Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 13, 2009

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We all know the stereotype—the scraggly-bearded, disheveled man with a wild look in his eye standing on a street corner holding a big, coarsely hand-lettered sign and calling out in a loud voice over and over again: “Repent! The end is near! Repent! The end is near!” It’s the stuff of New Yorker cartoons. We sneer and feel superior. We’re so much more enlightened and sophisticated than that! Fair enough, but here’s my concern about all that this morning. That image has given repentance a bad name. It’s made repentance a joke. It’s made repentance into something serious people don’t take seriously. And that’s unfortunate because, you see, repentance is a serious thing and a serious part of the life of faith. So this morning, despite the stereotype of people who shout it on the street corner, I’m going to take repentance seriously and consider what it is and what it might mean for us today.

The first thing I notice when I do take a serious look at repentance is that not only do we make fun of repentance, we badly misunderstand it. Just the other day I was doing a New York Times crossword puzzle. A clue read something like “feel remorse about something.” The answer was “repent.” That’s the popular understanding of repentance. We take repent to mean feel bad about. Feel regret for. Often we take it one step farther. We take repentance to mean we need to beat up on ourselves for things we’ve done wrong. We associate it with wearing a hair shirt and groveling in ashes. We take it to mean feel guilty. And we think that what those feelings of guilt call us to do is go to confession, to admit the mistakes we’ve made and the sins we’ve committed. And often we think that if we do that, if we feel bad enough and confess sincerely enough, that’s all we need to do. We think that if we do that, and maybe if we perform some small act of penance like saying a few prayers, God will forgive us. Done deal. We’re good. We’ve repented, and now we can move on—probably to keep doing what we were doing before that we thought we had to repent of.

Well, that may be what we think repentance is all about; but I’m afraid that I have to tell you that no matter what we think, that’s not what repentance is. Indeed, repentance is actually something very different from all that. At least, the Biblical understanding of repentance is something very different from all that; and just what that Biblical understanding is we see in our reading this morning from Luke about John the Baptist.

In Luke’s account, John begins by blasting the people who have come out to be baptized by him. He calls them a “brood of vipers.” I’m not sure why. I guess for our purposes it doesn’t matter. Something else John says to them is far more important. He says “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Now we know from a line just a little bit earlier in Luke’s account that John’s ministry is all about repentance. At Luke 3:3 we read that John was “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” I take his line “bear fruits worthy of repentance” to be a call to do things that show that you have indeed repented. In Biblical language, “bear fruits” indeed means live and act in a certain way. It’s not a call to feel bad. John doesn’t say feel feelings worthy of repentance. He doesn’t say beat up on yourself so we will know that you have repented. He doesn’t say go to confession so you can be forgiven. He says: Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Bear fruits that flow from your repentance. Do things that not only show that you have repented but are the result of your repentance, indeed that are your repentance. We learn here that repentance isn’t really about feelings at all. It is about acts. It is about the things we do. It is about how we live.

In Luke’s account John drives the point home with specific examples. Luke relates that the people asked him just what they should do. John gives them a few specifics. Anyone who has two coats must share with anyone who has none. Whoever has food must share with those who have no food. Tax collectors and soldiers must act honestly and honorably. All of these examples are about acts. They aren’t about feelings.

So what then is repentance? It is nothing less than changing your life. It is nothing less than changing how you behave, how you treat other people. But how? Change how? Treat people how? Well, I think we can extrapolate some from John’s specific examples. Those examples, I think, don’t go far enough—more about that in a moment—but they are a start. They are examples of living the way Jesus Christ calls us to live. We see it most clearly in the first examples—if you have two coats, give one to someone who doesn’t. If you have food, share it with someone who doesn’t. These are examples of living justly. They are examples of living with compassion. The other examples—tax collectors not taking more than they are due and soldiers not engaging in extortion—are examples of living honestly. Of not taking unfair advantage of others. These examples come close to characterizing the Christian life.

They come close, but they don’t quite get there. This is where I think they don’t go far enough as I just mentioned. They don’t go far enough in large part because they don’t call on soldiers not to fight. That omission strikes me every time I read this passage. Jesus called for nonviolence, Luke’s John does not. Other than that, however, John’s examples tell us that repentance isn’t about your feelings, it is about changing your life. Repentance, properly understood, is about how you live. Repentance is living a truly Christian life. It is about changing actions, patterns of behavior, and habits that do not reflect the way of Christ. That’s not to say that there is no mental component to repentance. There is. Actions flow from thoughts. That’s why thoughts matter. But thoughts without actions do not repentance make. Repentance is about acts. It is about changing your life.

And repentance understood as changing your life is undeniably that to which Jesus Christ calls us. In our reading today the call comes from John the Baptist; but when Jesus began his public ministry after the arrest of John the Baptist, the first thing he did was pick up John’s call of repentance. Jesus’ first public message was: Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. It was John the Baptist’s message. Then throughout all the rest of his ministry he taught us what that repentance looks like. He lived that repentance in his own life. Repentance, understood as changing our lives so that they more closely reflect the teachings of Jesus, is the call of the Christian.

So in this Advent season, let us contemplate how Jesus Christ, whose coming we await, calls us to repentance. How he calls us to change our lives. Do we share enough? Do we care enough? Are we committed to justice for all people? Are we committed to peace and nonviolence? We all know that repentance is part of the life of faith, but are we prepared really to do it? We can feel bad about the wrong we do and the good we leave undone. That’s easy, and it’s a start; but it’s not repentance. Are we ready for true repentance? It’s a hard question. I ask it of you, and I ask it of myself. It’s a hard question. I’m not sure I know the answer for myself, much less for you. It’s a hard question. It is the question of the season. It is the question of the Christian. Amen.