Whenever life becomes dull and uninspiring, when the structure of our lives starts showing its age and crumbling, we humans often dream of the big overhaul.  We start thinking about major changes.   The things that trigger these kinds of thoughts differ from person to person.

For me, traveling to a place I’ve never been always gets me thinking about making some big changes in my life.  About twenty years ago, I was working for a video production company, making below minimum wage.  The hours were long and the work atmosphere somewhat abusive.  One day I found myself shooting an interview in a beautiful mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean in San Clemente, California.  We were videotaping the reminiscences of a lovely woman named Jean Vander Pyl.  You may not know her face, but you know her voice.  She was the voice of Wilma Flintstone.

During the shoot, I was getting particularly depressed about my career and where it was headed.  So I walked out on her patio.  I was up on a cliff, hundreds of feet over the Pacific.  I looked up the coastline, at the waves breaking, through all the ocean mist, at the mountains.  Suddenly I had this overwhelming feeling of the world being so much bigger than I had thought and not just because I had discovered that Wilma was animated.  I said to myself, “What am I doing with my life?  I have to make some changes.”  When I got home after that trip, the first thing I did was quit my job.  It started a whole series of events that are responsible for me standing up here in front of you today.

Maybe your yearnings for change are not rooted in an experience of Wilma Flintstone.  But occasionally we all get a sense of other untried possibilities life offers us and just know somewhere deep down, that we need to make changes.

We think… I wish I could be… less angry…more forgiving…less materialistic…more spiritual….less resentful…more loving…a better parent…a better spouse…a better person.  We wish our lives had more meaning or we could have a more real experience of God.  Maybe we even want things to be right between God and us.

Jesus gave us a key to changing, a vital component of overhauling our lives. He once told a story of two men who went to the Temple one day, seeking change in their lives.  One was a Pharisee, a religious expert, someone all of Jesus’ listeners would have respected.  The other a tax-collector, basically an extortionist, a dishonest cheat. The majority of Jesus’ audience would automatically assume him to be the bad guy in the story.  Weaving back into the thread of 60’s TV, if you grew up watching Romper Room, the tax-collector is the Don’t-Bee. New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan says that instead of the parable beginning with a Pharisee and a Tax Collector, imagine if Jesus started by saying, “ One day the Pope and a pimp go into St. Peter’s to pray…”

The Pharisee is not a bad guy. He is simply trying to change his life in the only way he knows how.  He says a prayer,” God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income” 

Actually this prayer resembles the common prayers a 1^st Century Jewish man would pray.  Jesus was not exaggerating to make a point here.  This was the kind of prayer a man would stand up and speak out loud in the Temple.  It puts us off a little bit.  But the disciples would not see it that way.  This Pharisee sounded like a good guy to them.  He was going the extra mile.  He was even giving a lot of money to the Temple.  In that day, a well-off man was expected to give more, perhaps even to make up for those who couldn’t give as much.  The disciples, when first hearing this story thought, “Great.  This Pharisee’s righteousness will probably even rub off on that wretched tax collector.”

Meanwhile that tax collector can’t even lift his head.  He stares at the ground, beats his chest and prays simply, “God have mercy on me.  I am a sinner.  I’m not perfect.  I need to change.  That’s it.  That’s my prayer.”

Then Jesus does what he always does in his storytelling, particularly in Luke’s Gospel.  He reverses everyone’s expectations.  He tells the disciples, you know which guy left the Temple right with God?  You know who went home a changed person?  It wasn’t the smug religious expert.  It wasn’t the guy who said the right prayer and had all the answers.  It was the reject. It was the one who took a good honest look at himself and simply turned to God.

We hear that story and may have mixed reactions.  Part of us says, “You go Jesus!  You tell off those religious hypocrites!”  That’s so much fun and it’s so easy.  Sometimes it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.  I imagine some of you feel the same way.  Perhaps you have been on the receiving end of religious judgmentalism and hypocrisy. It may even be why you are here today.  If you related to the Pharisee you probably would have chosen a church that would make you feel morally or theologically superior to other people.  So I imagine that most of us are here at this church because you see yourself as more like the tax collector.

But remember Jesus didn’t tell this story to a group of Pharisees.  He told it to his disciples.  You see, that’s where we start feeling squeamish.  We’re not so sure we want to pray like the tax collector.  He labels himself a sinner.  It wreaks of shame and guilt.  We all know of churches and religion that rob persons of their self-esteem and beat them down.  If we were approach God the way the tax collector does, not daring to look up, asking for mercy, how will that make us feel good about ourselves?  It’s so repressive and… Victorian.

