APRIL 26th, 2026 PASTOR DON PIEPER
A Gospel Of Grace Rom. 8:18-28/Luke 13:1-9
“SECOND CHANCES”
When I was in junior high two of my buddies and I dressed up as the three musketeers for Halloween one year. As we headed out the door with our makeshift wooden swords in hand, sporting fake fedoras with fake feathers one of my brothers said, “They look more like the three hoodlums!”
Strange, noone seemed to know who're we're supposed to be. As we knocked on his door, Mr. Hill opened it, looked at us, and said: 'Mabel, it looks like trouble is knocking at our door again!'
Truth is, trouble will inevitably come knocking. What do you do when it comes knocking at your door? How do you respond to the seemingly meaninglessness of sudden tragedy? How do you make sense of all the violence that fills our newspapers for example, of moments of madness like last Sunday's murder of eight innocent children in Virginia, seven of whom were children of the shooter?
One danger with all the bad news we're subject to is that we become numb and stop caring...
Hobbes: Hey Calvin! What's up? What's eating you? It's not me is it?
Calvin: No! What? No, I'm just fed up with how messed up the world is. I’ve decided to stop caring about things. If you care, you just get disappointed all the time. If you don’t care, nothing matters, so you’re never upset. From now on, my rallying cry is, “So What?!”
Hobbes: Really? I don't know... That’s a pretty tough cry to rally around.
Calvin: Yeah? So what?!
Hobbes: (walking off) Thank you for yet another stimulating conversation.
For those who’ve grown numb to all the loss and pain in the news, or who’ve been hurt one too many times by those around them, they’re rallying cry can quickly digreess to “So what?” Such is the sentiment, for example, behind the popular bumper sticker: ‘crap happens!’
Some respond to pain with apathy; others get angry. I saw a little girl in the airport, crying at a water fountain. Apparently it was one of those water fountains designed to double as a fire hydrant.
Well, this poor little girl got it up her nose and in her eye. Her mother showed up and scolded her:'How many times have I told you to wait for me? Now look what you’ve done! Look at this mess!”
You don't have to spend much time on social media to realize how angry people are. I sense some of this kind of anger in this story from Luke 13. Jesus is responding to the reaction among his followers to a tragic incident in which a number of their neighbors had been brutally murdered. Sounds familiar. Apparently those hanging with Jesus were angry and upset – and understandably so. Yet, in their anger they come to some unhealthy conclusions. They assume that God allowed and or even initiated this act of violence as judgment on their neighbors because of some hidden sin.
Jesus voices their thoughts when he says, “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all other people from Galilee? Is that why they suffered?” (Luke 13:2)
In the aftermath to the Virginia Tech attacks a female commentator was expressing her outrage.
First, she identified the school authorities as being responsible, then she entertained the idea that it was the police, and then she suggested that it was the failure of lawmakers. Like Jesus’ contemporaries she, and many others, were quick to point fingers. I wonder how Jesus would’ve responded.
-2-
Professor and author, Tim Wendel, tried to offer some perspective. “Sometimes it takes an unspeakable tragedy…to shuffle life’s priorities. And it doesn’t take but a moment to see what belongs on top. All we can do are the simple things: a hug and a kiss; not letting an argument fester; saying, ‘I love you.’ Such acts may seem mundane, arbitrary even. Yet, in the end, they’re all we truly have.” (Tim Wendel)
By pointing to the significance of small gestures of love and affirmation, Tim Wendel offered a bit of perspective, a glimpse of the big picture and an end to the blame game.
In light of the faulty conclusions some of his followers are making in a season of loss, grief and anger, Jesus urges them to see the big picture. Instead of responding with apathy or with anger, Jesus suggests their response to such dire times be that of humility and anticipation. Instead of looking back he points forward: “Is that why they suffered (because they were worse sinners)? No, not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God.” (Luke 13:4-5)
Jesus is not saying those Galileans perished because they did not repent but is reminding his followers that the events that trouble them reveal that life is short. As tragic as they are they provide an opportunity for those who remain to get their own house in order. He's urging them to step away from the prevailing impulse to play the blame game and to instead address their own need for reform!
French author, Teilhard de Chardin, puts it this way: “Like an artist who is able to make use of a fault or an impurity in the stone God is sculpting so as to produce more exquisite lines or a more beautiful tone, God transfigures life's miscues by integrating them in a better plan, thereby our faults, failures and fallouts can be embraced in that transformation, provided always we repent of them. Not everything is immediately good to those who seek God; but everything is capable of becoming good.” (Teilhard de Chardin)
For now, God allows us to be put in harm’s way. Buildings collapse, viruses proliferate, fires devastate, evil people violate and inialate. From what we know about God, none of these things reflect his ultimate will. In the face of tragedy, I can respond either by blaming and turning against God or by turning toward him, trusting him to fashion good out of bad. One option focuses on the past and closes off the future. The other option looks forward, anticipating God’s good and gracious plan, allowing an Artist to use whatever happens as the raw material for a new story, different than it would have been without the tragedy or failure, but in some ways even richer, because it has been redeemed.
