Repenting is Hard

Joel 2:12-19

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week, I was talking with a friend about the upcoming Lenten season. “I have so much to do!” I complained. “There are extra sermons to write, services to plan, people to see, Holy Week and Easter to prepare for - and the annual spaghetti dinner falls 4 days after Ash Wednesday! There’s so much to do for Lent!” My friend looked at me with a mix of compassion and confusion and said, “Are you sure Lent is a season for doing, and not simply a season for experiencing Lent?” I stood convicted by my own words. This year, like many years, I wanted a plan to “do Lent.” But Lent, Ash Wednesday, and repentance aren’t something to be “done” but something to be lived, an ongoing reality in the life of a Christian. This temptation of “doing Lent” is also a common temptation regarding repentance, where we are tempted to repent and check that off the to-do list, and then go do something else since we’re done repenting until it comes up on the calendar again.

The prophet Joel would like a word with the tribe of Judah and with you about that. As locusts descended on the crops of Judah, eating the grain and ruining the harvest, he tells the people to repent, not merely by outward signs like tearing their clothes and dumping ashes on their heads, but by tearing their hearts. Joel doesn’t describe this repentance as something to do and then move on from, but a pattern of living. After all, repentance isn’t about you. Sure, it’s easy to think that it is. The Lenten season in general and Ash Wednesday in particular seem like a good time to dress the church in black, to get your gritty, ashen smudge to remind you that you are mortal. But if your repentance and your reflection today are only about yourself, you miss the point entirely. Joel invites the people to return to the Lord because He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and He relents over disaster. The Lord keeps His promises, and He is jealous about His people. Repentance isn’t a mark of how honest you are or how sorry you look or if you can apologize like you mean it. Repentance is standing before the Lord your God and recognizing that He loves you, even though you are corrupted and ruined by your own sinfulness. Repentance confesses faith that God relents over disaster, including the disastrous condemnation that you deserve.

Joel tells the tribe of Judah to assemble everyone for a solemn assembly. Everyone should be there - from the elderly to the infants. Even the newly-weds should leave the honeymoon suite to gather in humility before God. The priests should stand in the temple and unashamedly beg God for kindness. After all, if the Lord wiped out His people for their sinfulness, the nations around them could rightly say, “The Lord chose them, and then went back on His own word and wiped them out! Look at the evil indecisiveness of their God!” So, the priests were to beg God for His goodness because the Lord is good - even though His people are sinners. In repentance, we confess that God is good, even though we are not.

We are sinful, and the wages of our sin is death. That’s why we might wear ashes today. You are dust and ashes, just as the Lord God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. Because of sin, you will die and you will return to dust. You are dying from a terminal case of sinfulness. Your thoughts and actions confirm that truth. Pride, anger, impatience, gossip, lust, dishonesty, theft, covetousness, an inattention to God’s Word and God’s name, and a whole host of other sins testify against you because you are a real sinner. You don’t just play a sinner on Ash Wednesday, but your sinfulness is true each and every day, and you’re dying because you are a sinner.

But today, do not just throw your hands in the air and say, “Welp! I’m a sinner and there’s nothing I can do to change it. I may as well just accept the consequences and die.” No. At this solemn assembly tonight, we confess that the Lord is good. He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He relents over disaster. He deals with your sinfulness, not by giving you a to-do list of all the things you need to do this Lent, but by showing you a Savior who was tempted for you, who entered into Jerusalem and was crucified and rose from the dead for you.

The Lord Jesus receives mortal, dying sinners. That means you. You have confessed your sins. You heard the Lord’s forgiveness. I may as well have said, “The Lord spares you from the disaster of hell!” because that is what He has done for you. Believe His promises. Believe His goodness. He does indeed hear your prayer and create a clean heart in you. That’s not something you did, but something God does for you by His grace.

So, how do you live in the midst of Lent this year? After all, you heard the words of Jesus where He assumes that you will fast, that you will pray, and that you will give charitably to the poor. Those are good things to do. But most of all, confess your sins and call upon the good Lord of all who forgives you and preserves you in faith. The Lord is good, and His mercy endures through these forty-plus days of Lent into eternity, where you will live with Him because He is good enough to forgive your sin and undo your mortality. Amen.