Resetting Our Repentance

Opening Prayer

Let’s open with prayer. If you have a prayer concern, just offer it up out loud in this space. It can be a situation, a need, a family member or friend. When I sense we are finished I will close out our prayer.

Ukraine

Remind about candles in back as a form of prayer...

Prayer of confession...

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against your holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and apart from your grace, there is no health in us. O Lord, have mercy upon us. Spare all those who confess their faults. Restore all those who are penitent, according to your promises declared to all people in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may now live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of your holy Name. Amen.

Introduction

We are continuing our series for Lent Hitting the Reset Button. What we are focusing on is that Lent provides us a time and space to reset some things in our lives that may be out of step with God. As we journey with Jesus toward the Cross, we will look at various aspects of our faith that can get out of order, and how the Gospel brings us back into alignment.

This morning the message is called Resetting Our Repentance. This already sounds like a downer. It invokes images of sitting in sackcloth and ashes, and of feeling sorry for our sins - which we should feel sorry for, but that’s not the primary meaning of repentance. Repentance is actually a gift of God. It is ‘how’ we reset our lives away from unfruitful or destructive activities. Repentance takes us away from being formed into a person we will regret, and toward being conformed into the image of Jesus. The good news is that repentance is the gateway to fruitful kingdom living.

Problem now

I don’t know if you saw the report this week about the tragic accident in West Texas involving a bus full of golfers from the University of the Southwest. While driving back from a golf tournament, a truck driven by a 13 year old came across the median and hit the school van head on. Both vehicles burst into flames, and I believe 9 of the passengers were killed, along with the young boy.

All across Texas families are wanting to know ‘why?’. Why did something like this happen. These were young kids at a Christian college for Pete’s sake. This is always the question asked when people come to an untimely end.

Unfortunately, this is a tendency for those on the outside of the situation looking in to concoct a false cause-and-effect scenario. Our minds begin to wonder if they did something wrong, and was this in some way God’s judgment. We do this, don’t we, when we hear of earthquakes in California. Those people are evil and this is God’s judgment against their sin. We heard this at the height of the AIDS epidemic, where it was common to hear from pulpits that this was God’s curse on the LGBT community. We create these cause and effect responses when natural disasters hit. Many Christians believe that the hurricane that broke the levies and flooded the 9th Ward in New Orleans was an act of God against evil.

The funny thing is, we hardly ever think it’s an act of God when tragedy hits close to home. I don’t recall hearing anyone say the tornado that destroyed part of Fort Smith and Van Buren in 1995 was God’s wrath on these cities. I don’t remember anyone claiming it was God’s judgment when the East side of Fort Smith flooded a few years ago. Perhaps the first lesson this morning regarding repentance is that we should repent from being too quick to assign God’s judgment on people who are suffering tragedy.

Problem then

Of course, we still ask why. We want to know a reason for when bad things happen. This is the unspoken question being put to Jesus by those in the crowd that day. The implied assumption is that those who were killed by Pilate - killed apparently during a worship ceremony - must have been sinners. This must have been God’s judgment on them.

So Jesus addresses their secret thoughts - and ours. “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” Or regarding those who were killed when a tower fell on them - something we might attribute to an act of God - Jesus again asks, “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?”

The short answer to these questions is ‘No’. But in giving this short answer, Jesus disconnects the cause and effect mentality they - and us - often have. These were NOT acts of God’s judgment upon particularly sinful people. They were no more or less sinful than anyone else. Jesus is not saying, “And God will do this to you too if you don’t shape up”.

Instead, he addresses the real problem, which is that death comes for us all. Death can come when we least expect it, like a falling tower or a bus crash. But death also comes because of our own unrepentant lifestyles. BUT - and as they say, this is a BIG but - not because God wants to hurt you, but because sin always carries its own death consequences. Sin - all sin - always leads to destruction and perishing. We could say that death is the built in consequence of sin. As the apostle Paul writes in Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death...” We should pay close attention to how we read this, for Paul is not say God pays the wages. Sin pays the wage, and the wage is death.

This is actually Paul’s point from our earlier reading. Using Christian baptism and the Lord’s Supper as a comparison, he says that the Israelites had been baptized by Moses in the Red Sea, and they had eaten and drank spiritual food in the desert. In other words, just like the Christians Paul is writing to, they had practiced the right religious activities, but their unrepentant hearts led to their falling in the desert and failing to enter the Promised Land. Again, Paul’s point is not that God DID something to them, but that they did something to themselves by following the destructive path of sin.

