I grew up in a small town between Amarillo and Lubbock, Texas, named Tulia. The annual 8th-grade trip was a major rite of passage there. It was always at the end of the school year, and it served some sort of graduation purpose. Maybe it was a hangover from Tulia's not-too-distant past when, for many, 8th-grade graduation might well have been the last. More probably it was a consolation prize for those about to fall from the top perch at Tulia Junior High School to the bottom rung at Tulia High.

So, at the end of each school year, 90 or 100 excited 8th graders loaded into lumbering yellow school buses and journeyed north for a day in Amarillo's Wonderland Park. Now you have to understand that Wonderland Park is not Sea World or Disneyland or some big amusement park with long lines and Cokes that cost two bucks fifty. Wonderland is more like one of those rickety carnivals that turn up for the county fair, and at the end of the fair, it folds itself back into beat-up trucks and rolls out of town and there isn't much (of) evidence it was ever there except that cotton-candy wrappers littered the town square.

Wonderland was like that--only Wonderland's owners seemed to have tired of traveling, and so they put a fence around the place and hung a shingle, and to kids who lived in Tulia, Texas, and who had never seen Sea World or Disneyland anyway, Wonderland was, well, wonder land.

My cocky 8th-grade class poured off those buses and paraded through Wonderland's arching gate. We were now grown! My classmates and I would run around the park without chaperones for an entire afternoon--completely alone. We were old enough to behave as adults, to be treated as adults. They could untie the knots, loosen the bonds. After all, we might have been innocent, but we were trustworthy!

It was early that afternoon when Earl Denison opened his backpack to show me that can of beer. By the way, I've changed the names of those in this true story in order to protect, well, to protect me! Well, anyway, Earl Denison showed me that can and instantly I knew that this single beer would spill disaster. And not only for those who drank it. This beer would destroy those who merely saw it. So Earl headed off, and like flies to watermelon, a group formed behind him. Now, because my father is a Calvinist Presbyterian minister, and I knew quite enough about fallen human nature to know exactly where they were going. They trailed off behind Earl Denison toward the clump of trees behind The Texas Twister.

Now, exactly what those 12 boys expected to receive from their equal shares of a 12-ounce beer, I do not know. But word of their drunken escapade traveled like prairie fire, and the truth did not escape a single 8th grader. We were now every one of us involved. If the principal, Mr. Everett, found out about that beer--and we knew he would--everyone who had heard the story and not come forward would be held as nakedly responsible as the unfortunate child who had popped the top.

Now, I would like to tell you that I refused to drink that beer because of some grand moral conviction that underage minors shouldn't. And no less noble, I would even like to tell you that I did not drink that beer because I knew they were going to get caught. And that's true, too; I was scared of getting caught. And, yet, the primary reason I did not join my Budweiser buddies was that Britney McCoy asked me to ride with her on The Hammer.

Now, there are dreams in life, and then there ARE DREAMS. To be asked by Britney McCoy to ride The Hammer was to the average 8th-grade boy the equivalent of playing professional football, and I was not about to miss my shot at the team.

There was only one problem; I was then going steady with Elizabeth Snodgrass, a 7th grader. Now many good things can be said about Elizabeth Snodgrass; the most relevant to me at that particular moment was that she lived a good 40-minute drive from Tulia, and I hoped the distance would at least slow the news that I had ridden The Hammer with Britney McCoy long enough for me to call Elizabeth and explain that the ride had meant absolutely nothing, though, of course, I hoped that it would.

I rode The Hammer with Britney McCoy, and the decision was not the highlight of my moral existence. Feeling guilty as I did, then, you can imagine my dilemma when Britney McCoy's even more beautiful twin sister, Lucy, asked me to ride The Amazon with her. Well, moral failures are like potato chips, you know; you can't have just one. Not only did I ride The Amazon with Lucy; I bought her ticket.

