantage of their relatively wealthy son and brother.

            I read that Saroo sends his mother $100 per month in India. She accepts this with great reluctance. When offered the opportunity to move to Australia, she refused…

            Of course, Saroo and his adopted family could afford more, but she would not accept it. What is most important to his birth-mother is that son is alive.

            That is the most important thing to her. Nothing else matters.

           

[__07__]     We have received God’s grace by baptism, by the ability to confess our sins and receive Holy Communion…and in these sacramental experiences and encounter of Jesus Christ as our savior, we both receive something and we are given away.

            We are put up, raised up and sheltered by God’s love.
            Our mothers and fathers also give us away by bringing us to the sacramental moments of Baptism and Communion and all the sacraments. They do so … so that no matter how we “look” or appear on the outside, that they can rejoice.

            And, this applies in a special way to every mother, every father, every grandparent who has actually suffered the death of a child. Losing a child to death. Because, what is their hope? Their hope is that their child lives, that they will one day see their child again and in our faith we believe this.

They know that their child lives.

            Though we die, we also live.

            You and I were adopted. That’s good news.    [__fin__]