God’s Fingerprints

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. [1 Timothy 1:12-14].

Among the many stories told by our friend, the master preacher/storyteller, Will Willimon, in his provocative, challenging, and entertaining Accidental Preacher: A Memoir (Eerdmans, 2019), is that of a “sophomore dream trip to Europe” in 1966, which Will says he had envisioned as a “twenty-four-hour-a-day, three-month bacchanal.” And yet, Will allows that while his buddies were exploring Amsterdam, “the city that knows no sin,” he was in the Rijksmuseum, viewing, inter alia, Rembrandt’s self-portrait.

Standing in the museum, Will turned and saw an older man who looked familiar. He realized that the gentleman was Dr. Carlyle Marney, who six months earlier had preached at Wofford College’s annual Religious Emphasis Week. Will says that “Marney,” as the old preacher preferred to be called, spoke with a “deep voice that sounded like God, if Yahweh had been a Baptist from Tennessee.” Will tentatively approached the old man, “Dr. Marney?”

“Who the hell are you?” Marney replied. Will explained the Wofford connection and Marney asked him what he was doing in Amsterdam. Will awkwardly said something like, “bumming around Europe with some guys, looking for girls, just having a good time.”

Will adds that Marney then glared at him, saying, “You take me for some kind of fool, boy? I’ve been a preacher long enough to know when somebody is lying.”

“Uh, then I guess I don’t know why I’m here,” Will stammered.

Later, after the old man had dragged Will off to a nearby Amsterdam bar, Will says that Marney grinned as if he had figured Will out, but rather harshly quipped, “Son, life’s less monologue and more dialogue. Who brought you here? What’s the reason you won’t admit?”

Will says he felt as if he had “awoken to an exam for which I had not studied.” Fumbling for an answer, Will finally admitted that since Marney’s talk at Wofford, he had been thinking about seminary, adding, “It seems kinda crazy.”

“Why crazy?” was Marney’s response.

After some additional discussion, with which Will says he was much less than comfortable, he asked Marney, “But, how can I figure out what’s God and what’s my own screwed-up background?”

Marney leaned forward and said, “Son, God will use any handle God can get,” meaning, of course, that God would use even Will’s supposedly screwed-up background. Then, as Marney ordered another bourbon, he looked at Will and said, “Yep. I’m pretty sure God’s got your name. Not the first time I’ve heard this story. You’re nobody special. Got God’s fingerprints all over it.”

Then Will writes:

Sometime before dawn, tossing, turning on the dirty mattress in the fleabag monastic cell that three of us had rented for eight dollars a night, accompanied by the sound of some student puking in the shared toilet down the hall, I said the words that Paul surely prayed when God blinded him: ‘Why not somebody else?’ What kind of God would call somebody like me? But I don’t want to be a Methodist preacher.

Will allows that his night in Amsterdam was the birth of the accidental, initially humiliating, but eventually happy life that is not his own, “summoned, made accountable to someone other than myself, answerable to an externally imposed claim.”

God will use any handle God can get. Often, if you look carefully enough, you’ll see that God’s fingerprints are all over your life. That is essentially the message that Paul has for the early church as he writes the words to Timothy that serve as the Epistle lesson for this upcoming Sunday, the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (1 Timothy 1: 12-17, RCL, Year C).

Paul observes that prior to his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, he had been a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence [1 Timothy 1:13]. We know that Paul had aided and abetted in the execution of Stephen [see Acts 7:57-8:1]. When Stephen’s murderers needed someone to watch over their coats—one can throw a stone much better if one isn’t encumbered by a coat—they had laid them at the feet of Saul (as he was then known). Most of us remember that Saul encountered Christ while traveling to Damascus. We might not remember that in Saul’s pocket were special warrants signed by the Jerusalem magistrate allowing him to go to Damascus and search for Jews who had become followers of “the Way?”

If one were to line up all the likely candidates (according to humanity’s standards) who might take the Gospel message (remember that at that moment, there was not yet a “published” Gospel) to the Gentiles (i.e., to the world), Saul would be nowhere in sight. He acknowledged that, in fact, he was the least likely candidate. But God had other plans. To be sure, Saul had deep-seeded troubles—what Dr. Marney would call “handles.” But, as the old preacher said, “God will use any handle He can get.” Saul’s “conversion” story—it has God’s fingerprints all over it.

Paul’s essential message in this first part of the letter to Timothy: God’s activity, through Christ, focuses on salvation, not on one’s past. The sinner may see his or her “handle” as the disqualifying characteristic. God sees things differently. Just as Jesus chose 12 relatively uneducated, non-professional, non-academic folks as his core disciples, and populated his larger group with tax collectors, women with pasts, and others whom the proper Hebrew society looked down on, so also God chooses unlikely candidates like Saul to become leaders in God’s fledgling church. He chooses “accidental preachers” like Will Willimon to spread His Gospel message. Oh, and here’s where you need to be careful: He’ll even choose you!

More than 30 years ago, one of my favorites at Asbury UMC, where I served as a part-time local pastor, was a gentleman named A.C. Holmes. He was tall and somewhat gangly. Born in the late 1920s, only a few years younger than my parents, A.C. had grown up during the Great Depression and, as he related, since he wasn’t much good at school, he’d quit when he was in the ninth grade. He sold appliances at Durham’s Sears store for most of his adult life.

A.C. had a gift for gab, a great personality, and a mischievous smile. Years before, he’d reluctantly agreed to teach the “little old ladies” Sunday school class. He often said that there wasn’t a less likely candidate for the job. But, of course, God’s fingerprints were all over it. And so, after taking on that task, he put his energy and enthusiasm behind it; he turned out to be quite a good teacher.

A.C., of course, now has long been a member of the Church Triumphant, but in those years, as my Asbury friends will remember, he greeted one and all with enthusiasm, love, and a wonderful smile. One Sunday, A.C. greeted me with a warm embrace and his marvelous smile. I said, “A.C., you’ve got the biggest smile in Durham. What’s your secret?”

“First Timothy 1:14. That’s my secret,” was his reply.

Not knowing the New Testament by heart, I said, “First Timothy, what?”

A.C. looked off just a bit to the side, as if he was reading the text from some invisible Bible, and said, “And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

Later, I would realize that he was indeed quoting 1 Timothy 1:14. At the time, however, I said, “Wow, A.C., that’s beautiful.”

A.C. said, somewhat wistfully, “Oh, Tom, it’s more than beautiful. You see, I’ve experienced Christ’s overflowin’ Grace. And now, I’m just a-wallerin’ in it” (for those who were not raised in the South, think of the verb, “to wallow”). As Will, Saul, and A.C. have all confessed, “Christ’s overflowing Grace; it’s got God’s fingerprints all over it.”

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen [1 Timothy 1:17].