Repent!

This is the text from a sermon I preached on November 11th, 2012 – the first Sunday after Barack Obama’s second election victory. I think I might word things a little differently now (I think how we implement change via government requires a bit more nuance than what I said), but someone shared with me last week that it stuck with them, and after re-reading it, I am pretty happy. I think it might even be applicable three and a half years later!

The texts for the morning were: Jonah 3.1-5, 10; Hebrews 9.24-28; and Mark 1.14-20

Repent!

That is what our texts call us to do this morning. Repent.

In fact, when the kingdom of God is preached in the New Testament, it is accompanied with this action – repentance. The kingdom of God is near: repent. It wasn’t a provisional statement, but a essential to the good news of the kingdom.

We hear it so often that it is easy to rightly associate repentance and the kingdom without really taking time to think about what the juxtaposition of the two means. Why is repentance good news? Why is the good news of the kingdom tied to repentance?

After all, the good news is also delivered in terms of freedom. In the Benedictus, Zechariah rejoices by exclaiming that God has come to his people and set them free. Free to worship him without fear. This sounds much more like a celebration than self reprimanding – and we would be right to question why this freedom is in the same package as repentance.

Let’s think about repentance. Repentance is an action by which we are bound – we lose the freedom to blame the external for our own shortcomings – external forces, external actions and other people – and take responsibility ourselves. Repentance has no caveats, no provisos, no fine print. Repentance is humbling. Repentance is the unfiltered, pure declaration that “I am wrong, and I turn to God.”

At its core, repentance loses any notion of “them vs us”. In the midst of our problems, when we repent, we no longer talk about what they did. It isn’t an issue of what is happening to us, but what has happened by us.

Israel is never called to repent and turn their ways by telling God what their oppressors were doing. And they were being oppressed. When John and Jesus step onto the scene there is plenty of blame to go around – Greece and Rome had subjugated the Jews and had crushed several attempts at rebellion – rebellions that were meant to establish God’s kingdom on earth. There was plenty being done to them, and the kingdom of God was to come and fix that. Why were they called to repent? If anything, the message of repentance should have been going out to the Romans, not God’s subjugated people.

But they were not called to list out to God what was done to them. They were not called to list out what was happening against them. They were called to repent of what they had done. In fact ,when Jews who adhered to the law in the strictest of senses came to John the Baptist he referred to them as a brood of vipers.

Of course, part of the reason that they were repenting was because of the judgment to come – and in judgment you are not going to be able to position yourself against anyone else. You stand in front of your God, and have to account for what YOU have done. And so there is a real desire to get your orders in affair before the trial commences. That’s the story of Nineveh. Every last person in Nineveh, the prophet Jonah tells us, repented and turned. There wasn’t even a call to repentance – they simply responded to judgment in such a way.

But repentance isn’t simply fear based.

Jesus’ message, boiled down was this: The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand – repent and believe in the gospel. This is the reaction to what God is doing – repent. We get no indication from the text that the message changed once Jesus got to the “good guys.” Both Matthew and Mark describe the beginning of Jesus’ ministry this way and Luke records Jesus later in his ministry telling his disciples that if they do not repent, they will perish.

See, there is a gap between us and the kingdom of God, and if we do not recognize that difference, we can’t possibly continue in the way of making the kingdom of heaven known. Repentance is the process by which we leave behind our flawed methods of trying to make the world better (or worse), and we step into the work of Christ in redeeming the world.

Repentance, like salvation, is not only about what God will do in the future, but about what God is doing and wants to do right now.

Because the kingdom of heaven is different than the kingdom of earth – and the way in which we want to live is that of the kingdoms of earth. Whereby we accomplish our goals top down. Where we try to grab at power.

The kingdoms of earth try to accomplish goals through earthly means – through the copies of heavenly things. I am borrowing language from Hebrews here: which speaks to the difference between true things and copies. Where Christ advocates for us is different than where sacrifices were made on earth.

The copies – the temple – is not nothing. In fact, the temple is incredibly important – it just was insufficient. Simply an echo of what is the most true – the most real.

