Repentance
“‘I realized then that God was giving them the same gift that had been given to us when we believed that Jesus is the Christ. And who am I to stand in the way of God?’ When they heard this, the account satisfied them. And they gave glory to God, saying, ‘Then God has granted, even to the Gentiles, the repentance that leads to life.’” — Acts 11:17-18.
Someone recently asked me if technology has changed how church works. Well, locally at least, one obvious place is that it’s speeded up our production time on things like newsletters. We do our newsletter in about 60% less time than twenty years ago.
And my ability to be in contact with other pastors has grown. I talk not just to local pastors. I regularly exchange ideas with colleagues in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and California. How? Facebook.
Perhaps, the real answer about technology is it has changed not just church but everything. We can now do things in ways faster, more efficiently and with more connectedness. Just look at all the devices— cell phones, G.P.S. systems, computers, the internet— these do seem to have changed the world in which we live.
When I did my Master’s Thesis, my advisor, trying to helpful, described how she compiled data as she worked on her Doctoral Dissertation in the late 1970s. She painstakingly explained that, as she found data she thought might be useful, she took notes on 3x5 cards, making sure to include all the reference information for footnotes.
She then filed these 3x5 cards in shoe boxes, topic by topic. If she thought the information crossed topic boundaries, she even made copies of the card so she could put the same information in more than one place. Then, as she wrote her Dissertation, she went to a topic, found what she needed and recopied the information all over again.
Some twelve years after she wrote her Dissertation, I wrote my Master’s thesis. But things had changed. When I wrote that thesis, fifteen years ago, I already had a laptop computer. As I found useful information, I put all of it in one continuous word processing file. The program allowed me to footnote the information right in the file.
I did not need to arrange anything by topic because I could search for any word. As I wrote my thesis, when I came to a place I thought a bit of information I had found might make sense to use, it was just a matter of finding the pertinent quote, copying it from the research file and pasting it into the thesis file. The footnote even copied right where it belonged.
About half way through the process of writing of my thesis, I explained to my advisor the intricacies of my electronic shoe box. Now, when she did her Doctoral Dissertation, personal computers did not even exist. But she knew computers. When I was doing my Master’s Thesis, she already had several machines. But utilizing the machine the way I was had just never occurred to her.
The moral of the story I think is obvious: change happens. Sometimes we see it. Sometimes we don’t. Further, we might not recognize change, even when we think we know what’s happening, even when we think we are up to speed with where the world is going. Change can and will sneak up on us. (Slight pause.)
Now, here’s a common conceit: the idea that the kind of change the passage of time inexorably brings always means progress. Whenever I hear people insist change and progress are synonymous, I am reminded of a passage in Letter From a Birmingham Jail by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
That attitude, wrote King, stems from (quote): “the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually,” he said, “time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively”— destructively or constructively— our call, no? (Slight pause.)
And these words are from the work known as Luke/Acts in the section commonly labeled as Acts: “‘I realized then that God was giving them the same gift that had been given to us when we believed that Jesus is the Christ. And who am I to stand in the way of God?’ When they heard this, the account satisfied them. And they gave glory to God, saying, ‘Then God has granted, even to the Gentiles, the repentance that leads to life.’” (Slight pause.)
Our culture teaches that to be repentant means to be sorry. That not is what the word means in the Bible. From the Biblical perspective, repentance means to turn one’s life over to God totally and wholly. To be repentant means to turn one’s heart over to God totally and wholly. (Slight pause.)
In her book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, the Episcopal Priest and well known author Barbara Brown Taylor says (quote): “If I had to name my disability, I would call it an unwillingness to fall.... This reluctance signals the mistrust of the central truth of the gospel: life springs from death, not only at the last but also in the many little deaths along the way.”
“When everything you count on for protection has fled, the Divine Presence is with you. The hands of God are still there— not promising to rescue, not promising to intervene— promising only to hold you no matter how far you fall.” (Slight pause.)
Taken together, the two quotes I’ve offered, the one from Dr. King and the one from Barbara Brown Taylor, would seem to indicate we need to do two things. We need to trust God in the midst of constant change and we need to do the constructive work— the constructive work of change God calls us to do.
When we add the story from Acts into the mix, I think we get a fairly clear picture of what that work might look like. Indeed, the witness of New Testament affirms the radically new era ushered in with the advent— the life, death and the resurrection of Jesus— who is the Christ.
Peter explains to those assembled that the sense of exclusiveness with which they had lived in their community was no longer operative. Why? Because of Jesus, the Dominion of God was at hand. With the advent of the Dominion, God insisted everyone was valued and invited to participate in the Dominion. (Slight pause.)
So, the community of Christ, both then and now, finds itself in an old, familiar ballpark playing a new game, a different game. The new game constantly demands not just change but a fresh start, daily— each and every day.
Why? This change game, this game of change is constant. We are constantly and daily invited by God to repent, to be renewed, to turn our lives over to God. Thereby, we are constantly and daily invited by God to create a welcoming community.
Perhaps because of that, this is a time when apprehension, excitement and expectation are all real. And this very apprehension, excitement and expectation— this time of change— is what makes this a time to fully trust God.
Indeed, the place to which we are called looks like the description I offered moments ago: old park, new game, real tensions. And that— old park, new game, real tensions— that is a definition of change. But that is also definition of repentance. It is a definition of repentance because it requires us to turn our lives over to God.
So, what is true repentance? Repentance means not just to turn our lives over to God but to fully trust in God. Why? You know and I know— things are changing. Amen.
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This, then, is an précis of what the pastor said before the blessing: “Because it is significant too, I’d like to share a word about the Gospel reading today and how it recognizes change in and of itself. (By the way, of you want to hear more, I’m preaching on it at Chenango Valley Home at 3:00 o’clock. So, you can come on down!) The commandment to love is not new. The commandment to love lies at the heart of the Torah, after all. What is new, therefore, is not the commandment to love. Rather, what is new is that the commandment to love derives from the incarnation, the advent of Jesus, the Messiah, and the ways in which the Spirit can be present to the believer. And these are fully revealed in Jesus and in the resurrection. Indeed certainly one meaning of resurrection is that change is now a given.”
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