This week we continue in our Lenten series on Returning to Me With All Your Heart, and this Sunday our focus is on the Lenten discipline of repentance. This is one of those sermons I’ll be preaching to myself today as well as to you! And as we look at today’s scriptures, I’ll be pulling from them a list of six Repentances that we can practice during Lent and beyond.
For most of us, when we hear the word ‘repent,’ we tend to think of the old fire and brimstone preachers of years ago who used to practically scare people into heaven. Because of this, the word ‘repent’ has gotten a bad reputation: it sounds, to our ears, like a harsh word from an angry God.
When Jesus preached “the kingdom of heaven is near, repent and believe the good news” – what He meant was “change course and believe the good news.” Change course is closer to the true meaning of the Greek, and I want us to have the true meaning without any of the emotional baggage of the 20th century.
There’s just one drawback to saying “change course and believe the good news”: it makes changing course sound optional. As I was reading our passage from Isaiah this week, it reminded me of an old anthem our choir used to sing (I wonder if any of you have sung this?)
“Seek the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near… Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return unto the Lord…” It’s a beautiful song, full of lovely melodies.
The problem is the song makes repentance sound like a stroll through a European city: something pleasant you might do once in a lifetime if you can afford it. This is not repentance! When Jesus says “change course and believe the good news” – it wasn’t a suggestion. When you’re headed for a cliff, changing course is not optional.
So what do the scriptures tell us about this course change?
The primary message in our reading from Isaiah today is that everything good – in this life and the next – comes from God: and in a far deeper and more profound way than we realize. And the primary message from Paul in I Corinthians is a warning to not desire anything evil or self-indulgent but rather to resist temptation. Paul also points out that the sacraments and other religious activity will do us no good if we take God’s mercy for granted.
So let’s start with Isaiah. The prophet begins with a mysterious saying about thirsty people coming to the water and hungry people buying food without money. Jesus says something similar to this in the gospel of John, when he meets a woman at the well. You may remember the story: Jesus asks her for a drink, and she points out that Jews don’t ask Samaritans for drinks. And Jesus answers ‘if you knew who it was who was talking to you, you would ask him, and he would give you a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’
Isaiah is using the same imagery to point out that our greatest thirst as human beings is not for physical water but for spiritual water, and that satisfying our bodies doesn’t satisfy our spirits. Isaiah asks why we spend so much money and work so hard for things that don’t satisfy? Jesus said to the woman at the well, “anyone who drinks from this well will be thirsty again, but anyone who drinks from the water I give will never thirst.” God says: listen carefully to me, and eat and drink what is good. Come to me and listen so that you may live.
Repentance #1: We recognize that God has – and God in fact is – what our souls long for. God is love. God is truth. (Not God has love, or God has truth; God is love and God is truth.) God is just. God is holy. God is beauty. God is kind. God is perfect. It can be a little scary sometimes to think about just how good God is, because everything else in the world pales by comparison. So repentance #1 is to get in touch with that part of ourselves that longs for God above all else, and to honor that part of ourselves, and stop wasting time and money on things that don’t satisfy.
Isaiah goes on to observe some other ways in which we may overlook God’s word and miss God’s will for our lives. We may become busy, we may become preoccupied, we may worry. We would to better to bring our concerns to God in prayer. Which brings me to:
Repentance #2: Using Isaiah’s words as a springboard, we take delight in what God provides. For example, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – silly about saying “thank you God for spring” or “thank you God for flowers.” Through the world around us, and through the people around us, and through the Holy Spirit, God is always sharing with us. God is never silent. Turn away from harsh thoughts, from anger, from bitterness – or, if things really are bad, then bringing the causes of anger and bitterness to God in prayer, and let God deal with them, because God is bigger and more powerful than we are. And when we find ourselves in need of advice, let God be the first one we ask.
Which leads us to Isaiah’s next point. Isaiah quotes God saying “my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
We can’t begin to imagine how much greater and how much higher God is than we are; but as a lifelong cat owner, I’ve often thought that our relationship with cats might make a good parallel. How much of what we think and do, do cats really understand? Cats are smart: they know when dinnertime is, and they let us know if we’re late. Put a box of sand on the floor and they know what to do with it. On the other hand, cats have no clue why all the people leave the house in the morning, and they make no connection between our going to work and the availability of cat food.
I’ve also noticed if I give my cats something they don’t want, they will turn their backs on it and scratch at the floor – which is the motion they make when they bury something in the litter box.
I might give them the best gourmet cat food in the world, but if they don’t like it… (scratch). And I wonder sometimes if we react that way to God’s gifts? “This isn’t quite what I had in mind, Lord…” (scratch)
Isaiah says: God’s ways are higher than our ways. God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Not just a wee bit higher, but higher than the sky is above the earth. Anybody who thinks they’ve got God figured out is mistaken. On the other hand, people who think God can’t be known are also mistaken, because God has spoken to us, God has given the Word, as much as we’re capable of understanding.
Our words are not sufficient to describe God. Our minds are not big enough to contain God. But God, in the Holy Spirit, can become small enough to squeeze inside us and help us reach beyond our mortality: and this is the water that satisfies, this is the stream that never runs dry.
