Some of you will remember when the first heart transplant took place. It was an amazing feat. The first transplant was performed in 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa by Dr. Christiaan Barnard. The recipient was Louis Washkansky, a fifty three year old grocer with a debilitating heart condition. Unfortunately Mr. Washkansky survived only 18 days after the operation.
The first successful transplant was performed on Dr. Barnard’s third patient, a Jewish dentist named Dr. Philip Blaiberg. He survived for nearly two years.
After his surgery, Dr. Barnard carried Dr. Blaiberg’s old heart in a plastic box and showed it to him. The two men sat on the hospital bed examining the scars and thickening of the dead useless heart.
Dr. Barnard said, “Dr. Blaiberg, do you realize you are the first man in the history of humankind to sit and look at your own dead heart?” (1)
What an amazing story! Of course, today, thanks to modern anti-rejection drugs, people are living much longer after heart transplants than in those early days.
This morning our theme is “Dead Hearts and New Beginnings.” We’re thankful for physicians like Dr. Barnard, but we’re even more thankful that we worship a God who is the only surgeon who can put an entirely new heart in an individual. That is the only heart transplant that really matters. It is when God replaces a heart filled with malice, anger, hatred, envy, guilt and a host of other negative, destructive emotions with a heart filled with love, joy, peace and wholeness.
I don’t want you to hold up your hand, but I wonder if there is anyone here today who needs that kind of heart transplant? Is there anyone in this room who deep down knows that you need to make a new beginning in life?
A story comes out of World War II about a young Canadian soldier--a conscript of the British Royal Air Force--who bailed out of his plane over France and was picked up by the French underground. At that time the French were literally fighting for their lives as the Nazis sought to occupy their land. Most Frenchmen were grateful, indeed, for any help that the British could give them. When this young Canadian suddenly appeared among them, the French people treated him like a hero. They gave him the key to their city, took him into their homes and showed him every hospitality.
What they did not know was that he was no hero at all. It was not his idea to be on that bombing mission. He was terrified. This was his first time in combat. He did not want to die. All around him he saw his buddies being blown out of the sky. It was too much for him. As a consequence he pointed the nose of his plane toward the ground and bailed out. He was not shot out of the sky at all. He was no hero. He was a coward.
This made his royal treatment by the grateful French people that much more difficult to endure. Only he knew his terrible secret. Only he knew that he was a fraud. Finally it was more than he could bear. Imagine the shock to those who knew him as a hero when this young Canadian soldier took his own life. (2)
Is there anything sadder than the person who--finding himself in a difficult situation--simply gives up? One young woman who had a great fear of getting into water over her head traces her fear to an incident when she was younger. Finding herself in deep water in a lake she began swimming to the shore. A feeling of great fatigue overcame her after a short distance. It would be so easy, she thought to herself, to simply relax, to give up--to allow herself to slip quietly under the water. She did reach shore, but the thought of how easy it would have been to give in to her fatigue haunted her the rest of her life.
Here is the good news for the Second Sunday in Lent. The Christian faith, at its very heart, is about new beginnings. In our lesson from the book of Genesis, the first book in our Bible, we find God saying to a man named Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation . . .” Abram was an old man at the time. He had no children. Now he would have no homeland; yet God was promising him that he would be the father of a great nation.
St. Paul tells us in the fourth chapter of Romans that Abram “hoped against hope” that the promises of God were true. And they were. God is a God of new beginnings. The very word “faith” carries the connotation of hoping against hope, of believing and daring, of never giving up or caving in.
Of course, we can be trite in telling people to have faith. Somewhere I heard about an elderly gentleman who had a variety of health problems. His hearing was going as well as his sight. Arthritis kept him in constant pain. Complaining to his pastor he said, “I don’t know why God just doesn’t take me on home!”
His pastor, trying to reassure him answered, “God must still have something for you to do.”
The old man snapped, “Well, I’m not going to do it!”
We must be sensitive to people’s heartaches and trials. We may, in all good intention, make a statement of faith, as this pastor did, that comes across as far too glib because the person we are seeking to reassure knows that we have never been where he or she is. Still, the Gospel word is always a word of hope. God never forsakes His own. Even in the direst of circumstances there is the possibility of a new beginning.
David A. Redding tells in one of his books about Orville Kelly--a man who was informed years ago that he was suffering from terminal cancer. He and his wife went home to cry and to die. Should they keep it a secret? They wondered and they prayed. The answer, they decided, was that they should not only pray but also play. They decided to put on a big party.
They invited all their friends. During the festivities, Orville held up his hand to make an announcement: “You may have wondered why I called you all together,” he said. “This is a cancer party. I have been told that I have terminal cancer. Then my wife and I realized we are all terminal. We decided to start a new organization. It is called M. T. C.--‘Make Today Count.’ You are all charter members.” Since that time that organization has spread across the country. Orville’s recognition of his mortality was a new beginning.
Such an attitude is not as rare as you might think. Former Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin noted years ago that some people meet tragedy and fall apart at the seams. Others meet the same adversities and see their troubles as a challenge to their faith and courage. They make their troubles work for them, and the harder they fall, the higher they bounce.
As E. Stanley Jones once said, “The test of faith is not how people act, but how they react.” Life is not easy. We are continually needing to make a new beginning. Fortunately, God is a god of new beginnings--for a marriage, for a relationship, for a failed life and a hurting heart.
