Let’s get right to the heart of the good news this morning:  Our God is a God of second chances.  And because we are who we are – well-intentioned mainly, but often falling short of the mark – we need second chances now and then to get things right.

The beloved Appalachian Shaker song, “Simple Gifts,” comes to mind.  The lyrics carry this message so, well, simply, but profoundly: ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free.  ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.  And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘twill be in the valley of love and delight.  When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d.  To turn, turn will be our delight, ‘till by turning, turning we come round right.

You see, it is God’s gift for us to “come down where we ought to be.”  But sometimes we aren’t too good about accepting that gift, because in order to accept that gift we may need to turn from our present ways toward God’s ways.  And sometimes we resist turning away from our habitual ways, ways we have become used to, ways that have become comfortable, even though they may be destructive to ourselves or to our relationship with God.  But the song says – and God promises – that turning will lead to our delight, for in turning away from sin, from separation from God, in whatever form we love the best, we will find God’s pleasant valley “of love and delight.”

Paul assures us that “all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to [God’s] purpose.”  God has a purpose for us – a plan – but in order for the plan to succeed God expects – no, requires – our participation.  And God is willing to give us a second chance when we don’t seem to get it the first time.

You remember the story of Jonah, I think.  Not just the whale part, I hope, but also the crux of the whole story – the reason Jonah had to sit in the belly of a big fish for awhile to come to his senses.  You remember that Jonah the prophet was sent to the city of Nineveh to tell the people that unless they changed their ways God would destroy them and all they had.  Jonah didn’t want to carry that message, for he felt even more intent than God did about the necessity to destroy Nineveh and all its people, and he didn’t want to give them a second chance.  Human beings are often like that, more exacting and less forgiving than God.

And you probably remember that the people of Nineveh, despite Jonah’s less than enthusiastic call to repentance, to turning – and repentance is what “turning” means in that sweet little Shaker song – got it.  They heard Jonah’s call to repentance and turned to God.  God gave them a second chance then.  God did not destroy them.  And Jonah went off to sulk.  He didn’t like God’s way of changing from a plan of destruction to a plan of salvation.  But our God’s like that.  And for sure we need that forgiveness and compassion, don’t we?

There are other Bible stories that expand on the idea of God’s desire that we come out right.  You remember the story of Joseph and his brothers, how out of envy and anger Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery.  Years down the line, however, a famine in Palestine drove Joseph’s father Jacob and his brothers to Egypt for food, and they did not know that their son and brother was not only alive there but had grown to high rank in Pharaoh’s court.  Suddenly they come face to face with the evil action of years past.  “You meant this for evil,” Joseph wisely observes, “but God meant this for good.”  Sometimes, even despite our failings, God works behind the scenes to make things right.  God wants that badly for us to come out right.

In First Timothy we ‘re told that God has a “desire” that all of us should turn and fall into the arms of our loving God.  Desire suggests a passionate longing, and I like to think of God’s passion for us, God’s love for us.  In its best sense John 3:16 speaks the truth of that passion very directly: God so loved the world that [God] gave [God’s] only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.  John says that God, in a reckless act of love, gave his only begotten son so that God’s desire for the whole world might be accomplished.

What this speaks to is not only God’s love for us but also what is at stake for us, what we have to gain and what we have to lose.  What we have to gain and what we have to lose is our eternal presence with God.  When we are secure in God’s presence, then all else that comes our way – what we see as good or bad – is put into perspective. 

In a recent news report of a young woman who experienced a vicious random attack from an unknown assailant, her father said that together they would make it through, for “we’re a strong family,” he said, and we will make it through this calamity together.  God’s presence in their lives will sustain them.  Of that he is confident.  With God all things are possible; without God our defenses crumble.

Such is the case in the reading from the prophet Jeremiah this morning.  You will remember in Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet, that, although Jeremiah protested that he was “only a boy,” God told him he would be given authority to proclaim God’s word “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”  In this morning’s reading Jeremiah is fully grown as a prophet and the time to issue a word of warning from God has come to pass.

Historically this passage is about the fall of Judah, the southern kingdom, the last of the house of Israel to be conquered by opposing armies.  Jeremiah proclaims that the people of Judah  have yet another chance to repent and to turn to God to avert disaster.  The historical truth is that the nation did continue on its wayward ways and fell to the Babylonians, throwing the people into a long period of exile during which time they would come to ponder anew their relationship with God.

In the warning Jeremiah issues on behalf of God the people are called to change their behavior and turn to the ways of God to be saved.  God offers them a second chance.  But there was little turning then, little recognition of God’s call to change.  Jeremiah was mocked and scorned for a dark message they did not want to hear.  The people saw little good news in what he tried to tell them.  That, like a potter trying to make a useful, even beautiful, vessel out of a lump of clay God was trying to mold them into the best purpose God held for them.  But they would not listen, they would not turn.

For those of you who know Händel’s Messiah, perhaps you hear echoes of this passage from Jeremiah.  The libretto of that oratorio warns of God’s judgment on nations that wage war against other nations, turning away from God.  Borrowing words form Psalm 2 a bass solo asks the anguishing question, a question still alive today:  Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing?  And the tenor shortly thereafter utters God’s prophetic word:  Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.  That can happen when people turn their backs on second chances.  Faithlessness has its consequences.

But in a later moment, borrowing words of hope from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians imploring his friends there to turn from destructive behavior, a bass solo rises to great heights with these words: Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. . . The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

Such great and dramatic change occurs at God’s hands not only between mortality and immortality, but within mortality itself.  We are offered second chances to allow God to turn our lives around.  Like a potter carefully molding a lump of clay into something useful and beautiful, God tends to our lives with the great gift of God’s providence.  But unlike the lump of clay on the potter’s wheel, we are given the freedom and will to turn to or turn away from God’s loving purpose for our lives.

So as we prepare to approach God’s table of forgiveness and welcome this morning, let us consider in all seriousness God’s call for a change in behavior that opens us to God’s own design and order.  The opportunity to turn in repentance is an opportunity for faithfulness.  The changes into which God is calling us are a part of God’s desire and intention, standing over and against the chaos and disorder of disaster.  The promise of the Gospel is that God, the potter, can reshape us. 

We might remember how God has acted already in such ways in our lives, rescuing us from the jaws of despair and desperation, inclining us to hope for new life.  Where, for example, in your own story has God used the events of your life to reshape you?  As you have turned to God’s ways even in the apparent face of disaster, has God not brought you up from the pit, reclaiming you and opening you to new vistas of hope and life anew?  This is the direction in which God is calling us, even as we sing so many Sundays of every year, following the assurance of God’s pardon to sins freely expressed and repentance actively engaged: Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.

May it ever be so, for you and for me.  Amen.