Turn Around and Try Again
One way roads in places I do not know well are the bane of my existence. In the last month, I have been in Lancaster city twice, once for our Annual Conference, and this last week for our Jurisdictional Conference. Lancaster has many one-way roads. I wanted every road to go both ways, and any mis-turn I take to be as simple as three rights make a left. But more than once, I found that there was a single way that the road was headed, and it was not in the direction that I intended. I could continue away from my destination or I could turn around and try again. I needed to turn around and try again to get to my destination.
This month, we have been in a series of messages on Second Chances: Sin, Repentance, and Redemption. We have been looking at how we need sin as our hope for redemption, second chances that are for everyone, and today, we look at what it means to turn around and try again. Repent! Turn around! Walk away from the sin-filled life you have known! Seek Jesus and repair broken relationships! Words of a street preacher. Have you heard one recently?
At Penn State, there was a man who stood on the steps of the Willard Building and hollered, yelled, lectured and proclaimed. For lack of any other name, he was called the Willard preacher. Since 1982, he appeared most days to speak of sin. He called out to the college students as they went to classes. He condemned drinking and sexual orgies. He condemned laziness and liberal arts education. He called out and called out. Students would come to talk to him about God; they would taunt him and ask questions. They would inquire and seek hope. He had no options to give them; he only offered condemnation.
I wonder if this is how the gawkers first thought John the Baptist would be. As he called out by the river, ‘Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!’ But John the Baptist did more than condemn, he offered forgiveness and baptism. He offered the Way. He offered Jesus. John the Baptist called people to repent, knowing that each and every one who could hear this voice knew there was something in their soul’s that did not sit right. There was something in their hearts that could not be looked over. Something that separated them from who God called them to be.
John the Baptist called them to turn back towards God and offering the path forward. Traditionally, confessions at that time were public. As people came to John in the river, they would confess their sins. They would call out the ways that they had missed the mark. Drunkards and fornicators, liars and cheaters, Sabbath law breakers, abusers, murderers, and stealers, alike, would tell their lurid stories not to entertain crowds, but to confess their sins. In confessing, the community would hold them accountable to a different way of living and repairing the brokenness from their sins. Confession brings the secrets to light. Once we tell one or two of the way that we have missed the target, we might be held accountable to turn around and walk a different way, to repair the brokenness we caused. Once we tell a neighbor that we lied to our spouse, even their knowledge calls us to deeper honesty, and movement to repair the brokenness of lies with our spouse. Once we confess that we avoid certain roads because the homeless under the bridge make us uncomfortable, we feel the movement of the spirit within us opening our eyes to the humanity of those who are without homes. We can no longer deny that we too have fallen short.
Confession reminds us that we need God. Confession opens us up to the reality that God was already moving within and pointing us in the right way, but we had covered it up with defending, pretending, hiding, blaming others, minimizing our sin, or exaggerating our greatness. Again, this week, we were reminded of our vulnerability and humanity. We were reminded of how close life and death are. These are the words we speak at a committal service “In the midst of life, we are in death, whom say our help some from?” This week as a truck killed 84 people in Nice, France, unrest lead to an attempted coup in Turkey, and brokenness continued in our country, we were reminded again, that we need God. We need God each and every day to turn away from the bad behaviors of our impulses and seek the way of God filled with peace and justice, compassion and love.
When we know we need God, we confess our failings and seek repentance. True repentance is not of the sort where sinners get called up to the front of the church, as if on trial and read the damning list of sinners and offer condemnation. The church as court-room version of repentance misses that there is repair and reconciliation in relationships that have been broken, in systems that have caused harm, and in ways that have lead us away from God. Repentance is never about humiliation, but rather restoration.
The difference between remorse and repentance needs to be highlighted here. I spoke a bit about it in the introductory sermon in this series. The church has been successful at bringing about remorse. We invoke guilt and shame; people respond contritely with remorse. It is like the only jokes of how do you plan to make up for robbing the bank – say 5 hails marys and plan a bit better next time. The church has not always been committed to the harder work of inviting repentance. Remorse is being sorry that you got caught. Remorse is filled with excuses and justifications. Repentance is being sorry enough to stop. Repentance is turning around and going a different way, going back towards God’s way. Repentance is desiring change, even change is harder than continuing as you been.
