SECOND CHANCE
A Sermon by Rev. James D. Brown
Market Square Presbyterian Church
June 10, 2007
Scripture: 1 Kings 17:8-24 and Acts 20:1-12
The lesson I just read is a tricky one for a preacher trying to keep every one awake on a warm Sunday in June. It requires a short, lively sermon, doesn’t it, lest a Eutychus among us fall out of his pew.
Paul was in the town Troas, a port city on the Aegean Sea, not too far from the straits of Bosphorus in what is modern day Turkey. On Sunday we find him in the upstairs room of the house of an early Christian believer talking with—or rather preaching to—seven of his traveling companions. We can assume others were listening in along with a young man by the name of Eutychus.
The upper room was lighted by many oil burning lamps, leaving the air smoky and stuffy. Eutychus was sitting on the window sill, presumably to get some fresh air. Windows at the time had no glass in them; they were simply openings in the wall to let in light and fresh air.
Paul droned on and on, and Eutychus “began to sink off into a deep sleep.” Has this ever happened to you at Market Square? Well, in this case Eutychus fell right out the window and landed with a thud three stories below, seemingly dead.
Paul, good pastor that he was, stopped preaching and made his way down the outside stairway to where the boy lay. There Paul, if we take the Greek literally, “threw himself upon” the dead young man and embraced him. Life returned. This young man had gotten his second wind, his second chance.
And what did Paul the preacher do? He went right back up the stairs and broke bread with his companions—which in the early church usually meant sharing a meal modeled after Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. After the breaking of the bread and eating, Paul picked up where he left off with his preaching, which lasted until dawn. My guess is that we would have to bar the doors if I ever got that carried away!
Then Paul left. His listeners, including Eutychus—especially Eutychus I would venture to guess—were not a little comforted. In short, they overjoyed by what seemed like a second chance for all of them as they cherished the good news of God’s life-sustaining love and mercy.
There are clear parallels with our Old Testament story, aren’t there? It’s set way back in the time of King Ahab, who ruled the Northern Kingdom of Israel about 900 years before Paul preached in Troas. It’s about Elijah and a destitute Canaanite widow and her son. Elijah was one of God’s prophets who railed against the Israelites for worshipping the Canaanite god Baal, who was believed to control nature, especially rain fall. In this story we have Elijah being saved from starvation by a follower of Baal, a surprising reversal of what one would expect.
The poor widow’s gift of water and bread had a sacramental quality to it—“the jar of meal was not emptied, nor did the jug of oil fail.” And why? Because God’s universal love shatters the boundaries of cult and clan to bring new life where we sometimes least expect it.
The story goes on to the resuscitation of the widow’s son. The son is breathless. Elijah laid him on his own bed, stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, “O Lord, my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And he revived and got his second chance, just as Eutychus would 900 years later.
Both of these stories have touched me in a surprising sort of way as I think of heading off to the Holy Land in just over a week from now. As you know, thirteen of us are going to Israel and the West Bank on a pilgrimage to visit with a wide array of people and to trace the steps of Jesus as we visit places like Bethlehem and Jerusalem and Nazareth.
We are going as seekers after hope in an upside-down time in the Middle East. How upside-down it is was driven home in Thomas Friedman’s recent column in The Patriot-News in which he quoted from Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat” to describe the mess in the Middle East:
Then he shut the Things
in the box with the hook.
And the cat went away
With a sad kind of look.
“That is good,” said the fish.
“He has gone away. Yes.
But your mother will come.
She will find this big mess!
And this mess is so big
And so deep and so tall,
We can not pick it up.
There is no way at all!
In anticipation of our going into a messy part of the world, I want to say a few brief words (did you hear that Eutychus—a few brief words) about three things that give me a glimmer of hope about the messy place we’re off to visit: fear, food and faithfulness.
Some of you have asked if those of us going on this trip are fearful. The answer is “Yes, we are.” You can’t read the newspaper or watch TV and not shudder at the level of violence in the Middle East.
I hasten to say that our trip is being carefully planned by a woman in Bethlehem by the name of Rana Khoury, who works with the International Center of Bethlehem and its Authentic Tourism office. We will be guided and sheltered by friends who care deeply about us and will do everything in their power to keep us safe. The practical, rational side of me is full of confidence that we will have a very fruitful trip and will return home safe and sound.
