Repentance

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

March 11, 2007

Text: Isaiah 55: 6-9 and Luke 13: 1-9

REPENT NOW

Is my repentance urgent? Or do I have some time to get my act together?

Jesus lays out two truths, back to back. It is time for everyone to repent. And, though God means business, God has patience.

Two events are on the people’s minds. Jesus is told of Pilate’s reprehensible cruelty perpetrated on innocent people who came to make sacrifices in the temple.

The other event was a natural disaster, a tower in the city falling on innocent bystanders. The assumption that most people in Jesus’ day would make is that, in both cases, the victims must have sinned terribly to be punished in such a way. Is this true?

Jesus doesn’t give an answer to this question in this account---exactly. Elsewhere he does. But we must deal with this first, at least briefly, because much human suffering has been compounded by the guilt associated with this belief. It is a visceral response. We ask, when something terrible happens to us or those we love, “What did I (or thy) do to deserve this?”

It is certainly true that sometimes my attitudes and behaviors have consequences--- which can mean suffering on my part and for others. If I behave as if I am without limits, physically and mentally, my body and mind will suffer. I bring this upon myself. If I decide that I can drive recklessly and I am injured as a result, or injure others, I and others may in fact suffer as a direct result. We can all come up with similar and more severe examples.

 However, so much that happens to people is not so simple. The two examples Jesus gives are not so transparent. On the one hand, people going to worship in the temple are the objects of heinous crimes. The people in the vicinity of the tower are not clearly guilty of anything. Does God decide to punish them for their sins by suddenly taking their lives? There are texts in Scripture which seem to say that those who are right with God will be blessed, and those who are not will perish. (Psalm 1, for example; and the Book of Job, with Job’s friends trying to figure out what Job must have done to bring all those tragedies on himself.)

Jesus, however, uncouples the direct correlation between evil actions and suffering.

Think about it: Jesus announced God’s favor on the poor, the maimed, the blind, the crippled. Jesus made it clear that one’s “financial, social, and physical conditions were not a direct reflection of one’s spiritual state.” In addition, Jesus, in Matthew, says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike----a sign of God’s gratuitous grace.

On this occasion, however, Jesus wants to drive home a different point. He as much as says, “Don’t stand around wondering how terrible these victims must have been! Instead, take a measure of your own life, and make a turn around before it is too late! Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”  

Now I grew up with evangelists coming to town with their tents to scare all of us little heathen boys and girls into repenting. Either we might die and not be saved; or Christ may come again soon, and we would not be cast out of his presence. In either case, we would be in big trouble if we did not walk down the sawdust trail and confess Jesus as our Savior. (Never mind that almost all of us had already done so by being baptized by confession of our belief in Jesus Christ in our own churches; these evangelists could evoke enough guilt that we would all feel as if we had slid back so far as to be out of God’s favor and needed to do it all again. (Some persons would “get saved” every summer, and were re-baptized. Maybe they would finally get it right!)  I have always had the suspicion that the evangelists’ motives were mixed: love for us and scalp counting---so that they could tell others how many people had made “first decisions” to accept Jesus!

Is this what Jesus is doing? Is he trying to scare people into repenting so he can have more disciples?

There is an urgency in his tone, and a warning. Jesus certainly calls on every person to “repent and believe the Gospel.” But it is the Gospel-- the good news-- that Jesus came to proclaim. It is the love of God revealed in his teachings, his actions on behalf of sinners and the suffering, his determination to expose the cruelties of pharisaical systems which ground people into the dust. The good news is the gift of the power to make changes in our lives, not to be controlled by hatred, mendacity, selfishness and greed.

Jesus calls people to a fresh start, in relationship with a compassionate God.

The edge to the Good News is that, to turn your back on it---on God--- is to live a perishing life. Therefore, repent now; don’t perish!

Jesus is a teacher of wisdom. He is calling on people to make wise choices---wise in the long run.

 We are made in God’s image. We were made for relationship with our Creator. We are prone to reject God, or to give highest place to other so-called gods. In Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself. If we have seen Jesus, we have seen his Father. God has come to where we are, in the Word made flesh, and has dwelt among us.

 To give our lives to God is to find our true self, our destiny as beloved children of God. Wisdom woos us back. (“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”) Make peace with your Creator and Redeemer. This is the meaning of repentance. To come home; to return to the one who has been loving toward you all along.