One warning we should take from this is that religious activity is good - baptism, communion, reading the Bible, prayer, giving - these are all good things that help shape Christ’s image in us. But they must also be joined with genuine hearts of repentance and obedience or they are of no avail.

Gospel then

It can be hard to see the gospel in all this. It can all sound like death and doom and destruction. And the warnings are real and should be heeded. But is there any good news? And the answer, of course, is ‘Yes!’ Repentance IS the good news. That there is a way to leave behind the kind of life that only leads to perishing, and toward a life of abundance and fruitfulness. There is a way to be the kind of human you really want to be, and the kind of human God made you to be. And that way is repentance.

It might be helpful here to make sure we are on the same page about repentance. It is not merely saying ‘sorry’ for wrongs that have been done, or feeling bad about them. It’s not an apology for bad behavior. Repentance is a heart-felt turning away that shifts our actions away from death and frees us for a new fruitful way of living.

Jesus gives us the example of the fig tree. The owner, rightly, wants fruit. He wants good for the fig tree - that it would thrive and be fruitful. But it will not, and so why should it continue to take up space. The gardener likewise wants to see fruit, but has a different timeline than the owner. Give it one more year, and let me give it special attention to see if it will become fruitful.

Sometimes we want to figure out who is God in the story. Is he the owner who want to chop the tree down, or is he the gardener who wants to give it more time? Or is God the owner and Jesus the gardener, so that we have ‘good God/bad God’ scenario playing out. In this case all of that would be unhelpful and misses the point of his story. The point is that God is giving grace in the form of time. The good news is that there is still time to repent, still time to bear good and lasting fruit. We live in this in-between time where there is still time to repent from unfruitful actions and bear true kingdom fruit. Repentance is the gateway to fruitful kingdom living. So maybe we should say that the owner is the parable represents the end of this age, and the gardener represents a gracious God who is pouring out his love and mercy and grace on us so that we will leave behind an old way of life and enter into his abundant life.

Gospel now

You have probably watched one of the 27 versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol that plays every Christmas. Scrooge, the miserly curmudgeon who won’t spare a coin to help those in need, is visited by three ghosts who expose his sorry life and where his love of money has taken him - loveless, friendless, and bitter. And as the story plays out, we see that no one has done that to Scrooge and except Scrooge himself. He is suffering the wages of his own conduct and choices.

The last ghost to visit him is the worst, showing Scrooge what is yet to be. Here Scrooge sees the fate he has chosen for himself - death, judgment and torment. Scrooge finally sees the error of his ways and falls before the ghost in genuine repentance and to plead for mercy. He begs for more time, but it seems that his time is run out, and he is throw down into his own grave.

The next moment he wakes with a start. And he realizes it was all a dream, and he rushes to a window and throws it open to see the sun shining and hear the church bells ringing. He asks a boy who is passing what day it is, to which the boy replies, “why, it’s Christmas Day, sir”. And in that moment, Scrooge is overwhelmed with joy because he realizes he still has time. He has time to give a true repentance from his old, dead way of life, and turn to a new way filled with joy and fruit. And, of course, if you read the rest of the story, that’s just what he did.

But we too can have this same kind of joy this morning. Yes, there is a warning about sin - we must repent or perish, for death comes to us all in one way or another. But if you are here today, or if you are listening from home, then there is still time. There is time to repent. To leave behind and old life and old habits that only lead to death, and to turn toward God. To offer a true repentance, and then do the deeds that are in keeping with repentance. There is time to ask forgiveness, invite the Spirit into your life to change you, and then choose to walk in a new life. There is still time to become the person you always hoped you’d be with God’s help. The good news is that repentance is the gateway to fruitful kingdom living.

Where is God calling you to hit the reset button?

Ministry time...

Communion

Paul writes in 1 Cor 11:27-28 “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” The immediate context was how more wealthy Christians should repent for their treatment of poorer Christians, but more broad it applies to all the areas of our lives that are inconsistent with the Gospel of Jesus. As we come to the table, we come with repentant hearts that are ready to receive all the mercy and grace of God available to us in Christ, and the to allow repentance to be the gateway to a new and fruitful life.

The Lord’s Prayer

Words of Institution

Invitation

This is the table, not of the church, but of the Lord,

It is made ready for those who love God and for those who want to love Him more.

So come, you who have much faith and you who have little;

You who have been here often and you who have not been here long;

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed.  

Come, because it is the Lord who invites you.

It is His will that those who want Him should meet Him here.