And one of the chief ways that I think we are called to repent, in light of kingdom season, is the manner in which we have accepted the copy of human rulers in place of the Lordship of our King. Our allegiance is not, and has never been, to political parties, ideologies, or presidents. Our hope has never sat in the White House – and never will.

In case I am not being clear enough, let me say it more plainly – the election of Barack Obama to the presidency will not thwart the kingdom of God, and no matter who you feel about the outcome of our most recent presidential election, centering your life around the outcomes of American politics is centering your life around a lesser hope of a lesser ruler.

Political actions have real consequences -just like the priests in the Old Testament made sacrifices that had real consequences. Their sacrifices weren’t nothing. But in light of Christ they are secondary; tertiary. It is too easy to hope in earthly rulers and to give the role of the Church over to the government.

For example: It may be true that a perfectly just society doesn’t have women terminating pregnancies – but this morning we are called to repent of the ways in which we have championed the “Pro-Life” cause while allowing young women in our own back yards to be faced with the difficulty of a new life that they can neither properly raise, care for, or afford – with no help in sight from the ambassadors of the heavenly kingdom.

Our eucharistic prayer guides our thinking. We do not pray:

Let gas prices go down
Let the middle class be stable
May this country remain a global superpower

We pray:

Bless the Earth
Heal the Sick
Let the oppressed go free

And so in this post election Sunday, whether we sit in political victory or defeat – our only true triumph is in how we as a church are living out that calling. And where we don’t live up to that reality, where this is not the cry of our hearts, we repent.

If buy into the notion that the good of the world happens primarily through the government, rather than the church, we have bought the copy instead of the reality. We have assumed that Christ handed over the keys of the kingdom to an earthly ruler. Again, our prayers inform our theology: this morning’s collect puts the priorities in the right order – we pray that those in earthly power would be subject to Christ, that the copies would emulate the archetype – and we place our hope in that archetype.

Let’s be clear – no matter what the outcome was in last week’s election, our goal has not changed, nor has our calling – that we would be the people of God, serving the world, ushering in Christ’s kingdom. That happens to some degree through politicians, but it happens more so on the ground – in neighbourhoods, in communities. In the day to day interactions that you have with those around you.

That is what we need to repent for. How we have failed to make Jesus known in our own back yards. How we have allowed a narrative of them vs. us to dominate our thinking and our actions. The only “us” and “them” that we should be concerned about is those who are in Christ and those who are not in Christ yet. All things will come under Christ’s rule, and we repent for the ways that we haven’t made it so – and for the ways that we haven’t wanted to make it so. Where our priorities have been flawed, and where our outlook needs to be changed.

But we do not point the finger.

When we accept the earthly copies as substitutes for heavenly rulers – disastrous consequences happen. That is, in fact, the very nature of idolatry – worshipping the created rather than the creator.

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, Veteran’s Day in the United States. The yearly remembrance of those who fought and died during the first World War – nearly 1% of the Canadian population died over in Europe. In Canada, we wear poppies on this day – hearkening back to a poem written by Lieutenant (Lef-tenant) Colonel John McCrae after burying one of his friends in Flander’s Field, in France:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

I love this poem, and I hate this poem. I love how it briefly, yet powerfully, illustrates the suddenness of death, especially death in war. But I hate how it perpetuates the cycle of destruction – that our battles must continue on past our deaths by those who follow. Righteous causes or not – our desire can not be for earthly victory, especially when our earthly kingdoms are as temporary as our own lives, in light of our King and His Kingdom.

It is customary, on Remembrance Day, to take a minute of silence at 11:11am to honour the dead. I would like to close by combining the two events that fall on this Sunday into one moment and ask you (for a minute that is near, although not exactly, 11:11) to take a minute of repentance. We as a church have failed those who we have been charged to serve. We continue to pursue God’s kingdom by the ways of the world, and in order for us to enter into the kingdom of heaven and be its ambassadors – we must repent. We must turn from the ways that lead to death, the ways of division, and instead long for the complete and total rule of Christ. To long for His work in subjecting the whole world to himself – and look for His coming in Glory. And to turn from our ways to His ways. The kingdom of Heaven is at hand: repent and believe in the gospel.