*Due to being stuck in London until Tuesday, this sermon was not preached, but is offered here in hopes that in reading it, the Spirit may still speak.
In name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” That’s a stark warning from Jesus that leaves me wondering what exactly it means to repent. Afterall, if repentance is how to avoid the other side of that “unless,” then I’m all ears.
The most common understanding repentance is saying sorry and apologizing. But we know that Jesus is doing more than teaching us common courtesy or admonishing us to be polite. One of those things that happens as a parent is that you find yourself saying the same things that your parents said you to 30 years ago: “I don’t want you to feel sorry, I want things to change.” Right, it’s not about magic words, it’s about being changed. And that, at its heart, is what repentance is truly about.
There are two Biblical ideas that undergird this understanding of repentance, one is from the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the other is the Greek of the New Testament. In the Jewish mindset, repentance is a word related to a physical turning. If you’re driving on 85 North and then realize you were supposed to be going south, you’d have to stop and change directions. That’s the idea behind the Hebrew word for repenting – it’s about recognizing that we’ve been going in the wrong direction and making a change. Now, sometimes we don’t need to, or can’t, do a complete 180°, but a shift is what repentance is all about.
The New Testament’s word for repentance is more psychologically oriented; it’s metanoia, which is very much like the word paranoia. The noia part means “mind” and the prefix para means beyond, so someone who is paranoid is out of their mind. Well, the prefix meta means “after,” signifying something that comes next. It’s about change, as in metamorphosis. So, the Greek idea of repentance is about changing our minds – seeing ourselves and the world in a new way. Repentance is telling ourselves a different story and therefore living differently.
You all know that I’ve been very involved in racial equity work in our community over the past 6 years, and I’ll tell you that I’ve done a lot of repenting, a lot of changing my mind. I’ve learned things and had conversations that have made me question and rethink the assumptions and biases that our culture has handed me. That’s why I’m so committed to the work of diversity and inclusion, because I’ve had experiences that required a change of mind. Thinking in terms of our Baptismal Covenant’s vow to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being,” learning what I’ve learned, I’ve had to repent and think about race and our society differently in order to pursue justice, peace, respect, and dignity.
That’s the what of repentance – it’s changing how we think about life and making appropriate changes. But how do we do this holy work that Jesus gives to us?
Jewish rabbis have taught for centuries that there are five aspects to repentance, and there is much wisdom that is helpful to us. I’m hesitant to call them “steps,” because sometimes life isn’t quite that linear. Steps also gives us the false expectation that once we get to end of the process that it will be finished. But repentance is an ongoing process. We are fickle and flawed, so even though we change our minds today, tomorrow we might easily slip back into old models of thinking. It might be tempting to think of these as five steps in a linear process, but instead think of them as five ingredients that go into a recipe – they all need to be there, and it might make sense to put some in before others, but the goal is to enjoy the cake of repentance, not to just say “I followed the directions.”
These ingredients are: recognizing our sin; remorse; desisting from the harmful thoughts or behaviors; restitution; and confession. For those of you familiar with the wisdom of the Twelve Steps from Alcoholics Anonymous, you’ll quickly notice that Steps 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 12 are all fairly well covered by this Jewish process known as teshuvah. These ingredients have helped so many people find liberation and recovery through the centuries and we would do well to heed their wisdom.
The first thing to do is to recognize our sin. This is something that Jesus helps us to do in the passage we heard from Luke. It’s a rather interesting passage, as most of the time, we think of Jesus sharing timeless parables and eternals truths; but here, he’s talking about what’s been going on in the news. He mentions a recent massacre ordered by Pontus Pilate. We don’t know the historical specifics, but from other records, we know this sort of thing happened from time to time. There must have been an uprising or something and Pilate chose to make an example of these people. That was a human made tragedy.
Jesus then mentions natural disaster, just dumb luck. Apparently, there was a tower that fell and crushed the people who happened to be in the area. The mindset of the day, and it’s a mindset that we share, was that these people who died must have done something to deserve it. We don’t like randomness. We want there to be reasons for tragedies so that we can learn from it. Or we want there to be some sort of reason why we can blame others for their difficulties and say “Well, I’m not like them, so I’m safe.” But these are coping mechanisms, not reality.
The people assumed that they were safe because they didn’t see themselves as sinners like those who had recently died in these events. But Jesus says do them, “Do you think they suffered because they were worse sinners?” The assumption was “Of course.” But Jesus counters, “No; but unless you repent, you will perish as they did.” Jesus is saying that it’s not about action and consequence, it’s about who we trust to save us.
Doing the right things or avoiding the wrong things won’t keep us safe because that’s just not how the world works, and because none of us are perfect at always doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things. Just as sin is universal, so is God’s love and mercy. But if our hands are full of our own self-righteousness, it’s hard to receive the grace of God. And so we begin by confessing that, just like those Galileans, we are sinners who don’t know it all, are short-sighted, selfish, and prone to mistakes. That doesn’t make us bad people, it just makes us human. Embracing our imperfections and sins isn’t about negativity or pessimism, it’s about not holding ourselves or others to unreasonable standards, and that opens us to receive God’s mercy.
