Sermon – A Life Redefined
Genesis 50:15-21; 1 Corinthians 15:3-11
9/27/2026
This summer has been a summer of firsts in preaching for me. Well, here is another one: what do Ebenezer Scrooge, Darth Vader and Boromir from the Fellowship of the Ring all have in common? They are all characters with redemption stories. Those are all fictional characters who were headed down a difficult, dark path and then had a moment to change, to repent, or to turn their lives around. Two of them actually gave their lives and sacrificed themselves to make that change, protecting the very people they had been trying to harm. One changed his life so radically that he has become the very heart of a favorite holiday. But there is one more character who stands out as one of the most beautiful redemption stories I have ever heard. That is Jean Valjean from Les Misérables. Victor Hugo gave us a character in his novel that was imprisoned for five years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister and her family. After three escape attempts, he ended up served 19 years total and was forced to carry proof that he was a convict for the rest of his life. Because of this, no one would give him food or a place to stay until he arrived at the home of the local bishop who sensed the brokenness inside Jean. He told him, “if you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us.”
In the morning, it is discovered that Jean stole the bishop’s silver and fled before he is caught and brought back to the bishop who berates the police officer. He claims he gave Jean the silver as a gift and adds the silver candlesticks. That moment of grace beyond grace transforms Jean Valjean. He becomes a new man and spends the rest of his life figuring out how to care for others and to value those around him, even the police officer who relentlessly hunts him throughout the story. It is an amazing redemption story of how someone so crushed can turn it around and create a life of abundant kindness, grace, and compassion. It is still hard for him, but the effort and the cost are worth it for all the lives that are helped.
I absolutely love a redemption story, and I hope you do, too. Believing that is the case, the question is why? The best question is always “why”? Why do we love a good redemption story? It is almost as if the gift of redemption might just also be at the center of who we are as God’s people. Yes, lives are absolutely transformed in God’s book. Scripture underscores the power of redemption with stories of its own. Two of them are what I just read.
In Genesis, we have Joseph reconciling with his brothers, the very same brothers who plotted to kill him and then sold him into slavery and told their father he was dead. All that time, they pretended Joseph had been eaten by an animal. When the brothers were forced to go to Egypt to look for food, they met Joseph, again, but did not recognize him. Admittedly, Joseph did “mess” with them a little to find out how they were and to force his baby brother to come to Egypt. Once together, he revealed himself to them and offered them all a home in Egypt where he could look after them. End of story, right? Wrong. Apparently, that whole time they did not actually believe Joseph’s goodwill towards them. For year and years, they apparently thought he was only putting up an act while their father was still alive. Apparently, they thought that it was all lip service or a scam to get back at them. Once their father did die, they were terrified that Joseph would finally get his revenge on them. They even concocted a lie that their father instructed Jospeh to forgive them. What they did not know was that he already had.
This is the baffling part. They had done NOTHING to make amends. You see no effort on their part to truly make up with Joseph or to apologize. They express no contrition, no honest regret, and no obvious change of heart. Their actions show more a selfish aspect, like those who were only looking out for themselves and their people. From the beginning, Jospeh told them that what had happened was basically God’s plan. It was fine. It was what God intended. They had not listened. What is going on is that they thought Jospeh was more like them. Then, Jospeh did the impossible. He redeemed his broken brothers. Joseph absolutely has his own great redemption story, but the one that astounds me is how he even redeems his terrible brothers who tried to murder him because he was daddy’s favorite and told them… a lot. In the following years, everyone grows up so to speak, but I am stunned that there is no evidence in Scripture of their attempt to honestly reconcile. It is up to Jospeh to take their guilt and to replace it with acceptance, grace, and love. This one scene enables us the entire story of Genesis to move forward.
Paul’s story is also radical but for different reasons. Before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, he had been the best of the best, a rising star in the Pharisees. He was zealous for God and willing to do whatever he needed to do to be faithful. Yes, he believed he was VERY faithful in leading to the imprisonment and deaths of Christians. Then, when he met Jesus, his entire world exploded. Pretty much everything that he thought was true, at least the important stuff, had to be changed. Then, he was called to be Jesus’ point-man to the Gentile peoples, the non-Jewish folk. He went from being hated and despised to being untrusted to eventually also dying for his faith. Paul had to lay it all on the line just to prove he was legitimate. He had to give 110% to show his sincerity, and he does happily. The Apostles do recognize him as a fellow worker for Christ, but he lives with the grief of his story the rest of his life. It saddens him to have taken the hard, ugly route to faith in Jesus that he did, but his story, because it is a redemption story, is proof of something amazing.
We love redemption stories because they give us hope. They give us hope for ourselves or our loved ones. The longer we live on this earth, the more likely it is that we need the extra grace ourselves. In spite of our best attempts of living the kind of life that might make our people proud, it never works out that way. We make mistakes; we have struggles; we get mixed in with the wrong people; or are compelled to do things against our conscience. Even when we have brokenness placed on us for no fault of our own, it is hard to not let that affect us. We need redemption. We need to have all of that stuff in our lives held in the heart of Jesus and he still love us. Hear me: we are all loveable, each and every one of us, no matter what we have done or what has happened to us. That is the way grace works. Jospeh’s brothers did not deserve it. Paul did not deserve it. None of us deserves it, but in Christ, our lives become something different, they become redefined.
I see this every week in our NA support group, but it is all around us. God’s love is doing something beautiful right now in the gift of God’s Spirit. We are being loved away from being a sinful and broken people to being a sinful and broken people but-it-doesn’t-matter-because-we-are-healing. In Christ, we become more. In Christ, our past is the very evidence that in God all things are possible.
But what if I told you it is even bigger? This message today applies to us all and to our loved ones, but it even applies to those whom we are called to love. This same grace, this same redemption story reaches out of our gospel experience and embraces the stranger, the different, and the enemy. We do not hear these stories as often because they are difficult to accept. Some of us hold such resentment toward those who are very different that it is not easy to accept God’s love and redemption of people that we dislike and even despise. On the other hand, if redemption is possible for anyone, then there is always hope for me, for those whom I love, and for anyone I might meet. The gospel works everywhere and all the time if it is true for ALL people. I should want that love to flow forth even in the heart of the person I struggle to even like. I should want that love to flow forth even into the heart of the people doing me harm. There is nothing easy or simple about this. Paul found that the hard way, and it took him years just to be able to start his ministry once he changed. What is important is that once we have been loved like that ourselves, we live as if there is hope for us all.
To God be the glory. Amen.