I confess when I heard the sermon theme for Lent would be Second Chances, I was perplexed.  Chance connotes a carny atmosphere: “Step right up and take a chance to shoot the paddling duck,” or a commercial plea: “Last chance to subscribe to … for 50 cents a week.” Chance seems haphazard, almost out of my control –  carnival-like.  I don’t think that’s what our pastors intended when they decided on Second Chances to inspire sermons for Lenten Sundays.  I would have called the series, “Second Opportunities” in order to credit our capacity to improve a situation.  However, whether second chances or opportunities, the conditions for “next time” are never the same.  Would the Huskies win with a second chance game against Michigan?  Perhaps, but the quarterback might be injured or the weather foul.  Replicated chances don’t happen. 

                  When I was teaching high school English, occasionally a student would beg for a second chance to improve a test grade. Try as I might to create extra credit projects, it was impossible to recreate an identical testing setting.

                  Rewriting is a different thing.  Regularly, after teacher or peer critiques, I would ask students to revise their essays.  I explained to my students the roots of “revise.”  RE means to do again.  “VISE” is the root of vision.  Thus, revise writing means more than correcting punctuation or usage.  It suggests looking at a theme topic with a new pair of eyes.  That is challenging if only a short time has passed since the first draft; however, a longer time passing informs a fresh look.  A revised essay could be dramatically different, though it is hard to make significant changes without the intervention of learning time. 

                  So too with experiences.  Perhaps years pass between the time we do something and re-experience it with new eyes.  In the intervening years, various conditions inform our understanding.  Again, recalling my teaching years, there were times I disciplined a student who consistently spoke out without raising a hand, or a student who seemed incapable of remaining seated for an entire class period.  Now, I know about Asperger’s on the Autism spectrum.  Academically accomplished, these children are challenged in reading social clues.  Students with attention deficit disorder are constantly on the move.  Sitting still is torture.  Teachers in the 70’s and ‘80’s were not equipped with information or strategies to teach these differently abled students.  I wish I would have had a second opportunity with these students, because now, armed with understanding, I re-see them.

                  In the first sermon of the Lenten Series, the scripture featured God’s covenant with Noah — God would not destroy Earth again, a covenant written on a rainbow.  What what did Noah do with his second chance?  He planted a vineyard, drank excessive goblets of wine, fell into a drunken sleep and then cursed  the  innocent  son of Ham.  And God?  Well, Earth still exists, struggling through climate crises.  Given a second opportunity at creation, what knowledge does God need to Re-vise?

                  We will never have an opportunity to erase a wrong.  A person we offended may no longer be with us.  Time smudges, if not erases, but it can also inform.  What we need is not to expect second chances, but new opportunities enhanced with wisdom and perception from the last time we blew it.   Meanwhile we open our arms to forgiveness.  But that is another blog, another opportunity.