But I still won’t downplay a certain bit of background noise that reflects the fearfulness that creeps into my conscious and unconscious musings. Just the other day when I was stewing about this I came across a quote on fear by Albert Camus which was actually refreshing:
What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a
certain moment, when we are so far from our own country
we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to
go back to the protection of old habits. This is the most
obvious benefit of travel. At that moment we are feverish
but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver
to the depths of our being. We come across a cascade of
light, and there is eternity. This is why we should not say
we travel for pleasure.[i]
So yes, we head off to Tel Aviv on the 21st with a fair amount of fear, which is not all bad, is it? It may just prepare for cascades of light in a dark time.
This leads me to food. The story of the Canaanite widow feeding the Israelite prophet Elijah conjures up all sorts of powerful images. I’m reminded of a conversation our pilgrimage team had a few days ago. We talked about the nights we will be spending in the homes of members of our sister church, St. Joseph’s, in the little town of Jifna, which is due north of Jerusalem and a short distance from Ramallah.
We found ourselves focused on the hard times the Jifna families are experiencing and began to ask ourselves if it was fair to expect them to feed us. After all, unemployment in parts of the West Bank is over 50%. But having been there before I can remember how much delight my host family had in bringing in a few fresh eggs from a little henhouse in the back, and placing some goat cheese and some olives and some bread in front of me for breakfast.
How like the widow who served Elijah, defying the same logic as when the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail. And so we will leave for the homes of our brothers and sisters in Jifna primed and ready for miracles flowing out of the breaking of bread, expecting to be not a little comforted.
Finally, let’s talk about faithfulness. Here I’m not thinking about us. I’m thinking about the faithfulness of God, the God who acts through earthly intermediaries like Elijah, like the Canaanite widow, like Paul, like you, like me.
God’s faithfulness transcends all our biases, all our loyalties, all our “isms” like localism and nationalism and tribalism and patriotism. Even as Elijah was railing against the Canaanite worshippers of Baal, God was sending a Canaanite widow to save his life.
The God of Elijah transcends all our boundaries, all our roadblocks, all our walls, working to bring life where there is death, hope where there is despair.
I believe our God is the God of second chances. This holds true for us in deeply personal ways. When we hit bottom, when we take a road from which there is no exit, when we make a mess so big and so deep and so tall we cannot pick it up, suddenly Christ stands before us, daring us to break bread in his name, to taste his bread and drink from his cup that we might be made whole again. This doesn’t mean we get our way. It means we can rest assured that God has not and will not abandon us.
This is good news. And this good news has a social side, a political dimension. The God of Israel and the church is the God who transcends every tribe and every clan on the face of the earth. I was surprised as I worked on today’s sermon to be taken back in time to a hillside in Santa Fe where a friend pointed to cluster of homes where the cottonwoods were a little taller, the piņon a little greener than in nearby neighborhoods.
I asked why this was so. It turns out that during WW II that very area had been the site of an internment camp for Japanese Americans, who had been rounded up and hauled off to places like Santa Fe for no other reason than being of Japanese ancestry. At war’s end they left a legacy of the best soil in Santa Fe as a result of their gift for organic farming.
World War II was a mess so big and so tall that there seemed to be no way at all to pick it up. Now, more than half a century and later, Japan and America are friends again. This is a product of war and diplomacy and economic development to be sure. But I believe as surely as God was at work in Northern Israel with Elijah and the Canaanite widow, God was at work in places like Santa Fe during WW II, softening the hearts of citizens who watched Japanese American moms and dads and their children being herded off trains and placed in an internment camp right in their midst. Individuals get second chances. And so do the nations of the world. Just think of our own Civil War if you need reminded that this is so.
As we go to the Middle East we will be talking with Christians and Jews and Muslims about such tiny glimmers of hope. We will be taking books to children in Jifna, a banner to hang in the sanctuary of St. Joseph’s Church, an album of pictures of our children to share with children and teachers in Jifna. We will talk and listen and pray everywhere we go, clinging to God’s faithfulness as revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
We have published a booklet with our itinerary that includes the Scripture readings that we will read prayerfully each day. You are encouraged to take a booklet home with you today, and to make it part of your own spiritual journey from June 21-July 5. For those listening on the radio, the itinerary can be found on www.marketsquarechurch.org.
We also plan to use our web page to post daily reports and photos as we make our way through the Holy Land.
One day this past week I sent Father Emil, the pastor in Jifna, an email. Within a few minutes he answered, but not from Jifna. He was in Rome for a meeting. I shook my head in wonderment at how small the world has become, how closely knit we can be when our hearts are fixed on good things.
Our God is the God of second chances who promises to revive us again and again, who does intend the world to be a peaceable kingdom, and who does use plain old ordinary people to make this happen. It is in this spirit that our sometimes fearful but always hopeful band will head for Tel Aviv and beyond. Pray for us you must. You will be in our prayers in return.