Expecting a Healing Repentance

A sermon on Matthew 3:1-12

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by SOULSANA on Unsplash.]

I had a conversation earlier this week with a member of our congregation in which we shared that we had similar feelings about one of the words from today’s gospel. This made me wonder if this is a more widely shared phenomenon in our particular community.

If you’re willing, please raise your hand if you generally have a bit of flinch or cringe or otherwise negative reaction to the word “Repent.”

For my part, I know that my aversion is a response to formative years spent in the fundamentalist Evangelical subculture.

In that context, “repent” was a word linked to shame and fear.

Shame because that is what I was supposed to feel about any of the things that required repentance.

Fear because that is what I was supposed to feel about the consequences if I failed to repent.

Now, scriptural study and maturing faith have deeply shifted my theological convictions, so I no longer feel automatic shame and fear when I hear the word repent.

But the echo of those feelings still makes me tighten up, because I am so aware of the harm that can be done by using shame and fear to control behavior… harm to people and also harm to our faith.

Because shame and fear undermine the power of grace.

They drive people away from Jesus;

Or else trap them in a controlling, oppressive version of faith.

These messages have power, of a kind, to coerce people into a strict code of morality, but that morality has very little to do with the oppression-breaking, life-changing gospel of Jesus that I recognize.

All of which means that, in this Advent season of preaching about holy expectations, I don’t want to encourage an expectation for repentance.

I don’t want to call any of you into shame and fear.

I don’t want to trigger messages of conditional grace, or coerce you into behavior that conforms to a moralistic list of dos and don’ts.

I don’t want to frame repentance as holy.

That disinclination was what I got to repent of this week.

I really mean that! I got to repent of my distaste for the language of repentance this week. It was one of the great gifts of an otherwise challenging week.

To explain how that works, I want to talk a bit about the process of diagnosis for my hip injury.

Those of you who were in worship last week found out that I was dealing with a hip injury, but not what the nature of that injury was because… I didn’t know.

There wasn’t a clear story, like a skiing accident or a fall. There was just a slow-onset, escalating pain and the frustration of not knowing what was causing it or what could be done about it.

So, this week was partially consumed with the process of finding those answers:

Monday to the chiropractor who couldn’t help but could get me into a doctor who could.

Tuesday to that doctor who had a few possible theories but needed imaging to be sure.

Wednesday was the X-ray. Thursday was the MRI. Friday back to the doctor and finally an answer:

It was the better of the two possible injuries: a cartilage tear. It just needs a few more weeks of rest and then gentle physical therapy, and it should be well on the way to being healed by the New Year.

While 2 weeks ago that would have sounded like pretty awful news for my December, by Friday I was so grateful to know!

To have someone who could definitely tell me:

This is what’s wrong…

This is why what you were doing was making it worse…

This is what you need to do to make it better.

And somewhere along the line, it occurred to me: diagnosis and treatment planning is a lot like repentance.

If we set aside the moralistic, shame-coded associations that our Puritan roots have linked to the word, repentance is just about figuring out what it is in our lives that is causing pain and what changes we need to make to move toward healing instead.

I think that’s why the people in today’s gospel story were flocking to the wilderness to hear John’s message of repentance.

Have you ever been curious about that? About why “Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going to him”?

Matthew makes a point of telling us that John was a bit of an odd character… wearing camel’s hair and eating bugs and living out in the Negev, which is a pretty barren desert-like area.

He’s not exactly the most appealing character.

And his message is not the kind we would expect to attract crowds either:

“Repent. Confess your sins!”

But so many people come for John’s baptism that Matthew refers not to the crowds but to the regions that apparently empty themselves in the flow toward John’s prophetic message. Jerusalem comes. And all of Judea. And all of the region.

What would drive such a flood of humanity to hear a call to repentance?

It must be the understanding that repentance is actually good news.

It must be that people were distressed about the pain in their lives.

They could tell that something was wrong, they just didn’t known exactly what it was or what to do about it.

They were desperate for answers in the way a sick person is desperate for medicine.

So, when John showed up with the authority of a prophet of old, rejecting the systems that collaborated with power and offering a path toward real healing…

When he told the people that what they needed was repentance and confession… a willingness to admit their error and need and a longing for God the lead them in a new direction…

The people were overjoyed to repent. They saw it as freedom! They saw it as healing! They saw it as hope!

Or at least, most of them did.

When Jerusalem emptied, the religious power brokers and gatekeepers went with the flow.

They even followed the current down to the baptismal river.

But John stops them at the waterside with his typical blunt speech.

After a pointed insult he tells them that the cure is not in the water. It’s in the transformed life that is meant to follow: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

This isn’t a message of works righteousness; it’s just a clarification that the medicine only works if you actually take it.

And the religious leaders don’t long for repentance, they long for self-satisfaction.

They want to hold onto the delusion that they already have all that they need: “We have Abraham as our ancestor.”

But until they admit their need, until they accept the diagnosis, they are rejecting the healing that John offers, and they will reject the wholeness that Jesus brings too.

And that’s why I say that I got to repent of my dislike for the language of repentance this week.

Because however valid my critiques of shame-and-fear-based-messaging are, those messages do not define what repentance actually is.

Repentance IS transformation.

It is a change in the thoughts and behaviors that keep us locked into patterns that cause harm to us and to others and that alienate us from God’s love and grace.

And who among us does not need healing from some such patterns?

Acknowledging that need isn’t about shaming us.

It’s not about threatening us with punishment for our sin.

It’s about diagnosing a problem that is causing us pain and then saying, “so now that we know what’s wrong, we can work on the treatment. We can start the process of healing.”

John’s message of repentance is that diagnosis, so that the people would be ready for Jesus’s healing work.

Because everyone of us needs Jesus’s threshing fork to separate out the things in our lives that cause harm from those that bring life.

And that’s actually good news.

It means the separation is possible. It means we don’t have to be trapped in old patterns just because they are familiar and comfortable. We can be freed!

Not with shame. Not with fear. But with healing.

Which is why I am not quite happy that our second holy expectation of this Advent season, to expect a healing repentance.

Thanks be to God.