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The first time Jesus appears, in the first Gospel, the
first instruction he gives is "Repent".
From then on, it's his most consistent message.
In all times and every situation, his advice is to repent. Not just the scribes and Pharisees, not just the powerful
-- he tells even the poor and the oppressed that repentance is the key to eternal life. In an incident that would make
modern-day spin doctors frantic, Jesus even advises repentance in response to a horrifying atrocity. Some in his audience
tell him that Pilate has murdered some Galilean worshippers, spattering their blood on the animal sacrifices. Shockingly,
Jesus says, "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." Apparently he is not concerned about how this
will play on Mt Peor.
Talk of repentance makes modern-day Christians nervous. We are embarrassed by
the stereotype of old-fashioned preachers hammering on sin and making people feel guilty. We rush to assert that Jesus
isn't really like that, he came out of love, he wants to help us. He knows us deep inside and feels our every pain,
and his healing love sets us free.
This is one of those truths that run out of gas halfway home. The question
is, what do we need to be healed of? Subjectively, we think we need sympathy and comfort, because of our felt experience
is of loneliness and unease. Objectively, our hearts are eaten through with rottenness. A hug and a smile aren't
enough.
We don't feel like we are rotten: if anything, we feel like other people treat us badly. One
of the most popular myths of our age is that if you can claim to be a victim, you're automatically sinless.
A second
popular myth is this: We're nice. Being nice is all that counts in life, right? Isn't it the highest
virtue? Even granting that doubtful assertion, a more honest self-assessment would reveal that we're nice when we're
comfortable and everything is going our way. Anybody can be nice under those circumstances. As Jesus noted, even
sinners do the same, yet our God is kind even to the ungrateful and the selfish. That sort of kindness is a standard
we rarely intend, much less meet.
Finally, there's the ever popular conviction that we're still better than a lot
of other people. Christians should know better than this; God doesn't judge one person against another, he doesn't grade
on a curve. Yet we find it desperately hard to believe that we're really, truly sinners, because we see people
so much worse than us every day in the newspaper. In comparison with them we're just so gosh-darn nice.
The problem in all these cases is that we're comparing ourselves with others, rather than with the holy God.
Once we get that perspective adjusted, repentance can come very swiftly. And once we really decide that it is God himself
we want to approach, repentance comes to feel like a clarifying, tough-minded friend.
Repentance is the doorway
to the spiritual life, the only way to begin. It is also the path itself, the only way to continue. Anything else
is foolishness and self-delusion. Only repentance is both brute-honest enough, and joyous enough to bring us all the
way home. But how repentance could be either joyous or vibrantly true is a foreign idea to most of us, so let's spend
some some time learning why the early Christians valued it so.
In the third through the fifth centuries, men and
women went into the wildernesses of Egypt and the Middle East to devote themselves wholly to prayer and ascesis. They
are the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and are called "Abba" or "Amma," affectionate terms for "father"
and "mothers." There are hundreds of sayings and stories about these heroic desert-dwellers. One of
them, Abba Dioscorus, was once found weeping by a younger monk. When asked why he did so, Dioscorus replied, "I
am weeping for my sins." The young monk knew Dioscorus had led a valiant and holy life for many years, and said,
"My father, you do not have any such sins." Dioscorus told him, "Truly, my child, if I were allowed to
see my sins, three or four men would not be enough to weep for them."
"If I were allowed to see my sins."
The truth is that we cannot bear to see the selfish twists of our heart, our greed and self-pity and manipulativeness.
God allows us a measure of merciful ignorance. "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them
now," Jesus says.
The starting point for the early church was this awareness of the abyss of sin inside each
person, the murky depths of which only the top few inches are visible. God, who is all clarity and light, wants to make
us perfect as he is perfect, shot through with his radiance. The first step in our healing, then, is not being comforted.
It is taking a hard look at the cleansing that needs to be done. This is not condemnation, but right diagnosis.
It is not judgmentalism, because the judgment is evenly applied. All are sinners, all have fallen short. It is
not a false guilt, because a lot of the guilt we feel is in fact deserved: we are guilty. Forgiveness of past
sins doesn't cure the sickness in the heart that continues to yearn after more. We remain sick until the healing begins,
and it will be a lifelong process.
What a relief it is to admit this. Like the woman weeping at Jesus' feet,
we have nothing more to conceal, no more self-justification, no more self-pty. We are fully known, even the depths that
we ourselves cannot see, cannot bear to see. Instead of hoping that God will love us for our good parts and pass over
the rest, we know that he died for the bad parts, and will not rest till they are made right. The depth of our sin proves
the height of his love, a height we cannot comprehend until we realize how desperately we need it. We are fully loved,
and one day will be fully healed, brought into God's presence without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.....
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