Repentance #3: Acknowledge that any belief system, any education or training, any ideology, any form of organized religion, any understanding or skill we have is, at its very finest, child’s play compared with what God knows. Knowing this, we can set aside pride; we can respect tradition but not be wedded to it; we can enjoy the tribe we belong to, but know that in God all tribalism loses its meaning. The apostle Paul says: “now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I have been fully known.” (I Cor 13:12) Knowledge becomes complete only when Love comes to town.
With that thought let’s turn now to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. If you wanted to sum up Paul’s relationship with the church at Corinth you might say “it’s complicated”. Paul loved the Corinthians, and he spent a year and a half living among them and preaching the good news of Jesus, but after Paul moved on to other cities false teachers came in and divided the church with their teachings. These new teachings taught disrespect for the Gospel as well as promoting various kinds of immorality (sexual and otherwise).
Paul’s talk about baptism and spiritual food and drink in verses two through four gives us a parallel between the experience of Israel being set free from slavery in Egypt, and the Christian experience of being set free from slavery to sin. Paul is saying that both groups of God’s people have passed through water and both have partaken of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
He then goes on to say these things didn’t save the Israelites when they rebelled against God. He points out that when the people of Israel made a golden calf and worshipped it, over 3000 of them died the same day. And after another rebellion, thousands more died from snake bites. The fact that they had passed through the waters of salvation didn’t save them. As Jesus once said to the Pharisees, “Do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” (Matt 3:9)
Repentance #4: If we have been led to believe that doing certain holy things, like being baptized, taking communion, going to church, giving money, anything like that, is going get us into heaven, we need to change our thinking. There’s only one thing that gets people into God’s kingdom, and that’s the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and his resurrection from the grave, and our faith in Him. Nothing else will get us there. All these other things are good things: they are gifts from God to help us on our journey, but keeping rules and observing traditions isn’t what faith is about.
Paul says that this story about the ancient Israelites was written as a warning to us: specifically to warn us against thinking we can do what is evil and still reap what is good. Paul mentions sexual immorality, though there are certainly other sins that would qualify as well. The point is, whatever we are tempted to do, God is faithful and will not allow us to be tempted beyond our strength. God will provide a way out.
While I’m in this passage, one comment on Paul’s word regarding sexual immorality: I think what Paul says about sexuality has been widely misunderstood, on all sides of all issues. The root of the Greek word Paul uses here is porneo – the word we get pornography from, though that’s not what the ancient Greeks meant by the word. Like many words in English, porneo has more than one meaning and more than one variation. The Greek-to-English dictionaries I pulled from gave eight definitions:
- To practice prostitution
- To practice sexual immorality in general
- To live without sexual restraint
- To metaphorically practice idolatry
- To fall to one’s ruin or destruction
- To act unfaithfully
- To prostitute one’s body to the lust of another
- In scriptures, to give oneself to unlawful intercourse
Out of those eight definitions, three of them don’t have anything to do with sex at all (#4-6). And these three non-sexual definitions add to the shading of Paul’s meaning in this passage. Not that I’m discounting the other five definitions; but the definition of porneo includes within it the sense of a lack of self-worth, or a lack of self-control (or both), or the sense of being the cause of one’s own downfall or one’s own self-destruction; or of putting something in the place of God in our lives that belongs to God alone.
Paul sees this as a form of rebellion: a combination of putting God to the test (which is something even Jesus wouldn’t do) and practicing idolatry – that is, worshipping something other than God.
Repentance #5: If there is anything in our lives that’s more important than God, it’s time to make God #1 again. This Lent, let us strive to love God more than we love anything else. This Repentance comes with a bonus: when we love God more than anything else, all of a sudden everything else becomes much more real, much more beautiful – which is how God designed it to be. Jesus said, “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) This is how that happens.
And last, I added one of my own thoughts to this collection:
Repentance #6: I call this ‘repenting of our repentance’. Saying to God: We’re sorry if we haven’t taken repentance seriously enough. We’re sorry if we’ve neglected to bring our shortcomings to You. We’re sorry when we’ve taken Your mercy for granted. We’re sorry when we’ve made ourselves out to be worse than we are, forgetting that You created great beauty when You created our souls.
So the six Repentances:
- Stop wasting time and money on what doesn’t satisfy;
- Take delight in what God provides;
- Recognize that God’s thoughts are far beyond anything we can possibly imagine;
- Set aside any trust in religious activity and trust Jesus alone for salvation;
- Make God #1 in our lives, above all else;
- Remember to say “I’m sorry” to God, and then remember we are loved.
I love the saying that went around Facebook the other day:
Religion says “I messed up, Dad’s going to kill me.” Relationship says “I messed up, I need to call my Dad.”
That’s what repentance is all about: working on our relationship with our heavenly Father. This week: give Dad a call. AMEN.
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Preached at Fairhaven United Methodist Church and Spencer United Methodist Church, 3/24/19
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Isaiah 55:1-9 Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. PP I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. 4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 5 See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. PP 6 Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7 let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.
6 Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. 7 Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” 8 We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. 9 We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. 10 And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11 These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. 13 No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.