2^nd Sunday of Advent St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

December 5, 2004 Monmouth Junction, NJ

REPENTANCE AND HOPE

“In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” Matthew 3:1 RSV

For the most part, repentance is not a popular subject in our culture. The one thing that I think the Church can rest assured of is that Ash Wednesday will not become a major cultural holiday like Christmas or Easter. I would not go looking for an Ash Wednesday card from Hallmark to send to a friend or a big Ash Wednesday blow up balloon to place in my front yard anytime in the near future. And yet repentance is central to our faith.

In the wilderness, John the Baptist is preaching repentance and baptizing for the forgiveness of sins. Crowds of people are flocking to him to hear him, to proclaim their repentance and to be baptized that their sins may be forgiven so that they may come to the kingdom of heaven. Repentance and forgiveness of sin were for the early church and remain for us today, just as they were for the people of John’s time, central to the meanings of baptism. To be baptized is to turn to a life of penance.

In the midst of John’s ministry, groups of religious leaders, Pharisees and Sadducees, came out to hear him. John, on seeing them, did not take the first page out of Entertaining Angels or whatever the most recent manual on welcoming ministries was that he could remember. Instead, he called out to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance.”

So not only are we to repent, but we are to bear fruit that comes out of repentance. Boy, does that sound like a downer. Who wants to go around being sorry and feeling guilty for what they have done all of the time. Why would anyone want to be baptized if that is the case?

Well for one thing, although we often should be sorry for the things we have done and said, true repentance has little to do with just being sorry or feeling guilty. True repentance is about acknowledging who we are, what we have done and changing. It has to with turning from those things that are destructive to us, to others, to God’s world and that take us away from God’s love and life. Repentance is both personal and communal or social. The Book of Common Prayer contains both the communal confession of the Eucharist and Offices and the personal confession of the “Reconciliation of a Penitent”, and they do not replace each other.

In her wonderful book Speaking of Sin: the lost language of salvation, Barbara Brown Taylor tells of her own experience of repentance. She and a close friend made a pact. Each chose a behavior/situation that they knew they should change. They agreed over a period of time to report to each other how they were doing. Barbara chose to change her behavior of habitually being late for appointments because she knew that it meant that she did not take other people and their time seriously and that, in being habitually late, she seriously hurt her relations with friends, family, colleagues and others. For years, she had been late. At times, she said, that she had been late so often that some people almost stopped speaking to her because they were so angry about it. Still she found it easier to feel terrible about her habit and beat up on herself emotionally than it was to call a loving friend who was not judging her and say “I was late again.” Yet it was through this process that she broke the habit, stopped the burden of guilt and restored a number of relationships.

Repentance also has social implications. How do we participate in our society, in our culture and in our economy in ways that are destructive to God’s creation, to the life of others and yes, to our own life. These are hard questions and much more difficult to answer, but as Christians we are called to a life of penitence even here.

Repentance is about truthfully acknowledging who we are, what we have done, what its impact is and then changing and making amends.

Archbishop Tutu, after his experience with the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” came to realize that all of the confessions and all of the pronouncements of forgiveness would ultimately not do what was needed if the economic, social and personal plight of those who had been injured was not changed – if real healing, if real restoration to life did not occur.

It sounds hard. It is hard. Why would anyone want to do it? Because it is the way of turning from death to life, from alienation to reconciliation, from guilt to forgiveness and from despair to hope. If you doubt me, look at the life of the saints over the centuries and every twelve step program that exists today.

But how is a life of penance a way to hope?

For one, it tears us away from our carefully built up and protected illusions about ourselves and our world that we are so good at creating. We put an awful lot of energy and work into building them up and keeping them going. Yet they drain us, tear us apart and keep us from taking the actions needed to turn to life even when what we need to acknowledge and turn from are the ways we allow others to hurt and destroy us. As painful as it may be, there is real freedom and joy and hope in being able to say “You know what, I am not perfect, but that is OK. God loves me and calls me back to life.”

Second, it begins to move us in new, creative and loving directions. As we do this, we begin to encounter God in strange places and in strange people where we never expected to find God. In people and places and situations that we previously thought were repulsive, we find fellowship, joy and a new wholeness. I am sure that in that rag tag group that followed Jesus, there were many who, in their usual paths of life, would have never come close to each, in fact would have actively sought to avoid each other, yet together in following Jesus, they found the kingdom. One of the greatest needs that we as humans have is to have tasks and life that are meaningful. In penance, God calls us to new tasks and new places that we would have never found on our own.

Third, as we turn in penance to take responsibility for our part in the world in which we live, we find the possibility of actions, often with others, to bring change and healing to that world that bring healing and life to others and to ourselves. We may not bring in the kingdom (only God can do that) but in acting in penance and humility, we can open our world a little more to God’s healing and love. Over and over we are told that only in focusing on ourselves will we find wholeness, peace and life. In penance, we turn from ourselves toward God and others only to find a new, true, authentic fully-alive self.

The word mercy generally translates the Hebrew work hesed which means steadfast, constant, eternal love. Mercy is not pity, but the welcoming home of God’s steadfast love.

As we turn, turn more and more toward God, as in silence we open our hearts to God, we find God’s mercy. We are not called to penance to face a stern and awful judge who will deny us or abandon us. As we go deeper, as we reach out, we are touched, we are blessed, we are welcomed. There is a story of a son who took his share of his inheritance and squandered it. When he was broken, in poverty, hunger and shame, he decided to return to his father. Jesus did not tell that story just to tell a good story but so that we would know of the divine love that awaits us when we return.

So where shall we begin? What questions should we ask? Where does our life of penance start? Where do we begin to search for hope? Is it in asking if I am in touch with my feelings, desires, impulses and inspirations? Is it asking if there are whole categories of people by nation, color, class, political stance, etc. toward whom I feel fear, anger, resentment, or indignation? Is there a personal relationship in my life that stands un-reconciled? Are there ways that I have participated in and still do allow others to take away my God-given dignity? Are there ways that I do not allow God’s or others’ love to reach me and heal me? In what do I choose to ignore God?

I do not know your questions. I struggle to find my own. But in this Advent season, may we turn, turn away from ourselves and our brokenness that we may open our hearts so that Christ may be born in us and we may be reborn in God’s love and hope.

Amen.