God in Greenbrier by Dr. John Farthing
Better Late Than Never
Jer. 8.18-23, I Tim. 2.1-7, Luke 16.1-13
They tell me that I’m not very observant of my surroundings—that I’m not the best at noticing what’s happening around me—that I often don’t do a very good job of paying attention. Yesterday, when Norma and I were getting ready to go to Conway Regional to see about Dorothy Hefter and Hugh Thompson, I happened to notice how cute her bluejeans were, with a snazzy little pocket right above the knee. I said, “Gosh, honey, those are cute jeans. Are they new?” And my dear wife rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and got a discouraged look on her face and said, “John, I bought these for our vacation last July. I’ve been wearing them for two months now! And you’re just noticing? Where have you been for the last two months?!” And all I could think to say was to quote the title of my sermon for today: Better late than never!
But then I added a phrase that I’ve often found myself repeating over the last couple of years: “Just give me one more chance,” I said, “and I’ll pay closer attention next time.” Isn’t it true that we often live our lives stuck in a rut, promising that one of these days we’re going to get it all together? My dear Norma would be a wealthy woman today if she had a dollar for every time I messed something up and came to her and said, “Just give me one more chance, honey, and I’ll do better—I promise.” How many chances do I need? Just one more…
That’s what most of us have been saying to the world and to God for decades now. “Just give me one more chance, and I’ll change the way I’m living. Give me one more chance, and you’ll see that I’ve learned my lesson. Give me one more chance, and I’ll get serious about being a disciple of Jesus. Give me one more chance, and I will respond at last to the calling that God has placed upon my life.”
But sooner or later, time has a way of running out on us. Sooner or later we wake up to the realization that the jig is up, that it’s time to face the music, that all our excuses and evasions—all our cleverness, all our scheming and conniving—won’t be enough to get us out of the dead end into which we have turned our lives by some decisions that we have made. And that may be the time when we really understand what it means to say, “The harvest is past. The summer has ended. And we are not saved.” Those words from the pen of Jeremiah are perhaps the most chilling, the most pessimistic in all of Holy Scripture. “The summer is past. The harvest has ended. And we are not saved.” In other words, the time for deciding is over. The time for changing the direction of our lives is now gone forever. All that’s left for us now is to face the consequences of our blindness and dishonesty to God, to others, to ourselves. “The summer is past. The harvest has ended. And we are not saved.”
I’m a preacher of the Gospel. You’ve come here this morning expecting to hear me proclaim God’s own good news for your life. But the words of Jeremiah seem to rule out any hint of good news. Jeremiah makes it clear that sooner or later, things do reach a point of no return, when the finality of what we have done with our lives simply has to be faced. “The summer is past. The harvest has ended. And we are not saved.” Where in those chilling words is the Good News of God to be found?
So we turn from the Old Testament to the New. We turn to the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, hoping to find some word of hope or comfort—only to find one of the most bewildering of all the stories that Jesus ever told. A wealthy man, Jesus says, had a dishonest employee whose cheating finally caught up with him. The employee has been stealing his master’s money, and evidence of his dishonesty finally reaches his boss, who calls him in and says, “We’re going to audit your books, because I have reason to believe that you’ve been stealing my money. Get ready to clear out your office and go stand in the unemployment line.” The man knows that he is guilty as sin. He knows that there is no way he can talk his way out of the predicament he’s gotten himself into by his own dishonesty. He knows that the ax is about to fall. His career is over, and he’s probably headed for jail. If Bob Dylan had been observing the scene, he surely would have crooned in that hopeless, whining, grating voice of his, “It’s all over now, Baby Blue.” He’s at the end of his rope: his goose is cooked. As Norma’s dad, Sam Greenway, would often say in such a situation, “His cake’s all dough now,” and he knows it. He knows that he’s trapped. He knows that his life is stuck in a blind alley from which there is no exit. Here’s a man who knows exactly what it means to say, “The summer is past. The harvest has ended. And we are still not saved.” As the grim reality comes crushing in, he starts to panic. “What am I going to do?” he wonders. “I’m about to lose my job—how will I make it without a source of income? I’m not strong enough to do manual labor, and I’d be ashamed to turn into a beggar.” But even in the desperate situation into which he has gotten himself, he doesn’t give up: anticipating the day when he will be unemployed—when he will need friends in the business world to pick him up on his way down—he calls in his boss’s creditors and strikes a deal with them. They can pay what they owe at bargain basement rates—they can pay 50% or 80% on what they owe, and the steward will mark their accounts PAID IN FULL. That’s a pretty good deal for them, and they’ll be grateful to the one who is cutting that lucrative deal for them. Later on, when he’s fired from his job, they will remember what he did for them and find ways to show their appreciation. The dishonest manager is looking after himself by making friends