St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
February 18, 2024
Year B: The First Sunday in Lent
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
The God of Second Chances
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Maybe you’ve heard that quote from the writer Maya Angelou.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Maya Angelou’s words point to the importance of first impressions and trusting our gut.
The quote comes up a lot when a politician or a celebrity does something wrong – something wrong that comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention all along.
And I bet this quote rings true for any of us who’ve been burned by someone – burned by the same someone in the same way – over and over again.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
The idea seems to be that it’s better to make a quick decision about someone, better to not hope for improvement, better to avoid disappointment, heartbreak, or worse.
Maya Angelou was very wise but, fortunately for us, this is not how God operates.
No, God is the God of Second Chances.
In today’s Old Testament lesson, we heard the end of the story of the Great Flood, Noah, and the Ark filled with pairs of the world’s creatures.
Just like the story of Jonah that we talked about a few weeks ago, Noah’s Ark is one of the Bible stories that we often share with children – probably because there are animals involved.
I wonder about that because, when you stop and think about them, both stories have terrifying elements.
Jonah spending three days and nights in the belly of the Great Fish sounds like the stuff of nightmares.
And even worse, God getting so fed up with our misbehavior that God floods the entire planet, destroying every living thing except Noah and his family and the animals he was able to cram onto the ark – well, it’s hard to imagine something more frightening than that.
But at the end of the story, it almost sounds like God has some second thoughts about the flood – or, if not second thoughts then at least God promises never to do something like this again – and God seals this promise – this covenant – with a rainbow across the sky.
Just like in the story of Jonah, when he was disgorged from the big fish and given an opportunity to go to Nineveh and just like when the people of Nineveh repent and God decides not to destroy the city, God is revealed to be the God of Second Chances.
God is the God of Second Chances.
But why?
I mean, let’s face it, if you or I were God we would’ve given up on us long ago, turned our attention to some other planet, some other more obedient species with a better track record of love and generosity and forgiveness.
If you or I were God we would’ve given up long ago on a world where sick and addicted people are camped out on the streets of the wealthiest country on earth – a world where we can’t even have a Super Bowl parade without some angry and armed person opening fire – a world where a brutal dictator coldly disposes of his opponents without guilt or fear – a world filled with our less dramatic but still destructive cruelties and dishonesties
It would seem that we have shown God who we are, over and over.
But maybe that’s not true.
I’ve mentioned to you before that one of my spiritual heroes is Thomas Merton, the 20th Century monk and writer.
Thomas Merton spent a lot of time thinking and writing about what he called our real and false selves.
Merton wrote, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the man I want to be but who cannot exist. Because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.”
Our false self is the person we present to the world – the mask we wear to get along in this messed up world we have created.
The false self thinks it can be satisfied with money, power, prestige, or just security – and yet they are all illusions.
The false self uses others for our own benefit or pleasure.
The false self is never truly at rest, at peace.
And so, as Thomas Merton, wrote, God doesn’t have anything to do with our false self.
But God knows our real self – the real self that is such a great mystery that we may not even know it ourselves.
But when we look at Jesus – the Ultimate Second Chance given to us by God – we see what’s real.
When we look at Jesus, we see what God is really like and we see what we are really like, too.
In today’s lesson from the Gospel of Mark, we again heard the story of Jesus’ baptism – this one-on-one encounter between God the Father and Jesus the Son, the Beloved with whom God is well pleased.
Our real self, beloved by God.
And immediately after Jesus’ baptism, we’re told that the Spirit cast Jesus into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan.
I like that Mark doesn’t tell us the exact nature of the temptations because that means we can fill in the blanks and think of our own temptations, our own weak spots, and know that Jesus can resist them.
With God’s help, our real self can resist our temptations – and live the lives of love that God has always intended for us.
So this is our task, especially during Lent.
With God’s help, we face our sinfulness and repent.
With God’s help, we recognize that the stuff we spend so much time, energy and money chasing, will never really satisfy us.
With God’s help, we look more closely at Jesus and see who God really is.
With God’s help, we look more closely at Jesus and see who we really are.
If you were here last week, you may remember that in my sermon I talked about my recent trip to San Francisco, which happened to coincide with the fierce rainstorms that swamped much of the California coast.
The worst of it was on Sunday when I made a memorable trip up and down “the mountain" to Grace Cathedral.
The next day, Monday, the storm had subsided.
I took an early morning walk down to the Bay where I was greeted with the most beautiful rainbow, soaring across the vast, open sky.
There weren’t too many people out yet but most of us there, including me, pulled out our phones and tried to photograph the rainbow’s beauty, its wide embrace.
No matter the storms of our life, no matter our sins and failures, no matter how we get fooled by our false self, God has known from the start who we really are.
And so, long after we might have given up on us, God promises to be – continues to be - the God of Second Chances.
Amen.
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