This week I found myself needing to repent. I got caught up in a pattern of behavior that was life-draining for me and caused pain and confusion for others. And when I woke up to it, I felt awful and flooded with regret. Because I was thinking about repentance as our theme this week, it was especially uncomfortable because most of me was caught in the pain and agony of the experience, and a small part of me was watching myself and taking notes.
The Greek word for repent, Μετανοεῖτε means literally “change how you think after being with,” in other words, turn around, shift your being in another direction, change your purpose after this encounter.” Repent is not a moral word of judgment and condemnation, like we like to make it. It actually isn’t about being good or bad. Repentance in the biblical sense is a complete reorientation. It is turning from death to life. We could think of it as laying down your mind and exchanging it for the mind, perspective, and purpose of Christ. Sometimes repentance is used as something that happens to you, rather than something you do. One biblical scholar says, “It can be more about being found than about finding oneself." (Matt Skinner, Working Preacher).
When we recognize we have sinned, that is to say, when the lightbulb goes on and we can see that we have made a choice toward death and division instead of life, we are flooded with regret and sorrow. We can’t go back and undo what we did or take back what we said. So what happens next?
Sometimes we double down; it’s too painful to honestly face what we’ve done or own what we’ve said, so we blame other people, or the circumstances. We may make excuses, or drink to forget. We may deflect and point at someone else whose actions are “worse” than ours, to try to make ourselves feel better. All of these things usually make us feel worse and more stuck.
We have no good human mechanism for getting ourselves out of sin, the power of sin, the mindset of sin, which is separation, isolation, judgment. Paul says we are a slave to sin. Trapped in sin we move to the punishment of sin, condemnation. Because Sin is living as though God is not God and we are not beloved children of God created to live with and for each other. So when we get caught in sin, and we are suddenly aware that we are caught in sin, we often sin more to try to make ourselves not feel so alone, so trapped, so disappointed in ourselves. Or we judge and condemn ourselves, or each other for the sin, which is just another way of staying locked in sin, being ruled by the way of fear.
But God has a mechanism to get us out of sin. All the way back to Adam and Eve, through the prophets and judges and kings, to John the Baptist shouting on the banks of the Jordan this message is then embodied in Jesus himself who proclaimed the words that set us free: Repent! Repent for the kingdom of God is right at hand!
Translation: Trade out your way of sin and alienation and disconnection for my way of belonging and love. Let yourself be found, for God’s way of life is right here for you.
Like sunflowers turning their face toward the sun, like exhausted, angry toddlers running back into their parent’s arms, repenting returns to our true selves, and our true place in God. We turn our wilting little hearts back toward their source of life.
We don’t even have to believe we will find mercy, though we will. We may be craving the judgment and condemnation we think we deserve, but this is the power and beauty of God’s way: once we repent, once we turn our sorry selves back toward love, we are released from judgment and condemnation. Once we repent, we receive grace and find ourselves held by God with others. We only need to trust just enough in that belonging to open up and admit we feel ashamed, and acknowledge our regret over what we’ve done.
So many of our texts this Lent have been connected to the Babylonian exile – the Israelites ripped from home and stuck somewhere unfamiliar and uncomfortable that is not home. This feels fitting because this pandemic has been like the whole world living in a kind of exile. The promise of this prophet to the people in exile is a relationship with God that is not dictated by rules, shaped by fear of punishment, or demanding careful tiptoeing, but a connection defined by love, covered in grace and secured by the Divine and not by us, steered by the One who anticipates our need for salvation and offers it before we ask.
These people don’t know if they have what it takes to live up to their end of the deal. In fact, all evidence from history and experience from history tells them and if it is up to them to remember their place and live from that truth they will fail at staying true to God. But God says it’s not their job to uphold this relationship. God will make a new covenant, a new bond, not dependent on their ability to remember correctly and teach each other rightly, but written into their very hearts, every one of them. This covenant can’t be broken because it will be inside them and God will do the heavy lifting. They will be God’s people and God will be their God, period.
We long to be connected and alive, to sense God and see others, and we long to contribute to connection and love and joy for others. So for us, repentance is the gift of this connection, the tool right here in our own hearts, to come home when we fall away, to remember when we forget, to let ourselves be put back together again by God, whose love and mercy meet us not only when we step up and reach out, but especially when we’re stuck in our sin.
God’s goal isn’t punishment but reconciliation, reconnection. God wants for us wholeness and love.
So we get to step up and claim it. We get to accept being accepted, like we said last week that Sabbath rest offers us. Repentance does this too. It’s the wake up moment when we say, Oh! I want to trade my pitiful way of greed, resentment and constant condemnation, for God’s way of love that belongs me to God and other people! And in that moment, we let God’s salvation meet us just exactly how we need to be met, to heal us where we are sick, and mend us where we are broken, and release us where we are caged and find us where we are lost. Our anger or disappointment, our mistakes or our stupidity, do not get to set the terms, define our lives, keep us divided or trapped. God’s love sets the terms. Grace holds us. When we receive God’s forgiveness, we can forgive ourselves, and we can forgive each other.
But we have to do that part. We have to repent. We have to take that step of complete vulnerability and say it – to God, to ourselves, to the person we’ve wounded. We have to admit we’ve gone off track and let ourselves get turned back around by God, to the way of love and trust, to our true selves.
After repenting, I felt relief and hope and clarity. It’s painful to look honestly at yourself, but it means a new way opens up. Nobody in my house is under any delusion that I wont behave badly ever again, but I got to experience being seen, being forgiven, remembering my place alongside those I love, and more ready to forgive and see and love them as well. We belong to each other. I belong to all others.
A few of us meet online for morning and evening prayers each day. Every Friday night we pray Psalm 40:8. It says, “I delight to do your will, O my God, your law is within my heart.” We delight to do God’s will. We delight to feel ourselves part of the fabric of life, connected to others, aware of God, awake to gratitude and fullness of joy. God’s way is inside us, part of us, leading us, and leading us back when we lose our way, bringing us home again.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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