among those who are in debt to his boss, so that later on, when he finds himself reduced to poverty and unemployment, they will return the favor by giving him a position that will get him off the unemployment lines. He’s looking out for number one, and he’s doing it at his boss’s expense. But here’s the strangest twist that Jesus gives to this strange story: when he finds out about the scheme, the boss actually commends the employee who has just been ripping him off! “My, my,” he says; “You sure do know how to take care of yourself! The joke’s on me, but I’ve really gotta hand it to you; that was quite a trick you pulled on me. It’s about as shrewd a move as I’ve ever seen in this dog-eat-dog world, and I must tell you that I’m really impressed.” What in the world is Jesus saying to us here? Does he actually mean to recommend dishonesty as a way to take care of ourselves? Of course not! Jesus knows that all our scheming and strategizing—all the clever little tricks we play—will not be enough to keep us from having to face the music in the end. But if cleverness was all the dishonest steward had to offer, his boss was willing to give credit where credit is due. It would be ridiculous to expect a cheated businessman to give the one who has just ripped him off credit for being clever in his dishonesty. But is that any more far-fetched than the lengths God will go to just to forgive those who have chosen death for themselves by turning their backs on him? If we can believe Jesus, God is far more eager to forgive than we are to be forgiven. Maybe in this strange story, Jesus is trying to let us know something about how eager the Father is to work with us and help us find our way back home to him. Maybe Jesus is trying to tell us that when life collapses all around us, through no one’s fault but our own, God is still there waiting to take whatever is left and work with us—wherever we are, whatever we may have to offer in the process—to put things back together again. Better late than never.
If Jeremiah’s words are among the bleakest and most despairing that you will find on the pages of Holy Scripture, let me remind you of an episode that has to be counted among the most hopeful and encouraging in the entire Biblical revelation: the penitent thief, hanging on the cross at the right hand of Jesus, says to him with his dying breath, “Lord, when you come into your kingdom, remember me.” Picture the thief as he hangs there on Jesus’ right hand. Talk about a hopeless predicament! Talk about a life turned down a blind alley! For the thief on the cross at that moment, nothing in all the Bible would have seemed more appropriate than the bleak words of the prophet: “The summer is over. The harvest has ended. And we are not saved.” But Jesus was then—and is now—in the business of snatching life out of death and hope from despair. Just being in his presence is enough to evoke a last pathetic cry from the heart of the dying thief. Just being close to Jesus, even while hanging on a cross, is enough to let him know that all is not yet lost. So he turns to Jesus and says “Lord…”
I firmly believe that if that had been the only word he uttered, Jesus’ answer would have been the same. “Lord”—that says it all. No one can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit! When Jesus heard him utter that one word, he was ready to speak peace to the heart of the penitent thief. By the time he called Jesus Lord, the dying thief was already in a position to hear the word of grace, the word of comfort, the word of hope that Jesus was longing to speak to his heart. The thief didn’t give a full confession of faith. He didn’t fulfill the law of Moses or submit to baptism or make restitution for all his crimes. He just turned to Jesus and said, “Lord…” And immediately the despair and defeat and death of that moment were transformed for all time and eternity, when Jesus replied, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” That’s when the penitent thief learned what you and I desperately need to know. It’s far better not to wait until we’ve made shipwreck of our lives before crying out to God. It’s far better to come to Christ as soon as possible. As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 12.1: “Remember now the Lord your God in the days of your youth…” But if that is not what happened with you—if you missed out on the chance to come to God early on in your life—the good news is that it’s still not too late for you: better late than never!
I wonder this morning—is there someone here who doesn’t have much trouble identifying with the dying thief or with the manager who knows that his career is about to come to a crashing end? Does that look pretty much like your life right now? Does anybody here know exactly what Jeremiah is talking about when he says, “The summer is past—the harvest has ended—and we are still not saved”? Does your life seem to be on a one-way trip to nowhere? Does it just seem that there’s no way out?
Then hear this: God sent me to you this morning with a word of good news just for you. While there’s life, there’s hope—and it’s not yet too late for you to come to Christ. It may be much later than it should have been—but it’s eternally better to come to him now than not at all. Better late than never!
Will there come a time when it’s simply too late? Deep in our hearts, we already know the answer to that question. But right here—right now—it’s not too late at all! Better late than never! Christ’s word to you is clear. Still today his voice rings out, loud and clear across the centuries, the word of the living God addressed straight to your heart: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
That is his word to you. Now what is your answer to him?
John L. Farthing
10 September 04