"What If You Could Start Over?"

"What If You Could Start Over?"
1 Peter 1:3-5

       I read an article this week that was a sort-of rebuttal to the atheists that Easter doesn't matter.  That it couldn't have happened.  That it's not verifiable.  The article was trying to make the point that even the invisible forces in the world, like love, or honor, are no less so just because you can't see them.  So it is with God.  And the Resurrection.

       It got me thinking about how do you "see" the Resurrection?  This is the first Sunday after Easter.  We had a great string of Holy Week services, building to the crescendo of the Easter Sunday cantata.  But what does the Resurrection mean for everyday living?  What does it mean to live the Resurrection life?

       I think we need to find out from an eye-witness.  Someone who was there.  Someone who was one of the first to be there.  Someone who stuck his head in the empty tomb.  Someone who had a couple of intimate conversations with the Risen Jesus.  Someone like Peter.  For Peter, the Resurrection was everything.  It formed the basis of everything he came to believe.  It was what empowered him to become the leader of the early Christian church.

       So, we're going to turn to Peter's first letter this month, and look at what Peter wrote about the Resurrection, and why the Resurrection is so important for the Christian life.

       In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the main characters is Nick Carraway.  Nick thinks about what he calls, "the last and greatest of all human desires.  The last and greatest of all human desires is also one of the foremost and primary human dreams.  Those who study the mythology of different peoples have found this desire weaving its way throughout each culture's history.

       In the Bible, this greatest of all human desires is traced from the time when Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden of Eden, all the way to a midnight conversation between Nicodemus the Pharisee and Jesus.

       What is this "last and greatest of all human desires," this first and foremost of all human aspirations?  It is the dream of starting over.  It's what I call the resurrection desire.

       In "Decision Magazine," published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, there is story after story of people who have ached for this dream.  There is a medical intern who saw ads for a crusade in Columbia, South Carolina.  The intern attended and responded to the invitation to bring Jesus Christ into her life.  She said, "I'm tired of the life I've been living.  I need a fresh start.  I need to get things right with God."

       And there was the story of an attorney who said he and his wife were both alcoholics.  Their home-life was breaking apart.  He said they both needed a drastic change--a totally new lease on life.  Like the gospel story of the woman who had a hemorrhage of blood for 12 years, and spent every penny she had on every possible remedy, the attorney and his wife said, "We've tried everything else; Jesus is our last chance."  With that desire in their hearts they both attended and came forward at a crusade.

       What if you could start over?  How has this greatest of all human desires, this longing to begin again, this hunger for resurrection, been like a seed planted in your heart?  How would your life be different if you could let that seed grow and you began again?

       You know how you hear about people who just disappear?  Their faces may be on milk cartons or on fliers stapled to telephone poles, or stuck on laundromat bulletin boards.  My guess is, a number of those lost people don't want to be found.  When you run away, you run away from something or someone; but you are also running toward something else.  That's why I think some runaways, particularly adults, are running toward the dream of starting over.  Starting over somewhere, with a new name.  To become the kind of person they were never allowed to be in their past.

       Such is the story of Jean Valjean in the famous novel, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  Jean Valjean runs from his convict past.  He was arrested for stealing bread to feed his starving family.  After an escape from prison, he finds refuge in the house of a priest.  The next morning, Valjean has disappeared and some silverware is missing from the priests home.

       The next day, the police bang on the priest's door.  They have captured Valjean with the missing silver.  The priest looks at Valjean and says to him, "But you forgot the silver candlesticks I gave you as well.  Here, take them."  Valjean is stunned.  He's been shown unbelievable grace.  He takes the silver pieces and sells them.  He uses the money to start a small business that turns into a large business that saves a village.  He becomes mayor of the village.

       But then there is Inspector Jabert.  Jabert is hunting Valjean.  He doesn't want Jean Valjean to have another chance, to live a new life.  Both men in this great novel symbolize the two ways people approach life:  the Jabert way, which says you are chained to your past.  That nobody can change who they are.  And the Jean Valjean way, that pursues the great human aspiration of being freed from your past, of starting totally over.  It is about living life in a brand new way, and toward an ever new future.