Repentance is what we do on Ash Wednesday when we walk around with dirt on our foreheads in the shape of the cross. Some well-meaning person, always kindly pulls me aside and suggests that I might want to wipe off my forehead. True repentance makes us uncomfortable. We are not sure exactly who others will be if they change their behaviors. Might they be too Jesus-y and preachy? Might they go inviting people who aren’t like us and might not know how to act, exactly? Repentance comes when we choose to reveal our sins to God and one another, not as a gawking curiosity, sideshow of humiliation, but where truth works the miracle of change. Our 12 step groups have known that for years and years. It is not the tabloid-nature of self-destructive behavior that connects people with sobriety and healing. It is the honesty of repenting (turning around), facing back towards God, and repairing brokenness that feeds the souls of those who know darkness.
In the midst of the word, repentance we find penance. Penance got a very bad rap as something to assuage your guilt and continue on your way. Penance is truly about repairing relationship. If you stole vegetables from your neighbor’s garden, penance would be weeding your neighbor’s garden for a month. In today’s parlance, parents might recognize this penance as restorative justice. If you told lies about your sister to her friends, you would go and tell the truth to the sister’s friends. Turning around and going the right way is confessing to materialism and then giving your favorite things to those most in need of your new iPhone 6s and coach bag, who would never have the opportunity to have them. Then mowing the lawns of those in the sketchy part of town whose grass is always knee high anyway. Penance is not about inflicting embarrassment or pain, but about changing relationships and changing us.
The United Methodist Church has been participating in an Act of Repentance towards healing relationships with indigenous people. The United Methodist Church was a part of some of the worst and most painful atrocities against Native people with the Massacre at Sand Creek and forced schools like Carisle Indian Schools. Repentance does not merely saying sorry for what people have done before us. Repentance is about repairing the brokenness that has been handed down from generation to generation. Repentance was the act of worship at annual conferences around the world. Repentance is also the radical act that occurred yesterday at Jurisdictional Conferences as three united Methodist seminaries offered 100% financial support for any native or indigenous person who wants to attend seminary. That is more than saying I am sorry that those who went before me massacred your people; it is saying that your future and my future are necessarily related. I want to offer repentance and reconciliation. Let us turn from the bad path we have been on and walk together towards healing and wholeness.
Repentance is most completely: Confession, Pardon, Penance, and restoration of relationship. Repentance is what you and I are called to walk faithfully. Each time, we realize that we have walked away from the walk of God – to turn around and try again. To walk back into the arms of our loving God! So, let us walk together, confessing, pardoning, repenting, and seek the restoration of relationships in the name of the one who showed us how. This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
Old Testament Lesson: Jeremiah 31:18-19, 31-34
Indeed I heard Ephraim pleading:
“You disciplined me, and I took the discipline; I was like a calf untrained.
Bring me back, let me come back, for you are the Lord my God.
For after I had turned away I repented; and after I was discovered, I struck my thigh;
I was ashamed, and I was dismayed because I bore the disgrace of my youth.”
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,[a] says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
*Gospel Lesson: Mark 1:1-15
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
Meditations For Your Week
Sunday, July 17~ Saturday, July 23
Sunday: “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” Mark 1:2-3. What messengers can you hear preparing the way of the Lord?
Monday: “And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” Mark 1:5. Baptism and confession are often connected. As you remember your baptism, what has God called you to confess?
Tuesday: “I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’” Mark 1:8. Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit. Contemplate the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Wednesday: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” Mark 1: 14-15. The good news is that God’s kingdom is near. In what ways do you need to turn around?
Thursday: “Indeed I heard Ephraim pleading: ‘You disciplined me, and I took the discipline; I was like a calf untrained. Bring me back; let me come back, for you are the Lord my God. For after I had turned away I repented; and after I was discovered, I struck my thigh; I was ashamed, and I was dismayed because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’” Jeremiah 31: 18-19. The disgrace of our youth is not permanent. Where can you receive God’s forgiveness?
Friday: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Jeremiah 31: 33. To be the people of God is to be cared for even when we turn away. Prayerfully contemplate the mystery of God’s faithfulness.
Saturday: “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31: 34. God is gracious and merciful. What do you need to confess today?