Creekside Church Sermon of March 7, 2004 "Turn Around" Luke 13:31-35	Rev. David Bibbee
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You should have seen yourselves at the Ash Wednesday service. We used a better grade of palm ash this year. The cross I tattooed on your foreheads was no faint smudge-it was bold and black. After everyone had been "crossed,' I was taken back because the crosses were more prominent than your faces. Beneath the cross of Jesus was Walter, Kristen, Dennis, Claudette and Cara. All those crosses in straight rows gave me the sensation that I was looking at rows of gravestones, like the rows of limestone crosses marking the graves of Holy Cross priests at Notre Dame. "From ashes you have come, and to ashes you will return," I said to you. It wasn't nice, but niceness wasn't the point. I told the truth of Lent.

Someone talked about doing the daily rounds after attending Ash Wednesday worship. She said, "Helpful people tell us that we have dirt on our foreheads, and I'm tempted to say, "Yes, I know. That's my mortality. I thought I'd let it show today." Lent is the season of introspection; the time for self-examination and confession that, "All of us like sheep have gone astray." It is the season of repentance and resolving to be more like the Lord we follow.

We could hardly do such a thing were it not for the other crosses we wear beneath the cross of ashes… the cross of water put on our forehead at baptism, and the cross of oil when we were anointed. Beneath the tombstone cross are crosses of new birth and of healing.

The days of Lent correspond with the coming of spring. Lent happens during the "lengthening" days leading up to Easter. The cycle of nature parallels our spiritual development as the hard bulbs of our lives locked in frozen ground are thawed, tended, and tilled so the green shoots of new life will emerge.

The words, "sin" and "repentance" have been put into the cold storage of our vocabulary. They are relics of a time when people were hard on themselves and saw God as a sin accountant, recording every slip with a sharp pencil on the Ledger of Life. Today we have dropped the words and tried to come up with more "suitable" ones, but it has done nothing to curb the addiction that Keith Miller calls, "our sin disease."

I recall the story of a rookie Navy pilot who was participating maneuvers. The commanding officer had ordered no radio transmissions. Not realizing he had accidently turned on his radio, the young pilot was heard muttering to himself, "Man, am I fouled up!" Immediately, the commander ordered all channels opened and said, "Will the pilot who broke radio silence identify himself immediately!" There was a long silence before a subdued voice was heard, "I'm fouled up… but not THAT fouled up!"

The Bible says, "All have fouled up, messed up, screwed up and fallen short of the glory of God." No need to read the ledger…. we're on it. There is negligible difference between other's sin and ours, except that as Christians we know that it need not be the final word. It may sound odd, but repentance is the gift of change. It doesn't mean groveling in guilt. It doesn't mean enduring a just punishment. Repentance simply means, "to turn"-- to change our minds, our behaviors, and to change course.

Jesus was on a collision course with the dark events that awaited him in Jerusalem, and in Luke we notice the "unusual" behavior of the Pharisees. Jesus was a pain in their necks, and they did everything possible to discourage, denounce, discredit, and dispose of Jesus. But here they warn him that Herod has put a contract on his life. You know things are bad when your enemies warn you of what's coming!

But Jesus wasn't phased. "Tell that old fox Herod that I have better things to do than be hassled by him. Tell him my schedule is full the next three days. I've got lots of sick and possessed people to heal. I'll leave when I'm done. Not until then. Besides…no prophet meets a bad end outside Jerusalem." Then Jesus lamented over Jerusalem-"the killer of prophets, the abuser of God's messengers." God gave one chance upon chance. Jesus would have gladly played mother hen, clutching her unrepentant brood under protective wings, but they turned their pretty heads and walked away.

Barbara Taylor tells of a seminary classmate who was a Lebanese Presbyterian. One day he blew a fuse in class and howled, "All you Americans care about is justification! You love sinning and being forgiven, sinning and being forgiven, but no one seems to want off that hamster wheel. Have you heard of sanctification? Is anyone interested in learning to sin a little less?"

Nothing is more contrary to the Gospel or more detrimental to our spiritual growth than the idea that, "People are people" and you can't change human nature." I sometimes catch myself saying it-- "He's too old to change. She's too set in her ways. It's the only way of doing things the church has ever known. There's no chance for change now. This is DETERMINISM, not Christianity.

We feel that gnawing awareness that something isn't right within us. Maybe life could be better IF I got off the hamster wheel; IF I confessed to myself and others that I was wrong; IF I said I'm sorry and worked to make things right. We can make amends to others, not as punishment, but to know the grace God gives when broken relationships are restored. We can repent. We can turn around.

Philip Yancey says, "We will always feel a tug between two worlds, because people comprise an odd combination of the two. We find ourselves stuck in the middle: angels wallowing in mud, mammals attempting to fly; two horses pulling in opposite directions, with our immortal parts pursuing the divine Good while beastliness strains against it. We stumble from cradle to grave, tipping sometimes toward eternity and sometimes toward base earth, the humus from which we got our name."

Lloyd Ogilvie was driving to a distant town to preach for a friend. He had never been there before. Staying with the flow of the expressway, he kept one eye on the road and one eye looking for the church. He finally spotted it, but too late. He flew past his exit and had to find a place to turn around, but couldn't. Every block was marked with big yellow and black signs…. "NO U-TURNS!"

He turned down a side street, thinking he could double back to the church, but like all the other streets, it was marked with a blasted, "NO U-TURNS!" sign. The worship service was going to start soon, and he was on the verge of calling the church and saying, "I can't get there from here!" Just then he came upon a tree-lined cul-de-sac. It was as if one of the neighbors knew his plight, because posted near the street was a big, hand-painted sign that said, "U-TURNS ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED!"

I can't think of a more pressing need for myself, for you, and for the world that to turn around. Tony Campolo preached a gripping sermon at Eastern College the Sunday after 9/11. He said: "We dare not usurp the prerogatives of God at a time like this." He quoted two Senators who gave impassioned speeches about the terrorists. One said, "God may give them mercy, but they'll get none from us." Others offered similar statements from the Senate floor. But the best came from Senator McClusky from Maryland during a prayer meeting under the Capitol dome. She said: "I pray, dear God, that you will bring those who perpetuated this evil…" Camplo was sure she would say " to justice." Instead she prayed…"that you will bring those who perpetuated this evil to REPENTANCE."

Campolo continued, "That's our hope, people. If we keep on returning evil for evil, violence for violence, we'll get nowhere. It's only when We and THEY come to repentance and we change our ways that a new day will dawn."

The Gospel is good news. The good news is that we can change. I can change. You can. The church can. Our country, our world can. The word for it is, repentance. It's time, with God's grace, to turn around.

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