Have you ever felt like there was no hope at all- like there was nothing more that could be done? Like another book wouldn’t help, another revelation wouldn’t help, another bout of tears wouldn’t help, and another prayer wouldn’t help? Most of us have had one of those end-of-the-road-God-help-me-or-there’s-nothing-left kinds of experiences. Whether it’s fighting addiction, coming out of depression, surviving divorce or the loss of a loved one; they are moments that feel so lifeless that it seems as if the darkness is the only place to be. And from my experience it seems that these are usually the times when God can get to us most easily. Maybe it is because we are so weak that we have no other option but to receive the love extended to us or maybe it is because God literally makes a way out of it. God seems to have a way of clearing a path so at the very least we can see something good, something that is other than the darkness. And then gently we are invited to see even the smallest pin light of light until one day we wake up to find that beacon burning bright.
I remember crying through the floor vent of my bedroom as a kid. It was during the time of my parents’ separation and it seemed that there was no where I could go where I didn’t have to think about the fact that my world seemed to be caving in. Yet somehow, one moment led to another opening, which led to a new chance, a new possibility and a new beginning and eventually a light that was brighter than the darkness. I couldn’t see it at the time, all I could see was road blocks and barriers, boundaries and things that prevented me from moving forward, yet somehow God made a way out of it. I know with absolute certainty that it was God because there is no possible way that I could have moved forward on my own. It seems that God has a way of completely transforming a hopeless situation into one where slowly life springs forth. Indeed God has a way of changing things.
I know this right to the depths of my soul. God changes things. God changes despair into hope, dark into light, tears into shouts of joy. God takes whatever mess we make and works to pull beauty out of it. It’s like looking at the desert where there is only dust and oppressive heat and somehow there is a tiny blade of green poking through. God has a way of changing things. Yet for some reason I have a hard time believing that people change- that God changes people too. Why is it so hard for us to be as bold in professing that God changes things when it comes to people? We are told that people are who they are and that’s that. I have fallen victim to such thinking myself. It’s easier to write off someone in our life who we tell ourselves is just how they are, there’s no other way. But I wonder if God, by God’s grace can change people too. Maybe this isn’t revolutionary thinking to you. Perhaps you are thinking of course God changes people, but as I survey the range of decision making among our political leaders, religious leaders and within our families, it seems that many of us do not approach the world as if people can change. Because of course that is harder. It takes more of our souls to invest in the possibility that God isn’t finished with us. And maybe it’s harder to believe people can change because it leaves open the possibility that we too could change and for most of us that is the most frightening possibility of all. But I wonder if changing us, if turning our hearts and opening our minds, is one of God’s most cherished tasks.
In his letter to Timothy, we read of Paul’s own description of how he changed. Of course as is his style, he underestimates how truly and radically different he was before he was open to God’s grace. We read, “I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief…” He says he acted ignorantly in unbelief which is certainly true but the truth is Paul was more than ignorant. He was violent and angry. He persecuted and ridiculed those with whom he disagreed. He was indeed faithful to Jewish law, born into the faith, yet was not full of the kind of love God requires of faithful Jews. He adhered to all the practices and was faithful to all of the ceremonies. He was even a Pharisee, which included privileges and a particular status afforded to few others. He was zealous in his pursuit of keeping with the Law and according to his own account, there wasn’t one requirement that he had not met. But he was mean and angry. And he even persecuted the early followers of Jesus, including some of the disciples. If you are confused, yes this is the same Paul you are thinking of. This is Paul the Apostle, the Paul to which much of our New Testament books are attributed and he used to be mean and spiteful.
And then God’s grace overtook him. We read about it in Acts. He is out and on the lookout for more who profess Jesus as Lord so that he can bring them bound to Jerusalem for persecution and then it happens. Acts 9 reads, “Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul (that was his name before this moment) why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The replay came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’” Who knows why it happened then or how exactly, but somehow God saw an opening and took it. God took the opening and pried it right open. God took his heart and softened it right up. And in 1 Timothy, our text for this morning, we hear Paul say that is through God’s grace and mercy that he was changed, through God’s grace and mercy he was changed.
We don’t read why it happened then or what was happening in Paul that it made it a particularly good time for God to change him but it happened. Most of us don’t quite have experiences like that. For most of us it is like a rock in a river. We are thrown in or we tumble in, or we ride in on another until slowly we are smoothed over by the grace of God. And I wonder if part of being a Christian is choosing to be smoothed over and daring to stand before God and say, “Here I am God; I know you aren’t finished with me yet.” Perhaps part of our Christian task to jump into the river of God in order to be changed. It can’t really be seen from one day to the next but over time, the grace is there, smoothing and shaping, softening and flowing over. As Christians we dare to say that we are human, and in need of our God who longs to wear down our rough places and guard our tender spots. Frederick Buechner calls this “a crazy holy grace...crazy because whoever could have predicted it? Who can ever foresee the crazy how and when and where of a grace that that wells up out of the lostness and pain of the world and of our own inner worlds? And holy because these moments of grace come ultimately from farther away than Oz and deeper down than doom, holy because they heal and hollow.”
Maybe this holy grace, this crazy grace that surprises us and pulls beauty of anything kind of grace is just another one of those radical tenets of our Christian faith. And because of that grace, we dare to proclaim together that the world is not all it could be, that God has more to do, that God changes things and if we dare, God can even change us. Amen.
Frederick Buechner. Listening to Your Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) 9.