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SERMONS

Third Sunday of Lent
March 3, 2010

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

"Son. Don’t you know a leopard does not change his spots?" And he rattled the ice in his crystal old fashion.

We were standing around on a patio next to a golf course in the rocky mountains. Air was cool, the evening beautiful. I happened to be having dinner with men who had done extraordinarily well for themselves in life. Some had fought in wars. Some had lived the Horatio Alger dream.

Some had married wealth. I was there as a guest of a family member, and when the polite conversation ran out there was nothing left to do but talk religion and politics.

I was young and believed all that I was studying in books in school. Painfully idealistic. I did not have the good sense not to keep my political/religious opinions to myself. I was a babe in the woods. Whatever the topic that evening, I had turned to platitudes and idealism, and was being slapped down as a greenhorn.

"Son, leopards don’t change spots." It was said with all of the subtext of, "Get your head on straight boy. What are you thinking? So naïve. Ice rattling in the crystal old fashion.

I do recall feeling foolish. Missing a step with those I wanted to impress; those whom I wanted to emulate. How foolish of me to want to believe in the better angels of human nature. How foolish to imagine that perhaps folks want to do what is right; that folks want to change; that folks would be different if they knew how, or had a chance.

They seemed to be saying, "That’s just how things are – a good sort and a bad sort." No use trying to change folks, or expecting them to change. Stick to your own kind: leopards don’t change their spots. When the biblical scholar Ken Bailey is teaching, he says that his Middle Eastern students comment that Jesus is lucky that these people do not kill him on the spot because of the comment Jesus is making about their character and their relationship with God.

The polite conversation having run out, Jesus and these people in the Gospel have, themselves, turned to religion and politics. There has been a tragedy. Pilate has killed some Galileans while they worshipped in the temple. And rather than join the chorus of, "they must have deserved it, earned it." Jesus cautions his friends about their assumptions. Actually he is cautioning them about their pride of place. It seems that Jesus’ friends are doing the simple moral math that good things happened to good people, and that these bad things, like being killed while at the temple, naturally happened to the bad people. Would that it were so simple, so straightforward. Sin equaling personal tragedy. Those Galileans killed in temple – must be sinners – rattle the ice. Jesus invites these people to reconsider their moral math. Jesus invites them to deconstruct the mythology of their own misplaced self-worth, and their misplaced assumption about others’ sin. Not a safe thing to do in the ancient world.

Jesus warns them. Jesus warns them of the great leveling mechanism. All must repent, all must change direction, all must seek God. There is no simple moral math of some being more sinful and deserving of tragedy in this life than others. The events of this world do not correspond to simple notions of who is good and who is bad. Who is saved and who is damned.

There is only one leveling mechanism – and that is judgment in the eyes of God. Repent. Be not proud. Be not scornful. Repent, or be damned. There was man I met in the Mississippi Delta; I will call him Buck. The first night I met Buck I was a bit taken aback. It was an Ultreya/Cursillo gathering on a Sunday night, and Buck came in with his name tag and Tshirt. Buck sat on the front row and knew the words to every song by heart – called them out by name. At the passing of the peace he did not miss a single person. Although 15 years had passed; it was fresh. Some time passed, and Buck began to die. One day his story came to me through some good friends. Buck had always been a heavy drinker, something of a rounder as a younger man. Buck had also been one of the first young men to join the Citizen’s Council. Buck had organized, planned, and plotted, to maintain the separation of white and black in Mississippi. Buck was no sideliner.

White and black cannot mix – leopards don’t change their spots.

With the changes of the sixties and seventies in the Delta, Buck began to see the spots changing, and to drink and drink and drink – growing more and more bitter. Unbearable to family and friends. Finally, something within Buck was sick and tired of being sick and tired. A friend invited him to Cursillo – a renewal weekend – and they went together.

Christ touched Buck that weekend - after some 25/30 years of maintaining his position. Our Lord, and Buck’s new friends, helped him find a safe way to take the burden off. Buck confessed his sins, and he left them where they belonged; with our Lord, rather than piled up on the heads of his fellow human beings.

Buck came to understood what repentance really means. That repentance means when the root and the stalk are about to die, God steps in to try and save what might be lost. Repentance is not so much about saving ourselves according to our own devices – we have tried that and it does not work. No. More often than not repentance, changing our spots, is about letting God save us according to his devices. Though more frightening, God’s ways are certainly more effective.

When Buck died the church was packed; even some black faces in the congregation toward the back. And as we finished communion and sang we began "I am the Bread of Life." Without direction, without prompting, the entire congregation rose to their feet to sing, "And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up, and I will raise them up on the last day."

Joy. Hope. Light. All those things that only God, no Citizens Council, only God can give. Buck is not unlike this fig tree saved by the gardener. God digs around it, pours what Buck once certainly used to call manure all around it, and brings life into, and it is saved. Repentence.

So now when I am standing in circle, and that familiar tone of voice rises with its edge of cynicism, savvy, condescension, and someone’s effort in the direction of a new life is about to be drug through the mud of worldly wisdom, with "A leopard don’t change his spots that quick . . ." I pause. I might say something like, "Don’t know about that . . . not sure about that," and then rattle the ice in MY glass and think about Buck. " . . . and I will raise them up on the last day."