Repentance – Peculiar Faith

Repairing the Breach and Bridging the Gap

Ash Wednesday is one of those religious days that can prompt even non-religious people to think about religion—probably not for very long (especially when it falls on Valentine’s Day), but at least long enough to notice people with smudgy foreheads attending midweek church services.

More than this, Ash Wednesday also carries with it some language that sounds extremely and uncomfortably religious with words like “sin” and “repentance.” The liturgy in The Book of Common Prayer even uses some old-fashioned words like “wickedness” and “wretchedness.”

More than a few people find the language and the ritual of a day like Ash Wednesday at least off-putting if not distasteful. This is likely another reason for the profound disconnect in Western society today between the religious language of churches and the hopes and dreams of the wider world.

So there’s some urgency on these explicitly religious days, perhaps especially for whole seasons, like Lent, to pay close attention to the rift so many live with between “inner” and “outer,” or to the lively connections between our interior spiritual lives and our outward actions. This is the vital connection so often missing and lost between our religious communities and the wider world that is so desperate for the insight and transformation that can come with religious practice.

This is not just a profound gap, but also a tragic one. I remain convinced that the world’s religious traditions are needed today more than ever for the crises and challenges we currently face. More than this, for the compelling visions our religious traditions offer of what flourishing life can look like on this precious Earth.

There’s nothing new or modern about this challenge, by the way. Many Christians who ventured into church yesterday heard from the ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah, who was excoriating his community precisely for this failure to connect “inner” and “outer”: look how you engage in your religious fasting, he says, and yet oppress all your workers; you fast, yes, but then only quarrel and fight with each other!

You think groveling in ashes will suffice to get God’s attention, Isaiah says, yet this is the fast God prefers: to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to feed the hungry, and house the homeless, and clothe the naked (Isaiah 58:1-12).

The temptation of course is to suppose that we can choose either the inner or the outer dimension of our lives, or that one is somehow better than the other. Whatever “breach” Isaiah imagined covenant faithfulness would repair (58:12), surely the common gap between our religious practice and social action qualifies as part of it. Black History Month might actually present some reminders about why such repair really does matter.

“Becoming Beloved Community,” Michell Halley

In a world of racial bias, some argue for a color-blind society, as it’s sometimes called, a society where we pay attention to the inner workings of the heart rather than the outer appearance of the body. Some will quote Martin Luther King, Jr., on this who famously noted in his 1963 March on Washington speech that he longed for the day when people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Yes, and that great day will not arrive by pretending to ignore skin color, as if that’s even possible. To the contrary, we create Beloved Community—as King himself often noted—not in spite of our many racial, or sexual, or gendered differences but because of them. Diversity is not, after all, a problem to be managed but a divine gift to be embraced, a gift God’s own creativity without which our lives would be greatly impoverished.

To do that challenging work of inclusion outwardly demands that we do significant work inwardly—and that’s exactly the purpose of religious practices and spiritual disciplines.

Even so, I freely admit how much I still struggle with the concept of repentance: it’s hard for me to hear the word “repent” and not think of a scolding parent or a biting rebuke or an encounter framed with anger. (Images from childhood, especially “religious” ones, are never just shrugged off casually.)

But here’s what I try to remember nearly every single day, especially during Lent: the image of a scolding parent has nothing to do with the God of Jesus Christ or the good news of the Christian Gospel.

The God who is the very Source of life, the God whose Word brings forth the astonishing diversity of creation and the abundance of Earth, that Word becoming flesh and dwelling in loving companionship among us—this is not the God who comes to us in anger but with kindness and compassion, the God who wants above all to see every creature thrive and flourish—every single one, no exceptions.

Of course the stubborn fact remains that our lives do not always align with that gracious will of Creator God. And so we pause on occasion, as many Christians do on days like Ash Wednesday, so that we can notice that misalignment and to change course and to ask God to help us travel the good road toward abundant life—and that’s a much better meaning for repentance itself.

There’s just one other bit to notice carefully: we do all this remembering that we are in fact mortal, that we will one day die, and actually much sooner than any of us expect (or would prefer).

I suspect that’s why Ash Wednesday liturgies often include the portion many heard yesterday from Matthew’s account of the Gospel (6:1-6, 16-20). There Jesus urges us not to store up for ourselves “treasures on earth”—we just don’t have time for that. Besides, moth and rust will not only consume those treasures but that thief called “Death” will steal them away soon enough.

