Repentance Revisited

Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

December 9, 2007

by Dr. Charles Parker

I.  Introduction

 

            Last Sunday, we had a young woman visit our church.  She was not United Methodist, nor particularly familiar with United Methodism; and after the service, she asked me, “Does your church have confession?”  And I will admit to the uncharacteristic experience of being – temporarily – speechless and unsure how to respond.  We, of course, had Communion last Sunday, and we had said our congregational prayer of confession together, but it clearly hadn’t felt like “real” confession to her.  And got me wondering if it feels like confession to the rest of us?

 

            One of John Wesley’s favorite authors, Jeremy Taylor, once commented that, “Many believe [in the] remission of sins, but they believe it without the condition of repentance or the fruits of holy life.”  And I think that he’s right: confession and repentance don’t get a lot of attention in our church.  They make us nervous and uncomfortable, just like John the Baptist made the socially acceptable people of his day nervous and uncomfortable.  He’s this unkempt radical prophet, living outside the bounds of society.  He gets parodied in the New Yorker on a regular basis as a figure in dirty robes on Park Avenue, with some doom and gloom sign held on a stick.  

 

            But he makes us uncomfortable because he speaks directly to the parts of ourselves that make us feel uncomfortable.  He asks us about those places in our lives that we’re not so proud of.  And he asks us whether we in the post-modern church have lost our ability to be honest about the need for repentance?  I read a sermon last week in which the preacher recounted a conversation with her 74-year-old mother, who asked her, "Why can I be more honest at my AA group than I can at church?"  And the answer this preacher gave her mother was: "Maybe it's because at AA they know it's a matter of life and death, and we often don't in the church."

 

            Last week, we talked a little about Advent as a time of preparation both for the coming of the incarnate Christ at Christmas (which is when we experienced the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God into history) and also for the time when Christ will come again to usher in the Kingdom of God in its fullness (bringing an end to history).  And our Gospel lesson this morning is very clear that the process that paves the way for our experience of the Kingdom is the discipline of repentance. 

 

II. Repentance

 

            The disciplines of confession and repentance have been fundamental to us as Christians since our very beginning.   In both Matthew and Mark’s gospels, Jesus begins his public ministry with the words, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand!”  And, as you can see from our lectionary text from Matthew this morning, Jesus gets that message directly from his cousin John the Baptist.  For most of our history, confession was viewed by the church as such an important discipline that it was considered a sacrament; as it still is by our Roman Catholic and Orthodox sisters and brothers.

 

            Confession and repentance rest on two absolutely fundamental theological foundations.  The first is that God loves us – absolutely and unconditionally.  Now this is not a theological statement with caveats.  God does not love everyone except for you.  God does not stop loving you when you make a mistake or fail to live up to your highest potential.  God does not love us less when we fail a test, or lose a job, or damage a relationship.  God knows us better than we know ourselves and still loves us.

 

            In the wonderful words of Psalm 139: 

 

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

8     If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

9     If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

10     even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

 

            That’s the first point: God’s love for us is absolute and complete.

 

            The second truth underpinning confession and repentance is as uncompromising as the first: that we are fallen creatures, and we are going to sin.  The Greek verb for sin is ἁμαρτάνω, which literally means “to miss the mark.”  So the image is that we’re aiming for something and we don’t get it.  We’re “off target.”  We’re aiming for God, but we veer off track because of our own self-centeredness, our own need to be in control. 

 

            Just as surely as we cannot chase God away (which was the first point), we cannot change ourselves regarding this second truth.  We cannot fix ourselves.  You can call it “original sin” or “human nature” or whatever else you want to call it; but our inability to pull ourselves out of our own sinfulness is part of the human condition.

 

            So we have a God who loves us madly, and we have an inevitable tendency to make the wrong choices in that relationship, to set up barriers between ourselves and God.  The solution to this conundrum is that when we foul up – as we will – as soon as we realize that it has happened, we need to acknowledge that, to ask for forgiveness, and to resolve to try and not make that mistake again.  We’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to sin; but we can also learn from those sins, so that maybe next time we can avoid that particular one.

 

            The process of confession and repentance is really a process of self-knowledge, and self-knowledge and God knowledge go hand in hand.  The deeper and more profoundly we understand ourselves, the more we can open ourselves to the cleansing, healing power of the Spirit.  We will understand our own destructive patterns and learn how to avoid them.  Confession and repentance begin a process of spiritual healing, opening us up to experience forgiveness and healing and new life. 

 

            And it’s only as we begin to experience this forgiveness and healing, that we can begin to offer it to the world around us.   The more clearly we see ourselves, the less easily we can judge the faults of others.  We can be at peace with ourselves and therefore make peace with others.

 

            So repentance is about self-knowledge and about reconciliation: reconciliation with ourselves, God, and the people around us.

 

III. The Examen

 

            Now there are many helpful structures that have been developed by the great saints of our church for entering into a regular discipline of repentance, but one that I have found particularly helpful over the years was developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola.  Ignatius lived in the fifteenth century and is best known as the founder of the Jesuit order.  I believe that he is also the patron saint of basketball, but I could be wrong on that.

 

            Ignatius’s best known work is called the Spiritual Exercises, but he is also known for a form of confessional prayer called the Examen.  The Examen was a tool that Ignatius used every night before he went to bed, and is a regular part of the life of many religious communities.

 

            The Examen has five parts to it (feel free to write these down; or you can wait until I get this posted on the web-site, which at my current pace should be mid-year 2009): Acknowledge, Ask, Admit, Repent, Resolve.  Let’s take a quick look at each of these.

 

  1. Acknowledge:  the first step is to acknowledge that you are in the presence of God and to give thanks for the blessings that God has granted during the day.  Spend a moment looking at the day's gifts. Take stock of how God has blessed you.
  2. Ask:  the second step is to ask for the aid of the Holy Spirit in this process.  Before you can begin to explore the mystery of the human heart, we need the Holy Spirit to help us look upon our actions and motives with honesty and patience. The Spirit gives us the freedom to look upon ourselves without condemnation or complacency and thus be open to growth.
  3. Admit:  the third step is to examine how you lived the day and where the places were that you fell short, missed the mark.  Review the events of your day, hour by hour, searching through both the external and internal events of the day. Look through the hours to reflect on your interactions and relationships.  What moved you to act the way you did?
  4. Repent: the fourth step is to ask God to forgive our faults, to seek God’s pardon and a healing in the brokenness that our sin has caused.
  5. Resolve: the fifth and final step is to resolve to learn from our mistake and do better the next time we are faced with the situation.          

            In this practice of a nightly review of the day, Ignatius echoes wisdom as diverse as Pythagoras to John Bunyan who said, “If you have sinned, do not lie down without repentance; for the want of repentance after one has sinned makes the heart yet harder and harder."

 

            But whatever technique you use for this self-examination, it is critical to keep the two fundamental theological underpinnings in mind.  If you find in your reflections that you’re not finding any areas of short-coming, I suspect you’re not taking that second point seriously: you have sinned, look harder.  Likewise, if you find yourself paralyzed by your sinfulness and unable to pray because of it, you may not be taking the absolute love of God seriously enough.

 

            You’re going to sin; God is going to keep loving you.  Learn from it, move on.

IV. Conclusion

 

            Advent, like Lent, offers us a wonderful opportunity to explore some new spiritual disciplines that can help us open our lives more profoundly to God.  As we prepare for the Christ coming into our lives again this Christmas, and bringing history to an ultimate close, listen to the words of John the Baptist with fresh ears: Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand!