Mary Had A Little Lamb

"Mary Had A Little Lamb"
Acts 9:10-13


Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.


As part of the message this morning, I would like to ask one question of you.  Take some time to write down a few words in answer to this question.  Get out a pencil or pen--or use the one in the pew rack.  Jot down your answers on your bulletin.  Here’s the question:  What is your reputation?

Here’s a way to clarify that question by drawing a few circles around you and your many people contexts.  What is your reputation in your family?  Go ahead and write a few words down.  And, what is your reputation where you work; or, if you are retired, what was your reputation where you worked?  If you are in school, what is your reputation at school?  And finally, what is your reputation amongst your circle of friends?

Thinking about these questions and quickly writing down some short descriptions was probably hard.  I hope that if you didn’t write anything down, you are at least thinking about it.  Answering these questions may be hard because you may not know what your reputation is.  You might be thinking that only those within the circles of relationships that I drew can answer best for you.

I think we have an idea about what our reputations are.  It’s my hope that we have more than one idea what our reputations are.  Because ultimately, it is not others who are in charge of shaping a reputation.  We are the ones who mold our reputations.  We determine the kind of person we want to be known as.  We make the hard choices that shape the identity that others hear about or come to know.

When I was choosing nursery rhymes for this sermon series, I came across this familiar one about Mary and her little lamb.  When I saw it, and in my mind trying to associate it with developing it into a sermon, I began to think about what kinds of things follow us around like Mary’s lamb.  My immediate and lasting thought was our reputations.  No matter how we might try and shoo them away, or leave them behind, they have a way of following us wherever we go.  Reputations are us.  Trying to get away from our reputation is like trying to get away from ourselves.  It’s impossible.

There may be some people’s reputations that are like the little lamb’s fleece: white as snow.  Some are soiled beyond whiteness.  Probably for most of us, our fleeces are spotted at best.

There was a prosperous, young Wall Street broker who met, fell in love with, and was frequently seen escorting a rising actress.  He wanted to marry her, but being a cautious man he decided that before proposing marriage, he should have a private investigating agency check her background and activities.  After all, he reasoned to himself, I have both a growing fortune and a reputation to protect.

The young man requested that the agency was not to reveal his identity to the investigator doing the report on the actress.  In due time the investigator’s report came back.  It said the actress had an unblemished past, a spotless reputation, and her friends and associates were of the best repute.  The report concluded, “The only shadow is that she is often seen around town in the company of a young broker of dubious business practices and principles.”

There may be a lot of people who would not want anyone prying into their past or present relationships and history.  Just run for public office and you’ll find out.  No one wants something uncovered and then made public knowledge.  And there may be an equally large number of people who wish they could find some way to change or amend their reputations within any of the circles of relationships I had you think about at the start of this message.  How, if at all, do you gain or change your reputation--that thing that keeps following at your heels wherever you go?

One of my favorite novels is Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.  It’s the story about Jean Valjean, an escaped convict who was put in prison for stealing bread to feed his hungry family.  He escaped, and while on the run, he had an encounter with a priest that changed his life.  He changed his name to go with his new identity.  Over time he became a very wealthy man--a benefactor to many of the poor in the community where

While all those changes were being made in Jean Valjean’s life, there was an inspector.  Javert.  Javert became obsessed with finding Valjean and throwing him back in prison.  The two are finally brought together in the story through a confrontation that forced Valjean to reveal his previous reputation publicly, surprising the inspector.  Despite the powerful and good man Valjean had become, the inspector only sees him for who Valjean was.  The inspector Javert orders Valjean arrested.

Though that is not the end of the story for Jean Valjean (or Javert), it points to a crisis with which many people deal.  What do you do when you may have created a certain reputation, you change, but others will not allow you to change?  You want to begin the process of forming a new reputation.  But everyone who knows you will not let the old you go.  Or, like the children who ridiculed Mary and her lamb, will make fun of you and the new reputation you are trying to create.

With this in mind, we turn to the life of the Apostle Paul.  The part of the scripture story read in Acts picks up Paul’s story at a pivotal point.  Paul is trying to totally set aside an old reputation, and letting God put another one in its place.

Paul’s former reputation was that of a Christian basher.  He hated the Church and Christians with a vengeful passion.  He worked for and earned the reputation as one who, “...kept up his violent threats of murder against the disciples of the Lord.”  I like the way the King James Bible has this verse:  “And Saul was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord…”

When Ananias was sent by the Lord to Paul, Ananias fearfully hesitated, saying, “Master, you can’t be serious.  Everybody’s talking about this man and the terrible things he’s been doing, his reign of terror against your people in Jerusalem” (9:13).  Paul was the one person no Christian wanted to meet up with in a dark alley.  Or even a lighted alley for that matter.

When looking back, in telling about his life before his conversion to Christianity, Paul would speak about his misguided pride for his reputation of what he called being “...zealous toward God” (Acts 22:3).  The name of Paul was so associated with persecution that the two could not be separated.

I grew up watching Jack LaLanne.  I don’t know what it was about that guy, dressed in his one-piece stretch suit, leading people through calisthenics on TV every morning.  Here was a man who swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco, pulling a rowboat full of people, every New Year’s Day.  At one time in his life he said, “I may never die.  It would wreck my image.”  And then he went on to say, “I can’t even afford to have a fat dog.”

People’s names become wedded to their reputations.  Living up to your name means the same thing as living up to your reputation.  In terms of Paul in the way he treated the early church, that became a hellish marriage of his name with the reputation of persecution.  How hard it would be to try and divorce oneself from one’s reputation.  Especially when, as I said earlier, we have worked so hard to create and maintain that reputation.  We are the ones who choose to live up to our own creations of repute.  They aren’t given to us by anyone else.  We choose them by what we accept and deny to be true or best for us and about us.

In so many places we turn in Scripture where it talks about the formation of a reputation, we find its basis is in what we DO, not what we THINK.
The Son of Man will soon come in the glory of his Father and with his angles to reward all people for what they have done.  (Mt. 16:27)

God will reward each of us for what we have done.  (Romans 2:6)

And so, each of us must give an account to God for what we do.  (Romans 14:12)

The dead were judged by what those books said they had done.  (Revelation 20:12)

What we do, our actions, say much more about the kind of person we are and want to be than what we think.  Our reputations then are displayed by our actions, not by our thinking or our words.  I may think I’m a nice person.  But if I act contrary to that, all my thinking has not gotten me anywhere.  My reputation has been established by what I do, not by what I think.

The same was true for Paul.  The same is true for individuals as well as congregations.  The kind of people we are, and the kind of congregation we are is ultimately portrayed by what we do or don’t do.  It’s something visible--as visible as a lamb following us wherever we go.  Our integrity, our character, our name, our esteem is built up or destroyed by what we do and how we do it.

So, what if we want to change our reputation?  What if we don’t like the name we have made for ourselves?  What if we don’t like the reputations by which we allow others to come to know us, even before they meet us?

Maybe there are some like Paul, who really don’t want to change, but need to.  Someone else must decide it’s time for a change.  In Paul’s case, it was God.  I wonder if it’s safe to say that God is behind all reputation changes for the better.

God knocked Paul off his high horse.  After that everything started to spin in Paul’s little self-made circus side show.  The Lord showed him a reflection of his reputation; let him see what he looked like from the eyes of those who were being done in by his persecution; showed him what his reputation looked like from heaven.

That brief glimpse must have lasted a lifetime for Paul.  But in the horror of that glimpse, the Risen Christ also must have shown Paul what his reputation could be if he so desired to make a change.

It’s amazing what can happen to a person when the Lord grabs a hold of you like that.  Your whole life can change.  Everything that was once important to you loses its luster.  Every driving force behind your life can suddenly lose its steam.

And it’s not that everything stops glimmering.  Or that everything comes to a screeching halt.  It’s more that other things begin to shine--things you never suspected could capture your attention.  It’s more that other goals and pursuits fuel the fires of your life and passions--things you had no idea were even flammable.

Paul had no idea that if his life and reputation were ever reoriented, that that reorientation could ever come from Jesus Christ or the church.  But he never fully realized what the Lord could do in a person’s life either.

We may think our reputations are beyond amends.  Are we selling the Lord short?  You, and how you are known, can be changed.  Some things seem impossible to us, but not to God.

Ananias was not ready to accept God’s word either--that Paul had changed his ways.  But Paul began, almost immediately, to demonstrate by his actions, that he had changed.  That he was forming a new identity and reputation.  It was by those actions that he was finally accepted into the Christian community and became one of its greatest leaders.

It was not an easy road for Paul.  The Lord, in speaking to Ananias about Paul, said, “I will show him how much he must suffer for worshipping in my name” (vs. 16).  One of those sufferings was the changing of his reputation.  While Paul’s reputation with the Christians steadily grew, it was quickly diminishing with the Jewish colleagues of his past.

Changing your reputation creates a lot of painful growth.  It may mean dropping certain friends.  It may mean changing the way you talk.  It may mean revitalizing the way you relate to your spouse.  It may mean redoing certain work habits.

And it should mean a renewal in your relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.  That’s what the Lord was aiming at with Paul.  That’s what the Lord’s main intentions will be with us in whitening the fleece of the lambs that follow us around.  That is, washing, cleansing, and renewing our reputations.