Years ago, I lived in a town in which there were a lot of Victorian houses.  These were beautiful homes.  These were not like the pre-fab EPCOTish Victorian homes we build today.  These were the real thing.

Some were the Queen Anne style and featured tall octagonal towers that rose from their corners.  Others were Stick style and boasted hundreds of spindles tightly positioned in their porch rails ­ spindles that , believe me, were no fun to paint.  Still others were graced with exquisite architectural detail, arches of gingerbread woodwork, swirls of patterns that resembled everything from flowers to trees.  Our house had a gigantic arch of gingerbread that went across the upstairs porch.  Maybe it was just the influence of seeing “Jaws” as a kid, but I always thought it looked like giant shark’s mouth with hundreds of teeth.

 In the middle of the twentieth century, shortly before I was born, many of the homes in this particular town began showing their age.  After all, most were over eighty years old and in need of a major overhaul.  When I describe these homes today, and their unique details, most of us are enchanted.  We wish our houses had that kind of style.  This wasn’t always the case. Fifty years ago few people had an appreciation for the tradition they lived in.  They decided to do some overhauling of their own. 

So they did it the only way they knew how, according to the fabulously unrepressed ideals of 1950’s American suburbia.  After all, it was the space age.  As people of progress, they looked at the clapboard siding and figured it would be easier not to paint.  So they encased their houses in aluminum siding.  And all that gingerbread woodwork, that was too hard to paint too.  So they ripped it off.  And all those hundreds of spindles on the front porch rails, they tore those away and replaced them with simple wrought iron rails.  After all, you could just spray paint those. 

To top things off, when they scraped away layers of paint on their homes, they noticed that the bottom layer of paint was always white.  A-ha, they figured, Victorian people must have always painted their houses white.  After all, weren’t they prudish and simple and  well…white?  So whether it was paint, aluminum or vinyl siding, all these old houses in my town turned white.  Beautiful, pristine, monochromatic white.  But devoid of any beauty or soul.

In more recent decades, the historical society in town did some deeper investigation.  They tested paint chips from those original paint and were shocked by what they found.  The houses were not originally painted white.  It was simply that the pigment had faded from the paint.  Victorian people, it was discovered, did not paint their homes a bland white.  In fact, the houses were originally brightly colored ­ hues of blue, red, even purple.  The original intent of the builders was that the homes be painted in schemes of two or even three colors.

In the subsequent years, the houses in that town reflect that new aesthetic.  Go there today and you’ll see every other house being overhauled.  Aluminum siding is coming off, and bright colors are being brushed on.  Elaborate gingerbread trim is being installed on porches and entranceways.  It’s a new town.  These once banal houses are now in such demand that there’s a waiting list to buy them.

When Jesus began his ministry, he roamed the Galilaen countryside preaching one word ­ repent.  It means to change your heart, to do a U-turn, pull a 180 and start heading back towards God.  Throughout the centuries, the church has encouraged Jesus’ followers to take these weeks leading up to Easter as a time for self-examination.  It is the time when we, like that tax collector come to God, maybe avert our gaze a little and say, “God have mercy on me.  I am a sinner.  I’m not perfect.  I need to change.  That’s it.  That’s my prayer.”

Scary stuff, but it’s the first step in overhauling our lives. Carrying the baggage of our previous experience with churches and Christians, we’re afraid that opening ourselves up to that kind of overhaul will lead to much the same result as those Victorian homes in the 1950’s.  Our lives would become dull and monochromatic. Christianity comes along with good intentions, to change people for the better.  But somehow it always ends with some self-righteous blowhard standing up in a church and belittling some hurting guy with real problems.  It strips unique character, individual charm and beauty.  It leaves behind cold shells of vinyl, aluminum and iron.  Maybe even adds a pink plastic flamingo on the lawn.

But God is not some misguided house remodeler from 1955.  God is the eternal timeless Creator.  God is the ultimate Renovator, Restorer and Overhauler. 

We are called to trust the Jesus’ path of transformation - the path that begins with repentance.  God does not want to strip us of our individuality and character.  He gave us those qualities in the first place.  God wants to restore us to our original condition.  He wants to restore our lives to what he originally had in mind for us.   Beautiful, unique and colorful.  Overhauled lives that reflect the one who created them.