Foolishness says “No, or “not yet,” or “not here” or “not all of me.”

A comparison to out hunger for food may help. We can find many different kinds of food which fills our stomachs. We can super-size any of the food which is offered. But more of unhealthy food is not a good thing. (Two women coming out of restaurant. One says to the other, “Wasn’t that food awful?” Her friend replies, “Yes, but they serve such big portions.” (Woody Allen, in one of his movies.)

Our souls can be filled with many things that are not, in the long run, good for us. Jesus came to tell us that our souls hunger for God, the one who alone can fill the God-shaped void within us.

To fail to repent, then, is to live a stultified life. This is Jesus’ warning in context: Don’t choose death, choose life.

 If we are wise, we will choose life, abundant life. “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; you who have no money, come buy and eat….Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?....Incline your ear and come to me; listen, so that you may live…..Seek the Lord while he may be found [for the Lord himself has come to you]; call upon him while he is near.” (Isaiah 55) Jesus tries to light a fire under the procrastinators. It is the fire of warning and the fire of compassion.

The evangelists of my childhood, at their best, wanted to be saying this. They too often let their egos get in the way of the Good News.

FIG TREE

If this is the first of the contrasting messages of Jesus, the second is more obviously merciful. (Both are Good News, mind you.)

 Jesus tells a story about the fig tree. It is the third year; it should be mature enough to have figs on it. It doesn’t. Cut it down. We’ll plant something which will produce. But the field hand says, Give me one more year; I’ll loosen up the ground and put on some manure. If it’s still not producing in a year, then I’ll cut it down.

My Dad told me that, in his youth, they planted a new, improved cotton seed. The cotton came up and grew very high, so high that a man riding on a horse could not be seen riding through it. But, it had almost no cotton boles. They just had to plow it under.

God is patient, but God is not wishy-washy. God is like the landowner who is not in the business for grins; he expects results. It is not enough for people to say they repent; they should, as John the Baptist says, bear fruit that befits repentance.

Jesus is calling the people of God back to their original mission.

 They have been blessed in order to be a blessing. Being a blessing is to exemplify to the rest of the world the truth about personal and social holiness: authentic human living, individual and social.

Personal holiness means a life lived under the restraining and renewing influence of God. The Apostle Paul describes the fruits of the Spirit: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Personal holiness means resisting with all the strength God allows, the fruits of the fallen self: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like. (Galatians 5)

Social holiness means humility before God, loyalty and justice (fairness without bribes, regardless of anyone’s social and economic status), practical and effective help for orphans, widows, the poor, and the resident aliens (those without resources or power to improve their lot without help.) The people of God were to repent and turn their hearts toward God and be forgiven and renewed so that they can represent God’s will for the earth to all on the earth.

These are fruits; these are the produce which God looks for from God’s people: People who have their act together, who know who they are---- people who can “live as forgiven and die without fear.” (Donovan)

The message of this second story is that God has some patience. God is not a cosmic muffin. God’s mission is urgent. God wants Jesus to make disciples who will live purposeful, disciplined, joyful and loving lives in the manner of Jesus. People who have the mind of Christ and will not give up. But, “God allows people time so as to provide space for turning their lives toward him.”(Betty Jane Lille, SC)

So, which is it? Urgent repentance or a patient God? A hard-driving boss or a patient grandfather? Yes to both!

Jesus leaves the contrasting images of God together. One the one hand, God’s urgent call for repentance; on the other hand, God’s patience. “Luke doesn’t destroy severity by infusing it with grace; nor does he destroy grace by infusing it with severity.” (Craddock, Luke) The two go together, and both are Good News.

So, bring on the fertilizer! “A fruitless past need not produce a barren future.” (Daniel Harrington, SJ, American Magazine.org)Fertilizer for us is the “ordinances of God:” fasting, prayer, bible study, Holy Communion, worship private and public. If we are justified by what God has done for us, we move on to sanctification through what God does in us. (John Wesley, Justification by Faith) This means that we do not outgrow the need for repentance. When we are in a saving relationship with God, “sin does not reign over us, but it does remain” in us.  (John Wesley, “Repentance of Believers”) Repentance is “a once for all event that shapes the whole subsequent  course of life and a day by day affair that keeps putting sin away.” (Leon Morris, Luke)
 

If you and I were fig trees, would there be anything on us but leaves?

God, prompt us to repent now. God, be patient with us, and make us fruitful. Amen.