Jesus wants to redeem your pain and mistakes, but being the perfect gentleman he knocks on the door and waits for you to open it, to turn to him, just as I see Jackie doing in this season of loss & grief. She celebrated God's fingerprints! I love how Jesus redirects his friends with the parable of the fig tree that was not producing any figs. “It's taking up space!” and the landowner was losing face. He's not a happy camper! 'I've been waiting three years!' He wants it cut down to size. Makes sense. Why keep such a useless tree, but the gracious gardener intervenes & intercedes: “‘Sir, give it another chance.’”
(Luke 13:7-8)
Life is short and Jesus urges us to not let those moments in life when we are reminded of our mortality slip by without taking heed and getting our house in order. This parable is not the first one in Luke in which our souls are compared to a garden and Jesus appears as the gracious gardener. How poignant that at Jesus' resurrection Mary mistakes him for the gardener. (John 20:15) One might wonder how that idea was planted in her mind. The gardener's heart is clear: 'Give it another chance!'
(Luke 13:8)
Luke features this parable at the heart of his gospel of grace! God is a God of second chances!
-3-
Why then do so few Christ followers resemble him in this? Why is the litany of those on the outside looking in accuse us of being so judgmental and intolerant of those with different views and patterns of sin then their our own? I just finished a book this week in which the author tells of a student of her who came to her one day and poured out her heart and frustration.
“Ever since I can remember people have been telling me that the Christian faith is under attack. They warned me about humanists, evolutionists, communists, universalists and liberals. They prepared me for the threat out there but they didn't prepare me for my disappointment with the church.
I found myself far more versed in what they were against then in what they actually believed in.
If you try to talk to them about what's going on in the world, they don't listen to you, or are con-descending at best. I've found most to be full of anger and fear and led by arrogant leaders. It makes me wonder if the whole Christianity thing is real at all. If that's what a Christian is, count me out.”
(as quoted in Rebecca Reynolds' book, Letters to a Weary World)
Christian counselor Dr. Seamands keenly observes: “The two major causes of most emotional problems among Christians are the failure to receive and live out God’s unconditional grace and for-giveness; and the failure to offer that unconditional love and grace to other people.” (Dr. Seamands)
No wonder Jesus' response to his self-assured followers, those who're quick to assess the lack of spiritual health in others and failing to see their own status accurately, is by revisiting his call to repent, to actively turn from casting judgment, and to give (their garden) special attention! (Luke 13:5,8)
It's not small irony that our text reflects humanity's two great longings – our longing for justice and for grace, to see that other sinners get what they deserve, and that we may get another chance. Our libraries and theaters are filled with such stories, stories of revenge and others of redemption. The last two weeks we saw how Jesus, resurrected from the dead, repeatedly took his followers through the full length of scripture – how “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:45)
I bet he did! After all, the Bible, read wholistically, is a long sweeping story of how God over and over again gave his people second chances, starting with the Flood, and continuing with people like the murderer, Moses; the selfish, deceitful Jacob; the boastful dreamer, Joseph; the cheating adulterer David; the reluctant and fear driven Esther; the defiant prophet, Jonah; the demonized woman, Mary; the brash denying Peter; the arrogant and murderous Saul/Paul – over and over again we see God at work, especially among the followers of Jesus, giving those who'd fallen short at second chance. And all of that climaxes in the book's conclusion with God giving all of creation another chance.
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth... And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'The dwelling place of God is with all of mankind, for behold, I am making all things new!'”
(Revelation 21:1,5)
God is a God of second chances. Such is grace – a gift that flies in the face of reason and against everything that seems just and natural. That’s why it has such a profound impact on those who receive it, embrace it and pay it forward into the lives of those around them. It is a gift, yes, but a gift is useless, worthless even, if the recipient of that gift does not make good use of it.
We've seen it at work at a national level in our country's history, none more significant then in the wake of the Civil War. The press and his advisors urged President Lincoln to severely punish the South for all the bloodshed it had caused. Instead Lincoln boldy set for the Reconstruction Plan, defending it with his famous words: “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
(Abraham Lincoln)
-4-
Around that same time William Booth was shocked by the conditions he saw in London's east end with signs of alcoholism and abuse rampant everywhere. Moved by the example of Jesus' second chances focus, Booth started a Christian mission there that came to be known as the Salvation Army. When traditional denominations scorned his clientele Booth was attracting Booth had to form his own church to accommodate the kind of 'losers' he was attracting, 'losers' he called “trophies of grace”.
Author Phillip Yancey writes that “the church should be a haven for people who feel terrible about themselves. God needs humble people, (which usually means humbled people), to accomplish his work. Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is gravity. That which gives the down and out a second chance, that is grace.”
(from Phillip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace?)
Jesus wants to redeem your pain, your mistakes, your brokenness if you will but let him. A relationship with God does not promise supernatural deliverance from hardship, but rather a super-natural use of it. As the Apostle Paul famously put it: “God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
Jesus is knocking at your door eager to give you a second chance. The clock is ticking. Jesus' Fig tree parable serves as a wake up call for those who are not producing fruit as intended! Join us tomorrow night as we explore together how you might give (your garden) special attention!
(Luke 13:8)
Nurture your passion for Jesus who reveals our God is eager to “Give (you) another chance!”
(Luke 13:8)