This Lenten season, we’ll be walking through a series of messages that focus on our actions through Lent: I call them “the five Rs of Lent”. They are remembrance, repentance, recommitment, restoration, and renewal. Today the focus is on repentance.
Something to remember about Lent: it’s common to take upon yourself a spiritual or physical discipline during Lent. But, bear in mind that Lent is not an act of works-righteousness on our part that is aimed at making us more acceptable to God. Lenten discipline or spiritual growth is not something you undertake for God’s benefit – you do it for your own benefit.
The five Sundays in Lent this year take us through the stories of the five great covenants that God made with the Israelites: last week, Noah and his family; this week, Abraham and Sarah. You’ll hear the others in the weeks to come. But, those covenants are remembered (the first R) by us through a very particular lens: the lens of our own baptism into Jesus Christ. Baptism is the great covenant that God makes with believers through Jesus Christ – God’s action, God’s great gift. We can make all sorts of promises and covenants back to God; but we’re never going to keep them, no matter how hard we try.
After all, we confess we are captive to sin, and cannot free ourselves.
But we can keep re-focusing and returning to that baptismal gift. That re-focusing and returning is the heart of repentance.
The word repentance in Greek means particularly, “turning around.” Or, maybe more simply: re-orienting oneself in the right direction.
And it can be a challenge to read the story of Abraham and Sarah from Genesis 17 today and see repentance at work in their lives. After all, in our culture repentance has come to simply mean saying “I’m sorry.” The only problem is, in that same culture of ours, apologies are most often followed by dis-engagement in the broken relationship. Repentance, re-orientation in the biblical sense, is re-engagement in the lives and relationships around us. Unlike our culture sense of an apology, which is rooted in a feeling of shame, repentance should be rooted in an honest and forthright desire to be engaged in the world and relationships around us.
Abraham and Sarah begin their lives as Abram and Sarai. In the Genesis reading today, God calls Abram into relationship – he’s already called Abram out of
The covenant is between Abram and God, but it is God who is making the contract! He lists two requirements of Abram: the first, is to be in relationship: walk before me. And the second: be blameless.
And the people of God with one voice said: “WHAT!!!???”
Beloved, notice this: God says, blameless. Not, sinless.
God doesn’t call you into relationship on the condition that you are perfect. God is going to accomplish that in your life without your consent. What God does call you to be is blameless. Turn towards God. You’re not going to stop yourself from sinning, from wanting to be God in God’s place – but you can repent – turn around, turn back, and remember the covenant that God makes with you: that you are righteous - blameless - through faith in Jesus Christ.
When God makes that covenant with Abram and Sarai, part of the visible promise is that God re-names them: Abraham and Sarah. Abraham, the father of a multitude (what his name means); and Sarah, the queen, or princess. Sarah is precious, because she has to do the work. Abraham gets the glory. Sarah has to do the hard work.
They are called to follow, to be part of a great covenant of which they themselves are a small part. It is their faith, that becomes the source of their righteousness, their blamelessness before God. And very often, that covenant with God makes their lives harder, not easier.
Actually, that’s probably the real story of the gospel: if your life is getting easier, you’re probably not, in fact, living the gospel. But we don’t deal with that well. We want God to the be the great assenter to our own kingdoms, giving us permission to carry on in our self-centred lives.
The congregation that I interned at was just outside the limits of central
When life gets hard, then you may want Jesus. As long as it doesn’t cost too much.
That’s the apostles, as well, beloved. That's us. They gather around Jesus; they’re liking the attention, the ‘kingdom of heaven’ language. It’s all good. But then Jesus begins talking about being betrayed, being beaten, suffering, killed, and then rising – then, Peter gets uncomfortable.
“I believe in you, Jesus,” Peter says, “but talking like that isn’t going to get me to join your church. We need to be about social justice. We need to be about reforming sinners. But enough with this ‘cross’ business.”
And Jesus’ reply is famous: “get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on eternal things.” But then, then Jesus does something extraordinary: he gives a prescription.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Walk before me, and be blameless.
Jesus calls us to live lives of repentance – not lives of apology. But lives that are marked by returning to God, remembering the covenant of baptism that makes a claim on our lives; lives that find what life actually is.
As it turns out, a life of repentance isn’t about being sorry. It’s about being human – or humans being in relationship to God. Repentance is turning from sin-centred lives (and remember, beloved, the problem with sin is the ‘I’ in the middle), and turning to a Christ-centred life.
Beloved, God calls you to repent. Walk before God, and be blameless. Let your righteousness be your faith.
Let the people of God say ‘amen’.
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