However, there is a second thing that needs to be said: Christian faith not only makes new beginnings possible, it makes new beginnings necessary. In our lesson from John’s Gospel Jesus encounters Nicodemas--a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews. Here is no bum off of the streets. Nicodemas is not only a good man and a powerful man, but evidently he is a man who is open to the teachings of Jesus.
“Rabbi,” says Nicodemas, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Wow, that is high flattery from one who is a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews. And yet it fazes Jesus not at all. Jesus says to Nicodemas, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
The imagery is puzzling to Nicodemas. How can an old man like himself reenter his mother’s womb and be born again. He is puzzled, but he is also probably a little angry. After all, he is a man of nobility. What kind of new beginning could he possibly need to make? You’ve known people like that, haven’t you? They are the center of their own universe. How dare anyone suggest that they need to change.
Several hundred years ago, before Copernicus, most people believed that the sun and the stars revolved around the earth. When Copernicus issued his revolutionary teachings that the earth was not the center of the universe, he was greeted with a great outcry. It was many years before his teachings were accepted.
It is easy to see why persons might believe that the earth is the center of the universe. After all, it is our home. The truth of the matter is that for most persons, they themselves are the center of their universe. We come into the world kicking and screaming and insisting that the world meet our needs. What Nicodemas needed, and what every person in this world needs at some time in his or her life is a radical reorientation in which we acknowledge that we are not the center of the universe.
It is not some particular sin here or there that is the problem. It is our entire frame of reference. Are we centered upon ourselves, or are we centered in God and His will for our lives?
In one of his science fiction books, C.S. Lewis puts it in a memorable way. In this particular fantasy, a space fantasy, he has a scientist from earth land on another planet and make friends with the inhabitants. He decides to tell them the history of planet earth. As he does so, he notes with some embarrassment that he is recounting the story of war after war.
One of the creatures to whom he is telling this story concludes that their constant fighting must mean that on earth there is no “Oyarsa.” (“Oyarsa” was their name for God.)
Another of the creatures offers another explanation. Earthlings behave like that, he concludes, not because there is no Oyarsa, but because each of them wants to be a little Oyarsa, himself or herself.
Lewis as usual hit the nail right on the head. If we are not centered in God, we will be centered in ourselves--our passions, our desires, our idols. The Christian faith is about new beginnings. New beginnings are possible. Even more important, new beginnings are necessary.
This brings us to the last thing to be said. When we meet Christ, new beginnings are inevitable. If we truly meet Jesus, we are going to be a new creature.
That is what worship is all about. We come to hear the Word read and preached, to sing the great hymns of faith, to confess our sins, to make our petitions and to offer our praise.
That is not true of all of us, of course. Some of us simply “come to church.” It is a habit, a tradition, something that is good for the children. Many of us come without the least inclination that we might have an encounter with the living God at this time in this place. Someone has said that today’s generation of adults worship at their play and play at their worship. What a sad commentary that is on our time.
Jacob encountered God at Bethel and cried out, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is the house of God and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:17).
Perhaps this morning’s service is your Bethel. Every time we come into this place we ought to be prepared to encounter God. If we are so prepared, a new beginning is inevitable. Every Lord’s Day, every time we open the Word, every time we kneel in prayer is a time of new beginning. It is not only possible. It is not only necessary. It is inevitable.
John Ortberg in his book Faith and Doubt tells about a man named Bill Moore who discovered what a new beginning is all about. Bill grew up in poverty. One night he got drunk and shot a man for five thousand dollars. He ended up on death row.
Two men visited the prison where Bill Moore was incarcerated and told him about Jesus and his love--a love that sent Jesus to death row for people just like Bill.
Nobody had ever told Bill about Jesus before. “He'd been sitting on death row for years. He turned his life over to Jesus, and it changed him so much--changed the darkness and bitterness and hatred inside him so much,” says John Ortberg, “that other people began to be drawn to him. People started meeting Jesus through this guy on death row. He became known as ‘The Peacemaker.’ His cell block was the safest place in the penitentiary because so many people were coming to Christ through Bill Moore.
“Churches found out about this, and when people needed counseling, no kidding, churches started sending people to the penitentiary to get counseling from Bill Moore. Can you imagine calling a church to ask for a referral and hearing, ‘I want you to go over to death row. There’s an inmate there . . . .’ What does that? Jesus does that.
“Bill Moore was changed so much that he won the love of the family of the man he killed. It changed him so much over the sixteen-year period that all kinds of people wrote letters for him. Eventually, the authorities not only canceled his death sentence; they not only commuted his sentence, which was unprecedented; but they paroled him. Bill Moore now serves as head of congregation in a couple of housing projects in a desperately poor area.” (3)
That is the life-changing power of Jesus Christ in one person’s life. I understand. You are not on death row. You’re a pretty good person. My, you’re even in church this morning. I respect that. But, could it be that deep in your heart there is a hunger for something more to life? Is it time for you to make a new beginning? It is possible for that to happen, thanks to the love which Christ poured out on the cross of Calvary. And some kind of new beginning is even necessary if you are to ever be the person God created you to be. And if you have truly come to worship the living God this day, a new beginning is inevitable, if not today, sometime in the future . . . if you are truly seeking.
Dr. Christiaan Barnard transplanted hearts and gave people a new shot at life. God can do much more than that. God can give you an entirely new heart that is guaranteed for a better life in this world and eternal life in the world to come. Will you accept that new heart today?
1. Contributed. Adapted from a sermon by Ray Ellis, http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/christmas-miracles-of-transformations-ray-ellis-sermon-on-christmas-advent-53410.asp.
2. Contributed. Source unknown.
3. John Ortberg attributes this story to Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Faith.