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March 7,
2010
Pastor
Jim Bangsund
"The
Great Turnabout"
Isaiah 55:1-9; Luke 13:1-9
It was time
to repaint the church. The paint had been bought and the work crew
assembled. But the evening before, the pastor, wanting to save a
little money, had added paint thinner to the paint to get it to
go a little further. Unfortunately, it proved to be a false economy
because, in his frugal enthusiasm, he thinned the paint too much.
The next day, the paint job ended up being streaky and not covering
at all well. The pastor was distraught, and went to his office and
prayed, "Lord, you've seen the mess. What should we do?" There was
silence ... and then came the voice: "Repaint, repaint and thin
no more."
OK, I hear the groans. I feel your pain. My apologies to those of
you who invited friends on this Bring a Friend Sunday - no doubt
telling them about the high standard of preaching we have here at
St Tim's. And on top of it all, there's this heavy message, right
out of the chute, in our Bible readings: "Unless you repent, you
too will all perish." Some of you with good memories may be thinking,
"Ah yes. The last time Pastor Jim preached on a Bring a Friend Sunday
he preached on Hell."
I want to say this is all Pastor Dan's fault - but I can't, really.
As I think most of you know, we, like many churches, follow a three-year
cycle of texts here, which is generally a good thing because it
tends to keep pastors off of their hobby horses and into a wider
range of texts in the Bible. Yet sometimes - especially on Bring
a Friend Sundays, it seems - we get texts that have us chewing on
our lips a bit. But we go with them - we go with them - because,
as we move through the Bible over a three year period, we as pastors
have again and again been surprised at what God does with those
texts. And you probably have been, too. It's God's Word, after all.
"Unless you repent, you too will all perish." That's what Jesus
says - twice - in our Gospel reading. And, like me, you may have
an image in mind - a more modern image - an image of the haggard,
bearded guy with sunken eyes on the street corner carrying the sign
with "Repent" or "Prepare to meet your God" written on it.
But image and reality are often quite different; the reality is
this: God wants his best for you, as the Bible reminds us again
and again. Those cartoon images of God in the clouds ready to pitch
lightning bolts just don't get it. God wants his best for you -
he really does. The Bible is clear about this. So, that being said,
where does all this repentance talk fit in?
We may think of groveling, of sackcloth and ashes, but that word
"repentance" in the Bible - whether Old Testament or New - literally
means a great turnabout. A turning around, a change of mind or direction,
a return to where you should have been all along. Oh, indeed, the
word sometimes causes a bit of discomfort. Think of going to your
doctor. It's been said that your pastor sees you at your best, your
lawyer at your worst, but your doctor as you really are. And it
can be uncomfortable when your doctor measures you, weighs you,
pokes you and says, "You need to change your diet and get some exercise."
I mean, you knew that all along, right? You didn't have to pay a
doctor 150 bucks to tell you that. But - really - you did. We need
that word from our doctor that makes us get real with ourselves.
Good grief, we even pay for that word even though it makes
us uncomfortable - because we know it's what we really do need to
hear.
When you first came in, you saw a verse from the prophet Isaiah
on the wall: Isaiah 55:6: "Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near." Isaiah was a prophet, many many years
ago before there was a Bible. Think about it; how did God first
get the conversation going? How did he first speak to people before
there was a Bible? He spoke one-on-one through people like Isaiah
- through prophets and others - people whose words later became
the Bible. And in our first lesson Isaiah brings a message fresh
as the morning paper and as old as people's chasing after empty
things:
Why
spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does
not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your
soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Sounds a bit
like your doctor getting on you for your diet - but of course the
issue is even bigger, and Isaiah goes on:
Seek
the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to
our God, for he will freely pardon.
"Let him turn
to the LORD." The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, of course,
and the Hebrew word translated "turn" here is elsewhere translated
"repent." That's what repenting is all about. A great turnabout.
"Let the wicked forsake his way .... Let him turn to the LORD" -
let him "repent" to the LORD, if you will. For when that happens,
we read, God "will have mercy on him" and "will freely pardon."
It's that simple and that profound. No threats of lightning bolts,
no groveling or sackcloth and ashes. Wherever you find yourself
today, whatever you've done, God lays that offer of mercy and pardon
before you. And when we respond and say, "that doesn't
make sense; there's gotta be a catch," God replies, as he does in
the very next verse in Isaiah,
my
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways;
as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
So there you
have it. Repentance in a nutshell. The great turnabout; and a God
who freely forgives and pardons because his thoughts and ways are
quite different from our thoughts and ways.
Now fast forward the tape to the time of Jesus. Five hundred years
after Isaiah said those words, nothing had changed. Except for one
major thing: God had now shown just how much his thoughts and ways
differ from ours by taking on human flesh and entering the world
as one of us. As Jesus. God with skin on, as a child once put it.
And, not surprisingly, the people still didn't get it. Didn't get
how this moment, this exclamation point dropped into the middle
of human history, was God's way of providing that pardon Isaiah
spoke of. Because Jesus, God-with-skin-on, took upon himself the
sentence - for you, for me. Because that exclamation point had a
crossbar and Jesus hung from it.
Just before our Gospel reading, Jesus had been trying to get people
on board; trying to get them to see what significant times they
were living in because of his presence. Like Isaiah, he challenged
them to seize the day, to know the mercy and pardon God offered.