       Which of the two character's approach to life most describes how you view life?  Do you feel people, especially yourself, are fated to always be a prisoner of your past?  Locked in a tomb of your past with a huge stone rolled into place so you can't get out?  Is there no hope for you to become someone radically different than who you have been?  Is your only choice to be resigned to the fact of who you are, to sadly accept that you can never be changed?  That you will always live this tomb-encased life?  Have you succumbed to the thought that, "It's too late for me.  It's over."

       Here is what I believe.  I believe that God is the one who sows the seeds of starting over in every human heart.  You know how there are certain kinds of seeds that lay dormant in the soil until just the right conditions bring them to germination?  Sometimes there has to be a prairie fire, and there are particular seeds that are activated by the intense heat of the fire.  They need the disaster of that fire to germinate and begin life.

       So it is with this seeded yearning that God plants in each person.  When the prairie fire of human failure races across a person's life, that seed is activated.  The desire, the deep implanted need to start over begins to grow.  When the shoot, and the stem, and the first leaves appear, we begin the sometimes frantic search for that which will fertilize and water that precious new growth.

       I believe God hopes that in our search, we will turn to him to find the only authentic nurture that will bring that budding plant--that desire to start over--to come to fruit. Since it is God's seed, it is only by God that it grows.  All the other ways we try to make that desire unfold will only result in the frustration of watching the it whither and die.  That's when we get lost in resignation.  We become Jabert, thinking people can only be chained to their past, and never have a new future.

       Right at the start of his letter, the apostle Peter wants Christians everywhere to realize and hear again what God has done to give us this chance at new birth and new life.  As Peter personally understands, it is by God's act of raising Jesus Christ from the dead that we gain the new life we dream about.  That's why the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so important.  It is the way that God fulfills the deep yearning in each of us to start fresh.

       To give you another metaphor, the Resurrection of Christ is a door that God places before us.  If we accept what God has done for us in Christ, we open the door, step through, and shut the door behind us.  What we find when we walk through that resurrection door is that the door shut behind us has no door knob on our side.  We don't have a way of opening it again and going back.  We can only go forward into a brand new future with God, through Christ.

       Or think of it in terms of the birth process.  That's what Peter calls it in his letter.  We are given a rebirth through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Imagine yourself in the womb.  This is what Jesus was trying to get the Pharisee Nicodemus to picture, but Nicodemus' imagination was too limited.  Open up your imagination and picture yourself in the womb.  It's warm in there.  You tell yourself you are comfortable in a very cramped sort of way.

       You hear muffled sounds of another existence.  But you convince yourself it's not for you.  You tell yourself that this is the only place where you fit.  You feel fated to stay wrapped up in a little, tight ball of cramped existence.

       Then you hear a Voice.  The Voice is calling you out of that confined life.  "Come out, little one.  Come out and see this new world I have for you.  Come out and live a new life.  Grow and become.  Come out, child, into your new life."

       But you resist.  The Voice comes again.  That Voice describes in detail the kind of life you can have if you would only be born anew.  The Voice describes the sights and smells and tastes and wonders of a brand new existence.

       You are afraid.  It might hurt.  You're going to have to make a change.  Live differently.  The Voice speaks softly, "I have taken the pain of your new birth in my own body.  Don't be afraid.  Be born anew."  You touch the uterine walls of your confined life, not sure you can, or want to leave that space.  But hearing of the new life outside the womb, you long to see if the promises are true.  There's only one way to find out:  leave the womb of that previous life and be born anew.  Be born into the promises the Voice told you about.  Take the chance.

       You close your eyes.  You let God's resurrecting contractions begin.  When you open your eyes again you find yourself in a world beyond your imagining.  You are totally different.  You have been refit by God for the new world and new life you have just been born into.  Your heart is beating with hope.  Your lungs are filled with life.  Your existence has been radically and decisively changed.  The memory of your previous reality fades as quickly as a dream when you are waking.  It is unbelievable.  And it is all real.

       Isn't that what you desire?  Deep down you have wished to God that things could be different.  The Voice of God speaks and says, "Things can be different; they are different.  I have done all that for you in the raising of Jesus Christ from death.  Come out.  Come out of the womb.  See all the blessings that are yours in the new life I have made available to you.  Now is the time for your new birth.  Come out of your old life.  Be born anew.  See the resurrection life!"