Well, my adventure in Wonderland had to this point pushed me to the edge of the 8th-grader's moral universe. Not only did I know about the beer and had not reported it, I had also bumped into Eve and her evil twin sister and had failed the temptation to betray Elizabeth's love. All the major moral conundrums were there: love, loyalty, truth. I had failed. What kind of person was I? I had always been a pretty good kid basically. How had I gone in two hours from good to bad, from moral to evil, from exemplary to penitentiary?

The hard truth is that we are sinners. That does not mean we are rotten to the core. We do not sin all the time. We do not sin every time. Nonetheless, my trip to Wonderland had forced me to see the truth, to gaze into the mirror.

Well, God knows us through and through, and if grace meets us anywhere, it meets us where we sin. I sat on a bench between The Tunnel of Love and The House of Horrors and contemplated what I had done. I tried to hide my terror from my friends, tried to act as if everything was normal and I was in control. They knew me better, though. And, besides, they too knew about the beer and so we were all in this together. David Barstow. Paul Wilson. Jeanette Johnson. Courtney Bradley.

It was then that we saw her, coming toward us from The Tunnel of Love. Alone. It was Agnes Adams.

Agnes was by no means a popular girl. I am not sure which was more painfully obvious, that other kids did not much like Agnes or that Agnes did not much like herself. It hurt just to look at Agnes. You could see in one glance a lifetime of neglect, a sordid tale of family dysfunction, a pitied existence of poverty and abuse. In a small town where you know everyone in your class from the first grade on, none of us had ever known how to react to Agnes. In our insecurity we had shunned her. We had teased her, ostracized her, heaped upon her even additional self-loathing.

Agnes came closer. She stopped at our bench. We each looked down or away, at the ground, at our feet, anywhere, to keep us from peering into Agnes' eyes. She spoke, "Will somebody ride the roller coaster with me?"

I don't know what happened in that moment. Grace is like that, you know. I know only that we rose to our feet and said that, yes, we would ride the roller coaster with Agnes Adams. And we did! Each time the train stopped, we switched places so we could all have a chance to ride alongside Agnes.

Other kids saw it too. And at first they pointed and laughed at us, made fun of us, for being with Agnes, just as we had always done. But something happened to the nay-sayers, too, and they lined up as we left the roller coaster. They wanted to be part of this grace, and so ride to ride we went, all befriending Agnes Adams. It was as if the 8th-grade trip had become a corporate catharsis of repentance.

The bus horns honked the end of our stay, and we climbed aboard and headed south, the Class of '78.

Word of my betrayal reached Elizabeth before I did, and she ended our burning love affair with the admission that she found Brad James more to her liking anyway. And Mr. Everett, the principal, called me to his office the following Monday. He knew about the beer. He asked why hadn't I turned them in.

I didn't know it then, as my mind strayed from Mr. Everett's lecture to Elizabeth?s lost love. I didn't know it, but my 8th-grade trip was a microcosm of human experience. And north of Tulia is not altogether different from east of Eden.

Earlier that year, I had professed my faith in Jesus Christ and joined the church. In my confirmation class, the wiser adults had taught me that God is not impulsive or cruel; rather, God wants only the best for us. But we must choose the best for it to mean very much.

God gives us choices between good and evil, between faith and anxiety, between righteousness and our selfish whims.

It?s like the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve made choices. Poor choices.

But God keeps at us, renewing us every day, especially in Christ.

Remember how the Apostle Paul put it? Eugene Peterson translates Paul like this: "One man (that's Adam) said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man (that's Christ) said yes to God and put many in the right." (Romans 5:19)

Put many in the right.

Even the 8th-grade class.

If only for a moment, in our own way, we let Christ make it right. God's impulse to grace and forgiveness flows to us and through us, and if we choose, it extends from Christ to the likes of Agnes and Earl and me, too.
And you also.

And, that, my friends, keeps us going on the roller coaster in Wonderland.

Let's pray.

Help us, God, to be people of the second chance,
to give as we get, to clothe ourselves in your grace,
offered in the abundance of Christ. Amen.