Sermon for Sunday, April 22, 2007

The God of Second Chances

by

Rev. Cindy Bates

Scripture: Acts 9:1-19

¹ Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest  ² and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.  ³ Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. ⁴ He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"  ⁵ He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.  ⁶ But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do."  ⁷  The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one.  ⁸  Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.  ⁹  For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

¹⁰   Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." He answered, "Here I am, Lord."   ¹¹  The Lord said to him, "Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying,  ¹²  and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight."  ¹³  But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem;  ¹⁴  and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name."  ¹⁵   But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel;  ¹⁶  I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name."  ¹⁷  So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit."  ¹⁸  And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized,  ¹⁹  and after taking some food, he regained his strength. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus,

It is always a gift to hear the voices of our children raised in song and be blessed by their smiles and their exuberance for life. It was good to hear about a God of second chances through their telling of the story of Noah this morning. And it is good to come together this day and share some “good news” happening in our church family, especially in light of so much bad news occurring in our world.

Whether you have been remembering what it was like 8 years ago in the wake of Columbine, or watching the tragedy unfold on the campus of Virginia Tech, this has been a disturbing and difficult week. On Tuesday morning, as we gathered for our weekly staff meeting we could not go on with business as usual without stopping to take some time just to cry and pray together.  So we cried and prayed for those whose lives were lost and we prayed for the one who was so lost he was filled with hate and we prayed for all of their families and loved ones. And then we prayed for our world where such violence and goodness can coexist and where we believe in spite of the darkest of times, God’s love and light can still prevail.

Sometime the week before last, I chose today’s scripture and the sermon title, “The God of Second Chances”.  Then each time this week that I sat down to write the sermon to go with the title, all I could do for awhile was stare at the emptiness on my computer screen and wonder what I should say in light of all of this, in light of the loss of so many persons, so many of them very young, who did not seem to have a second chance. What does it mean to believe in a God of second chances?  Being in a hurting, questioning place this week, for me it seemed easier to begin with what it does not mean, rather than declaring what it should mean for any of us.   For starters, I found myself saying living life with a God of second chances does not mean “do-overs.” We cannot live our lives like children on a playground shouting “do-over” when something does not go like we planned. Being given a second chance in life does not mean we get to erase everything we wish we had not said, or reverse a poor decision made or retract an action taken that hurt or harmed self or someone else.  Every one of us knows life in all its richness and fullness and goodness also contains a lot of brokenness that cannot be restored without the chips and the cracks still remaining.  It is inherent in our humanness. We are all “cracked pots” containing the fragility of life.  Whatever was happening in the heart and mind of Cho Seung-Hui on Monday morning to cause his horrific actions cannot be undone.  There is no opportunity for a do-over to “right” this situation.  We all live daily with the consequences of our actions and those actions not only affect our lives but the lives of all those around us.  Just being created as human beings with the ability to make decisions and then act on those decisions, gives us a huge responsibility in life.  We have a lot of power as individuals.  We should never think otherwise.

So what does it mean to talk about the God of Creation, the God we worship, as a God of second chances?  I believe it means God knows we are going to make a lot of mistakes, poor decisions, bad judgments in life and God’s desire would be for us to learn from those experiences rather than be destroyed by them.  God loves us so much that God is always at work within us teaching and transforming us, calling us toward our best selves. Even when we have made the greatest of errors, or committed what we would judge the most deplorable of actions, God does not give up on us.

