May 4, 2003
A Second Chance
Riley E. Jensen

My colleague, Michael Lindvall (whom many of you knew as the recent pastor of our neighboring church to the east in Ann Arbor), tells a wonderful story to which many of us can relate.  He talks about usually being the second person in his household to greet the dawn since his wife was an early morning runner.  And that left him with the duty of waking their teenage son and getting him off to school in the morning.

As Lindvall tells it this was actually duty he looked forward to for many years -- actually since young Benjamin was an infant.  There were those long colicky nights when nothing seemed to soothe the infant child, and he could remember rocking him at 3:00 a.m. musing about a time in the distant future when he would go into his bedroom when he was sleeping soundly and yell, “Benjamin, wake up! It’s 4:30 and time to get up.”  Benjamin would roll over, pull the sheets over his eyes, and say, “No, no, I don’t want to!”

Michael Lindvall goes on to confess that the vengeful fantasy only came partially true since young Benjamin proved to be one of those unusual teenagers who responded rather quickly to his father’s call of “rise and shine” to greet a new day.  The truth is that some of us have an easier time greeting a new day than do others, but for all of us a new day represents something of that new beginning alluded to in our scripture lesson.

I remember memorizing our text in II Corinthians 5: 17 as a teenager, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creation, old things are passed away, behold all things become new.”  Certainly that is Paul’s version of the impact of Easter for Paul is the apostle of Easter.  That’s the theme of his writing and his experience.  He has nothing to say about Christmas and little to say about the life of Christ.  For him, it all begins at Easter, “If Christ is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.” (I Corinthians 15: 17)

Perhaps that is why as a teenager I loved this verse, because Lord knows I wanted everything to become new.  I didn’t like myself very much.  Actually, I wanted a total makeover.  We could start by getting rid of the curly hair.  Curly wasn’t in in those days and crew cuts were.  All the athletics had great crew cuts, but my hair was so curly that the skinhead look would have worked better for me but that wasn’t in so I wound up wearing a hat most of the time hoping that people wouldn’t notice.  A few more inches of height wouldn’t hurt.  Fortunately, I wasn’t so short that I got picked on, but I usually wound up playing second base on the baseball team, and guard on the basketball team.  I never played football because there wasn’t much demand for a hundred and ten pound halfback.  And the girls seemed to like guys they could look up to so I thought that taller was better.

Well, you get the idea – the miracle of the new creation was just what I needed and wanted so this verse gave me hope and fit my fantasies.  Actually at many points along life’s journey all of us would like the benefit of a mulligan, a do-over, a second chance to correct some of those mistakes we wish we hadn’t made.

I think that Diane Loomans gives voice to parents the world over when she writes a lyrical verse entitled “If I had my child to raise over again”.

“If I had my child to raise all over again,

I’d finger-paint more, and point the fingers less.

I would do less correcting and more connecting.

I’d take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.

I would care to know less and know to care more.

I’d take more hikes and fly more kites.

I’d stop playing serious, and seriously play.

I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.

I’d do more hugging and less tugging.

I’d build self-esteem first, and the house later.

I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.

I’d teach less about the love of power,

And more about the power of love.”

(From Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul)

One of the reasons that our text for the morning is so great and such a cause for relief, hope, and rejoicing is that it contradicts the once-and-for-allness of Easter Day.  For Paul Easter was never just about Easter.  It was never about something that happened to just one man, as miraculous as that was.  It was never about just Jesus.  It was about the power of God to grant new life -- eternal life.  Jesus never raised himself; the Gospel is that God raised Jesus from the dead.  As Paul says in another place these are just the first fruits of those that sleep!

Paul’s Gospel is that the resurrection is radical because it affects all creation.  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”  That is why we can now be two weeks removed from that festival Sunday of Easter and still be celebrating it, because Easter has reordered the universe and put us in touch with a new creation.

