The Rev. Noah Van Niel
The Chapel of the Cross
September 15th, 2019
Proper 19 (C): Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Tim 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10
A few weeks ago my wife, Melinda, and I were on our way to Charleston, South Carolina to celebrate our ten year anniversary when I saw something I had never seen before. As we drove down I-95 there was a billboard, but rather than the usual fast food ads, or car dealerships or personal injury lawyers, this one stood out because it was blank except for one word, written in all caps, in blood red ink: REPENT. “Ugh. Terrible.” I thought. “How tasteless. Surely no one has ever been driving down the highway, seen that sign and immediately turned their life around. Who is that sign even for?” I imagine I’m not alone in being put off by such a blatant call to repentance. After all, “Repent!” is the vocabulary of crazy guys on the street corner in sandwich boards, or the infamous pit preacher here at Carolina. It’s one of those words that time and history have turned into a cudgel. A way for those holier-than-thou types to bludgeon you into faith. As such it can leave a sour taste in our mouths.
Which is a shame because, before it was a form of bullying, the call to repentance was good news. If I place my contemporary condescension aside for a moment, our tradition gives us numerous examples of the call to repent that we lift up and celebrate. In fact, in both the Old and New Testaments the act of repentance is key to the life of faith. Think of the prophets, like Jonah walking through the streets of Nineveh calling those wicked Ninevites to repent, or of John the Baptist roaming the countryside clothed in nothing but camel’s hair growling out the same. They were just as conspicuous as a highway billboard and yet it worked for them. “Repent!” Was even Jesus’ first word of public ministry—“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” And he too found a willing audience for his message.
So after my initial, haughty disdain had ebbed, I decided that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance some wayward soul saw that billboard and took it as the word they needed to make a fresh start. I congratulated myself on this highly generous reading of that aggressive sign, and on we went down the road. It wasn’t until a few hours later, when we were getting on past lunchtime and stuck in some unforeseen and unexplained traffic jam which had me hangrily cursing my fellow drivers that I caught a glimpse of my scowl in the mirror and was struck by a terrifying thought. What if that billboard wasn’t just those wayward souls living overtly sinful lives? What if it was for me?
Preposterous right? I mean I’m no prodigal son, I’m the one who stayed home. I’m one of those 99 righteous sheep. And yet…“The LORD looks down from heaven upon us all, to see if there is any who is wise, if there is one who seeks after God. Everyone has proved faithless; all alike have turned bad; there is none who does good; no, not one.” That little slap in the face is courtesy of our Psalmist this morning, and while perhaps a little melodramatic, it hits some of the same notes that we see throughout the Scriptures, like in 1 John, when he says, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” And those were the same notes that were echoing in my ear as the traffic eased and we moved our way into town.
And I realized that in my generous recovery of repentance as a gift for those people living lives of sin, I had committed the biggest sin of all: thinking I was not one them. In other words, I was acting like a Pharisee. One whose righteousness has, somewhere along the line, tripped into self-righteousness; whose faith has glorified rather than humbled them. The Pharisees, remember, are upset at Jesus for spending so much time with sinners and outcasts, but what Jesus knows and what they cannot see, is that one of the reasons he is spending time with such people is that they are the ones who are ready for repentance. They recognize their sin, and that is good news. The Pharisees? They’re working on the assumption that repentance is someone else’s work. And so Jesus uses these parables to try and tell them, that not only does God rejoice at those who repent but that “You’re not so different you and them,” for we are all of us sinners, all of us fall short. The call to repentance is directed loudest to those who already think themselves saved, not to those who know they are lost, because so often the people who think themselves closest to God are actually the ones who are furthest away.
Just ask St. Paul. He is the prime example of one who needed to get it right between the eyes from Jesus in order to wake up to the errors of his self-righteous ways. But as the letter to Timothy indicates, his dramatic repentance propelled him into a new life, a new relationship with God through Jesus Christ that was so much bigger, so much richer than what he previously knew. And his story became the embodiment of how repentance can lead us to the gifts of grace and mercy that God is waiting to bestow on us. But only after we wake up to our need for it.
Whether your particular sins are big or small, is immaterial– they still need to be confronted and confessed. And that’s no fun. Most people don’t like to dwell on their imperfections, or have their shortcomings pointed out, so we tend to ignore or deny them, convincing ourselves of our overall goodness and righteousness and that repentance is for those people who really need it. It’s when you’ve convinced yourself of your righteousness, that a call to repentance can be a real bother. It’s only when you’ve convinced yourself of your sinfulness that a call to repentance can be a lifeline.
Because the truth is, repentance is not some obligation we are bullied into, it is the daily bread of discipleship; not just for notorious sinners but for each and every one of us, His beautiful, but broken children. And more than that, repentance is an opportunity, an opportunity to get closer to God. Some may feel that focusing on those sinful parts of ourselves that we all have can sometimes come off as degrading or diminishing. But I actually think the opposite is true. In some paradoxical way the more fully we are acquainted with our sins, the more fully we get acquainted with God. His grace. His mercy. His love. Those things which bind us close to Him. But so long as we do not confront our sinfulness, it will prevent us from ever truly being at home with Him. And he longs for us to come home. No matter what we have done, or what the particularly ugly parts of our personality are, it is never too late or too much. No matter how far we have strayed, or what shame we are holding, or what shortcomings, flaws, imperfections we possess, God has left the light on for us. And in fact God doesn’t just long for us; God is out looking for us. That’s the point of Jesus’ parables today. Like that shepherd going after that one sheep, or the woman spending all day searching for that single coin, so long as we are apart from Him, God is not satisfied. And He will not rest until He finds us. And when he does, and when he does the whole host of heaven will rejoice. Imagine that. Imagine that feeling you get when you lose something; how it bothers you to know end. And now imagine that disproportionate joy you get when you find it. God feels that same way about you.
God is on the hunt; searching every corner, climbing every hill, waiting, wanting, longing for you to repent; to turn around and come home. God’s mercy can always move us from sinner to sanctified through the door of repentance; a door that is always left ajar. And when we do walk through it, when we muster up the courage to confront and confess our sinfulness, unpleasant though it may be, there will be no chastisement, no rod or wrath, there will be open armed rejoicing that what once was lost, now is found. Because so long as our sin keeps us apart home doesn’t feel like home to God.
We had a nice weekend in Charleston, and I found myself on the drive back looking for that billboard that I had scoffed at just a few days before. Of course it wasn’t facing our direction so I didn’t see it again. I did see some that said “Jesus save my soul” and “Forgive me my sins” but those didn’t quite pack the same punch as the original. That strong, single word, that was written for me: repent.