Take for instance, the main character in our scripture this morning, Saul, better known as Paul. We know he wrote more of the New Testament than any other individual.  He gave his life to preach and teach the Gospel and spread Christianity throughout the ancient world. But we also know that prior to his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus Road, he was the most ardent persecutor of Jesus’ followers. His life mission was to wipe out Christianity.  He was on his way to Damascus, a city about 150 miles northeast of Jerusalem, so he could hunt down the Christians hiding there, put them in chains and bring them back to Jerusalem so they could stand trial and hopefully receive the death penalty. That was when God looked at a man of violence and hatred and saw something else.  Paul’s second chance story may be one of the most dramatic transformation stories we have ever heard, but if we look carefully at this most interesting, powerful story, it is not so much a story about Paul, as it is a story about God.  Just like our children’s musical this morning told us a story involving a character named Noah, the story was not told to help us understand Noah as much as it was told to help us understand the nature of God.  Biblical scholars M. Eugene Boring and Fred B. Craddock in The People’s New Testament Commentary have given us our “Words for Meditation” this morning in commenting on the story of Paul’s transformation.  “God chose Saul, not vice-versa.  The story is about God, not about Saul. The whole story is not about Saul’s successful quest for God but about the grace of God that transforms a persecutor into a missionary.  Readers are called not to admire Saul, but to rejoice that they belong to a Church whose mission is empowered and directed by such a God.”  To believe in a God of second chances is to believe that God  desires to work in each one of our lives to transform us into being co-creators of what is good, not perpetrators of what destroys or tears apart.

Kathleen Norris, in her book Amazing Grace, illustrates the need for our human nature to require second chances when she tells the story of a small boy, who, because of the way he had been abused in life, was very hateful and full of rage. She encouraged him to write a poem to express how he felt and he entitled it, “The Monster Who Was Sorry”.  He wrote of how his anger made him want to hurt his sister and wreck his room and even wreck the whole town.  And then his poem concluded, “Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, “I shouldn’t have done all that.’”  Norris said that little boy created a metaphor for himself that probably expressed more honesty than most adults could muster.  In a sense, we all have messy houses.  God knows that, and desires to help us clean it up so there will be more room for God and us to dwell there together.

Jesus obviously knew children could teach us a lot.  He kept telling us that if we paid more attention to children we would know more about God and God’s desire for us.  Just a few days ago, I learned something about the nature of God from a little girl named Luna.  Luna is 2 ½ years old, is bi-lingual and had me wrapped around her little finger in the first 5 minutes after we met.  What she taught me about the nature of God was what she did when we all gathered around the table for a meal together. She reached out, so everyone knew we were suppose to reach out and hold hands together and then she said, “We’re all here. Ahhhhhhhhh!”  No “amen” was needed.  “Ahhhhhhh”, said it all!  Luna, like God, reaches out to us, and wants to include us all around the table together. 

We are all on a path, a road headed in a certain direction.  How open are we to having God come and shed more light on our path? How willing are we to be led in a new direction? How receptive would we be to having some blinders fall from our eyes so we could see things differently? Yes, the stories of Noah and Paul this morning tell us about the nature of God wanting us to have all the chances in the world to live life fully and abundantly but Noah and Paul had some responsibility in listening and being willing to be led, being willing to be loved, into a new dimension in their lives. What about each one of us?

You see, the really good news about the nature of God this morning is God does not reach out to us in love to give us just a second chance. God is extravagantly generous, giving us not just second chances, but opportunity after opportunity to begin again, to build up not to tear down, to love not to hate, to clean up our messy rooms so God can abide with us, travel down any road with us.   What will we do with those opportunities?

My mind goes back again to the stories and the people of this last week.  One incredible example that stood out for me was Liviu Librescu, the 76 year old aeronautics engineer who was a professor at Virginia Tech.  He was a Holocaust survivor who had known a life of hardship since his childhood in Romania.  He had been given many reasons and circumstances in life to become bitter, negative and full of resentment toward his fellow human beings, but that was not how he chose to live his life.  He devoted his life to teaching others how to live and give back to the world.   On Monday morning, when his life was once again threatened by the hatred and violence that we humans can invoke on one another, he used his own body to barricade the door to his students’ room so they could escape with their lives.  In the end, he gave up his.

Second chances, third chances…. too many chances to count.  Each day is a new beginning.  May we all take the road with God. 

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