Part of the new creation is that “old things are passed away” like those bad dreams that seem so real causing us to roll and toss throughout the dark night.  But when our eyes greet the daybreak of a new dawning, we are able to cast off the heaviness and the hopelessness of those nightmarish thoughts and entertain new more hopeful possibilities.

Through the miracle of modern technology I was able to retrieve from my computer an old Roger Whittaker song that used to inspire me in days of yesteryear.  Through the turmoil, the warfare, and the uncertainty of the 60s and 70s, we were motivated by the belief that we were creating a new world.  That old world was a world of racism and sexism, corruption in government, and participation in a war that seemed to have no purpose, but our generation was going to create what Whittaker called “A New World in the Morning.”  “Every body’s talkin’ bout a new world in the morning, a new world in the morning bye and bye”, he sang.

We were indeed talking about a new world in the morning.  But the world of the 60s and 70s brought impatience with that talk because it seemed to have been going on for a long time with no appreciable results.  We fought a Civil War for that new world at the price of hundreds of thousands of lives, but 40 years later Theodore Roosevelt was castigated for inviting the first black man to dine at the White House in the person of Booker T. Washington.  Eighty years later we had coloreds as they were called then laying down their lives for our country on foreign shores but still not good enough to fight in integrated military units.  One hundred years later they couldn’t go to the same schools or eat in the same restaurants with their white counterparts.

Roger Whittaker was one of many who put into words songs that became anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements as he sang, “I myself don’t talk about a new world in the morning, new world in the morning, that’s today!”

I have to empathize with any who would approach this talk of newness and new creations with skepticism.  It seems that we are always fighting the war to end all wars but it never quite happens.  Sin and evil are too much with us.

“All things are become new.”  Oh, if that were only so!  If that were only true, that all things could become new, and that we would become new people, different from the people we were when we entered church this morning.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could start all over again, wipe the slate clean, get rid of everything on the hard drive, and start all over again.  That second chance, that new opportunity, that new lease on life is about as elusive as getting a real deal on a car purchase (which I have been doing lately and never getting as close to what Consumer Reports says is the right price as I think I should be).

I like the way Robert Spector put it in one of those little squibs that appears in The New York Times from time-to-time.  He entitled it, “Inferiority Complex”.

If I had Solomon’s wisdom,

Possessed all the power of Atlas,

And moved with Mercury’s swiftness,

I’d find a way to mess things up

Because I’d still be me.

Roger Whittaker was singing his song to an impatient generation that wanted to right the wrongs of the past and bring in the new kingdom today.  Many of us share that impatience and with it the discouragement that comes with the slowness of change.  Nevertheless, there is another way to understand and find hope in a new world that can start “today”.

You see, the essence of the Easter message is that it is an invitation to change to a people who want desperately to change, but also whose life experience has taught them to be suspicious of the “quick fix”.  That’s why the message of Eastertide is so radical because “old things are passed away and all things become new”.  This isn’t about a Middle Eastern empty tomb any more, it’s about us.  Can we change in ways that we want to and know that we should?

A contemporary Christian writer in England has noted, “There is little good in filling churches with people who go out exactly the same as they came in.”  It’s a waste of your time (not to mention mine, and not to mention God’s) if you leave this church exactly as you were when you arrived.  Something has to happen to you to make a difference in your lives, and you can’t wait to die for it to happen.

When Paul asserts that anybody who really understands and follows Christ is a new creation, he means that because of Christ we see things differently and we respond to things differently.  Things are not different but we see them differently, and thus we are different.  It’s the difference between night and day; it’s the difference between darkness and light; it’s the difference between emerging from the turmoil of the soul to smell the fragrance of the early morning dew framed by the possibilities of a new dawn.

You see, to be “in Christ” is to see the world as Christ sees it -- the work of a caring creator, the object of the kind of redeeming love that never gives up.  Easter then becomes that supreme watershed offering us a power greater than our good intentions.  Because of Easter we are in Christ, and because we are in Christ that “new world in the morning” starts today.  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold all things become new!”