January 22, 2017 – The 3rd Sunday after the
Epiphany
© 2017 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon is available here.
What does repentance look
like? Maybe it’s because I’ve seen Rob Bell’s Nooma video “Bullhorn” several times, but, when I picture repentance,
it looks like a middle-aged, well-dressed man with a large stack of flyers and
a bullhorn, standing on a busy street corner, yelling at everyone who goes by
that if they don’t repent they’ll go straight to hell. What about you? When you
hear the word “repent” and you try to picture it, what image comes to your
mind? Is it an angry, sweat-drenched preacher on public-access television?
Maybe it’s a billboard on the side of the interstate with a message that’s
designed to scare you into giving your life to Christ. Whatever it is that
comes to your mind, the images of repentance that are most common in our
culture are those desperate, emotional pleas that try to scare people into
finding Jesus, and I don’t think they’re working.
Does anyone actually hear
those attempts to scare the hell out of him and decide, “You know what: maybe
I’ll give Jesus a chance?” Fear might get our attention, but fear on its own
cannot lead to faith. There must be something more. If sweat-soaked preachers like
me want to introduce people to Jesus, we need to give up on evangelical
terrorism and look to the words of Jesus himself as an invitation to a hope worth
believing in.
Today’s gospel lesson is
all about repentance, but it’s not the sort of repentance we’re accustomed to. For
starters, the call to repentance doesn’t come from the lips of an angry prophet
but from Jesus himself: “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he
withdrew to Galilee…and made his home in Capernaum by the sea…[and] from that
time [he] began to proclaim, ‘Repent for the kingdom has come near.’” Does that
sound familiar? The words are the same ones that John the Baptist used in his
preaching, but, when John said them, he also called the religious people of his
day a “brood of vipers!” John always had that edge to him, but I don’t usually
think of Jesus in that way. In fact, I don’t think of Jesus as proclaiming that
message of repentance at all. Instead, he’s usually the one eating with tax
collectors and sinners—not telling them they need to repent. Jesus is the
gentle one, the understanding one, the compassionate one—not the one who shakes
a finger of judgement in their face. Why is Jesus picking up John’s message and
telling the people that they need to repent? Because repentance is good news.
“The people who sat in
darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and
shadow of death light has dawned.” Jesus’ ministry was defined by brining light
and hope to dark places, and that is the real message of repentance. The word
in the New Testament that is translated for us as “repentance” is a word that
literally means “turn your mind around.” In the context of religion, it means
turning around from a life that has been spent running away from God and
embracing the life that God is giving you. As Jesus understood it, it meant
turning away from a path that leads to darkness and hopelessness and death and
turning toward the light and hope and eternal life that God wills for all of
God’s children to have.
That means that
repentance isn’t just a rejection of the former things; it’s also an invitation
to new possibilities. And I think that the preachers who talk about repentance
more than anything else often forget that turning around involves two
directions—where you’re coming from and where you’re going now. The good news
of repentance is a message of new possibility for your life. That message has
been hijacked by those whose religion is built upon fear, and I think that it’s
time for us to take it back. I live in a world that is desperate to know that
things don’t always have to be this way. I meet people who want things to get
better—people who don’t need to be reminded that the path we’re on is fraught
with challenge and division and who want to believe that there is real hope out
there for them. That hope isn’t coming from false prophets who peddle fear and
fear alone—those who scare us but don’t have any real hope to offer. It comes
from Jesus, who invites us into a life filled with light and hope and promise.
What does repentance look
like when it comes from the mouth of Jesus?
As he
was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called
Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen.
And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”
Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he
saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat
with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately
they left the boat and their father, and followed him.
That is a story of
repentance. It’s a story of Jesus coming alongside some people and inviting
them into a new life of possibility and hope. Within this moment of turning
around, there is a clear component of leaving the old life behind. Simon and
Andrew must leave their nets and give up their life of fishing for fish in
order to follow Jesus and fish for people. Likewise, we read that James and
John leave their father and their boat in order to go with Jesus. But the hope
that stands before them is what propels them out of their boats and into new
life. Jesus doesn’t give them a diatribe about how their lives are stuck in a
dead-end job and how they’ll wake up one day and realize that they’ve wasted
their whole lives doing meaningless work. He simply says, “Follow me.” Behind
those words was a promise of new life, and that invitation was all that they
needed.
Jesus is calling God’s people
to follow him out of fear and darkness and into new light and new possibility.
Jesus is inviting us to be a part of God’s plan to bring God’s kingdom fully
here on earth. And we know what that kingdom looks like. It means hope to those
who sit in darkness. It means life to those who dwell in the shadow of death. To
follow Jesus means to repent—to leave behind a way of living that says that
things will always be this way, that fear will always win. And it means
embracing our part in bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to
the captives, and breaking the yoke of oppression. It means saying to the world
that the kingdom of God has come near, and that God’s kingdom brings healing to
all people.
Will we say yes to Jesus?
Will we say yes to the good news of repentance? Will we show the world that
things don’t have to be this way any longer—that it’s time for things to
change? Will we leave fear behind and embrace the hope that only God can give
us—a hope that God has given us in Jesus Christ?
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