And what do they do? They try to change the subject. Well, don't
we all? When God starts pointing at us, like Uncle Sam in the "I
want you" poster, we start pointing at everyone else. Divert the
attention, and all that. "Ah, right, Jesus, that's cool," they say.
"Hey, did you hear about how that butcher Pontius Pilate killed
those folks in Galilee who were making sacrifices to God? Now there's
some folks that must have really messed up big time before God -
even more than we have."
And Jesus, who was admittedly not a soft, new-agey 90s male, comes
right back with, "So you think those folks were worse sinners than
others because they suffered like that? Not at all! But unless you
repent, you'll face a similar fate." This does two things. First,
he shows Pat Robertson's infamous comment about Haiti's earthquake
being God's punishment for their sins to be simply wrong, wrong,
wrong. There are many things we could say about God and Haiti -
or Chile - but that's not one of them. That's the first thing Jesus'
words get settled.
But second, he pulls them right back from their attempt to distract,
pulls them back to that turnabout word "repentance." Back where
we started. Because God really does want the very best for you and
won't let you or me start changing the subject -any more than your
doctor would let you get away with starting to talk about how overweight
your neighbor has gotten lately.
So what does it look like up close, this repentance thing? What
might it look like in your life or mine? Let me tell you a story.
A man had been married for 20 years. It had been a good marriage
- wonderful wife, two kids, a house, nice neighborhood. But one
day a new woman showed up at the office, and they really hit it
off. They talked a lot, went to coffee together, nothing more. But
then things moved along and they started wondering about other possibilities.
And so The Plan had come about. He often traveled. His wife would
certainly not question another business trip over the weekend. And
so they carefully worked on The Plan. They would meet at a hotel
in a city about three hours away by car. Nice location, no one knew
them there. Zero chance of ... complications.
The day came. His bag was packed, he tossed it in the back seat,
kissed his wife good-bye - that was a bit of an awkward moment,
but it passed. And then he took off. As he drove, he thought about
what he was about to do. Thought about the women at both ends of
the road he was driving; worked it through; was actually rather
pleased with the way things were turning out. It was a fine day
for a drive, and as the miles of highway rolled away in the rear
view mirror so his mild anxiety began to recede as well.
He'd been driving for about two hours when his car phone rang. He
looked at the caller ID display in the dash: unknown caller - let
it go. But then he decided to take the call - and with the push
of a button the whole day suddenly changed. There had been an accident;
details were unclear; but his wife was in the hospital, in ICU with
serious injuries. How soon could he get there?
At this point, his whole world was suddenly turned around. He loved
his wife; he'd only been planning a little outing, a little something
on the side. But now he was suddenly struck by the enormity of what
he'd been planning to do. Context. Perspective. How could he have
gotten involved in something like this; how could he have put at
risk something so precious to him - something that was now indeed
at risk many miles behind him.
In his anxiety, he managed to get his car across the center divider
without causing an accident, and he headed back down the other side
of the freeway, headed back to home. At this point, everything -
everything - was now different. The great turnabout. All
that had been on his left was now on his right; everything formerly
on his right was now on his left. That which had been before him
and had been drawing him ahead was now behind him and actually driving
him away. And that which had been behind him, which he had been
about to betray, was now in front of him, had become the most important
thing in his life and was pulling him home.
That, my friends is repentance. The turning around, the reorienting,
the leaving of - and indeed at times even being driven away by -
that which was at first oh so enticing and compelling but which,
truth be told, has been unhealthy from the get-go. Repentance: being
turned around and drawn back to God's very best for you, to that
which God has had in mind for you all along but which you've just
been blind and deaf to up until now. And when you do that, saying,
"Lord, I really messed up; forgive me and get me back on track,"
then, as Isaiah promised so many centuries ago, God will have mercy
and will freely pardon.
That's what Jesus wanted for those folks who insisted upon changing
the subject and whom he sought to get back on track. That's what
the Cross is all about; that's what Jesus' death and resurrection
are all about; and that, too, is the focus of this season of Lent.
So what does the life of one who is changed in this way look like?
In this valley, where we are so quickly absorbed by activities and
lifestyles, by our houses, our jobs, making a mark, getting aboard
the right startup bandwagon ... what shape might be taken by the
life of one who has gone through the great turnabout? A few of you
may have been at the MOPS meeting on Tuesday. Pastor Dan spoke and
shared a Nicole Johnson video clip. (1)
It's rather good, and you can find it on Youtube if you search for
it by title - "The Invisible Woman."
I'm not going to go through the whole thing here - but I would like
to offer just one brief moment that gave a marvelous perspective.
At one point, Johnson opens a book on the great cathedrals of Europe,
noting how often we don't know the names of those who designed and
built these overwhelming monuments to faith in God. These people
are "invisible" as it were, known only by the great work they left
behind.
She tells "a story about one of the builders who was carving a tiny
bird inside a beam that would be covered over by a roof. And someone
came up to him and said, 'Why are you spending so much time on something
no one will ever see?' And ... the builder replied, 'Because God
sees.'" Because God sees. That, my friends, is the outcome of a
life marked by the great turnabout - repentance, if you will - the
kind of turnabout that God wants for your life, too. And there's
a joy in it - a real and complete joy. A sense of, "Yes, this is
where God would have me be - doing this and not that." A life well
spent ... "because God sees." Repentance: the great turnabout; because
God, who, in Christ, offers mercy and freely pardons, really does
want the very best for your life. Amen.
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YU0aNAHXP0
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