The next ingredient is remorse. Now, remorse is a feeling, so this is one that sometimes we have to work at. It’s one thing to know that we’ve made a mistake, but it’s another to admit and care about how that mistake creates ripples of brokenness. The best example for the need for remorse is Pete Rose. He was one of the baseball greats from the previous generation known for his hustle, fielding, and hitting ability. He was a 17-time All Star and seemed to be lock for the Hall of Fame; until he was found to be guilty of committing the unpardonable sin of sports: placing bets on games he was playing in. He was banned from baseball and locked out of the Hall of Fame.
At first, he did what a lot of us do when we are caught – he lied. For nearly 15 years, he denied any wrongdoing. When that didn’t work, he switched to truth-telling in a tell-all autobiography. He thought that coming clean would work. But it didn’t, mostly because he was attempting to justify his actions instead of owning them. The baseball world was unconvinced, which led him to bitterness about the whole thing. Rose died last year never having made it into the Hall of Fame. Some of you think he deserves to be in, others don’t. That’s not the point. The point is that Rose was his own worst enemy because he never showed remorse for what he did. It’s not about regretting that we were caught, it’s regretting that we did – no excuses, no blaming, no rationalizations, no distancing ourselves from our actions and the harm it causes.
Next is desisting and stopping the thing we’ve been doing, or not doing, as the case may be. And it’s okay to ask for help with this. As this week’s Collect puts it, “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.” Sometimes we need a Twelve-Step group, sometimes an accountability partner, sometimes a change of surroundings, sometimes a therapist, sometimes mindfulness practices, and always prayer. Sin is bigger than us, don’t try to fight it alone, that’s a losing battle. It’s also important to know that we don’t stop being sinners because we’re in the process of repenting. Relapses will happen, but that just means we start again tomorrow. If your physician prescribes important medicine to take, and you forget to take it today, you don’t say “Well, I guess I’m done with that.” Of course not, we start again tomorrow, perhaps with better reminders in place. If you need a confidential, supportive, and prayerful place to talk about this part, this is what I’m here for.
Then we add the ingredient of restitution, repair, and reparation. This isn’t always perfectly possible, but we attempt to restore what has been broken. Notice I don’t say “fix.” We can’t often fix what has been broken, but we can restore. If a bridge fails, I’d rather drive over a new bridge than one that has been repaired.
An integral aspect of restitution is that the offender isn’t in control of it – it’s needs to be done on the terms of the person who was harmed, and often mediated by someone who is able to ensure that justice and reconciliation is the goal. If you drive a Lamborghini and someone totals it, you don’t want their insurance company saying, “Here’s a Toyota – it also has four wheels and headlights, so now we’re even.” But, if you’ve ever been an accident you know it’s not just about replacing vehicle – there is pain and fear to work though. It’s the same in our relationships – trust takes a lot of time to rebuild, denied opportunities cannot always be replaced, bullying can take decades of overcome. And so we work to build new bridges and connections.
And when it comes to systemic issues like racism and sexism, that requires a tremendous amount of remorse and restoration. It’s why so many are opposed to the idea of reparations in this country – there is a lack of remorse and an unwillingness to consider just how deep and wide the wounds of slavery and discrimination still are. However, though these are hard conversations, Jesus’ warning remains: unless we repent, we will all perish.
Now at this point you might think – we’re all going to die, so what’s the point of doing this holy work of repentance. It’s not mortal death that Jesus is warning us about, it’s about living in captivity for our entire lives; living defined by our sins and trapped by our ignorance. Jesus is our Good Shepherd who leads us into abundant life, but we have to choose to go with him into those green pastures.
The final part of repentance is Confession, meaning the liturgical enactment of confessing our sin and being assured of God’s pardon. The Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz Weber gave an interview several years about Confession. The interviewer asked her if Confession and Absolution is like getting a “get out of jail free” card. She replied, “No, it’s about the burdens we are carrying.” She continued, “I’m more tortured by the harm I’ve caused myself and others. It’s about letting go of the secrets and mistakes I’ve been carrying around. Forgiveness is about people being freed and laying down the stuff that’s been weighing us down. Confession is about going to a trusted clergyperson and speaking these things aloud and then being reminded that God’s grace is so much more powerful than our ability to make mistakes. That’s the freedom of Confession.”
You can reach out to me anytime you want to schedule a time to do this. Confession is the culmination of repentance: trusting in the love and mercy of Jesus to make all things new and to raise us from the deadness of our sins into the newness of life.
I realize that many of us would like clearer answers to these questions about evil, suffering, and sin. Why are we so prone to sin? Why do we hurt each other? Why do we feel such negativity about ourselves? Why do bad and tragic things happen? As we gather here this morning, we are not given the answers we might like. Instead, we are given Jesus’ body, broken for us; we are given blood, shed for us and for our salvation. This is how Jesus responds to the questions we have, not with answers that satisfy us or make the world seem simpler than it really is, but with his very life given us, restoring us to Communion with one another and to God, so that we might more fully give our lives to him who calls us to repent and embrace his love that is making all things well.