“Heavenly treasures” are the ones that make a true and lasting difference here on Earth—the ones Isaiah insisted would break the bonds of injustice and let the oppressed go free.

Those are the treasures truly worthy of our time.

Gandalf’s Question and the Wilderness of Hope

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” Frodo said.

That’s the Hobbit Frodo, from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. You need not have read the books or seen the films to appreciate that quote. Simply know that Frodo had been given an epic task many times his size—and the world’s survival depended on his success.

frodo_ring — Elijah Wood as Frodo in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s *Lord of the Rings*

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” Gandalf responded, Frodo’s wizard companion. “And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide,” Gandalf declares. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

What time is it, anyway? High time to wake up, take notice, pay attention?

Is it time, finally, to repent?

Haven’t we heard that before? Aren’t some of us sick of that word? Preachers, I mean, especially. How much time should this take, anyway?

Does anybody really know what time it is (I don’t)
Does anybody really care (care about time)
If so I can’t imagine why
We’ve all got time enough to cry

Those of a certain age will recognize those lyrics from a band called “Chicago.”

My hometown. My kind of town, Chicago is.

Chicago—where they broke some heat records this past summer, during this past July, the hottest month measured on Earth since records began in 1880.

“In those days…John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness.”

John_baptist — Anton Raphael Mengs, “St. John the Baptist in the Desert”

We always hear about that wild man in the wilderness in this second week of Advent; this year, we heard Matthew’s version (3:1-12). But what exactly does Matthew mean by “wilderness”? Are there any wild places left on this planet not contaminated by plastic? Did you know that nearly every day it rains tiny plastic particles at the top of the Pyrenees Mountains in southern France, and at the top of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and likely over every mountain range on Earth?

It’s hard to know where my attention rightly belongs at a time like this, if not up there in the mountains, then maybe…

down here at the border, with the thousands of children separated from their parents, many in cages and put there by my government;
or maybe with more than a thousand incarcerated men of color fighting California wildfires for $3 a day and who are then barred from working as firefighters after their release from prison;
or where whales beach themselves, starving to death, their stomachs filled with plastic—presumably with whatever plastic hasn’t already rained down on pristine mountaintops.

These days are those days when John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching repentance.

Wilderness—a place of purgation, of starting over, of being refined by fire—and who exactly is that preacher out there? Matthew says he’s the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke.

Isaiah, it should be noted, had some peculiar notions about the wilderness, about wild places—where the wolf lives peaceably with the lamb, and the leopard lies down with the baby goat, and the calf dwells amiably with the lion, that wacky place where bears graze with the cows (Isaiah 11:6-7).

More than a few Bible commentators quickly propose that these are really only metaphors, poetic ways of speaking, not about wolves or sheep or lions and bears, but of humans, and about that day when human warfare shall cease.

That sudden eruption of peace would be wonderful, of course. But I see no reason to shy away from reading Isaiah just as wildly as his wilderness, to let him stretch our credulity and push us beyond—far beyond—what seems polite and reasonable; after all, not everything in the Bible that sounds just a bit outlandish is only, in the end, a metaphor.

I mean this: the God who can inspire humans to beat their swords into plowshares is actually too small for a prophet like Isaiah. The God Isaiah apparently had in mind is the God who rewrites the biological scripts of predation and reweaves the very fabric of creation without any trace of violence or destruction. “No one,” he imagines this God to say, “will hurt or destroy on my holy mountain” (11:9).

peaceablekingdom_isaiah11 — John Swanson, “Peaceable Kingdom” (based on Isaiah 11)

I’m guessing this is why Paul quoted Isaiah directly, by name, in his letter to the Romans. We heard from that letter for the second Sunday of Advent, too, probably because Paul really did single out Isaiah by name. I had never noticed that before, and these days it makes perfect sense.

Perhaps only Isaiah is sufficiently outrageous for Paul, sufficiently wild with hope to qualify as a champion for Paul’s outrageous take on the Gospel. Let’s recall some of its glittering nuggets that he offers to the Romans: this is the letter in which Paul invites his readers to imagine God acting “contrary to nature” by grafting the wild branch of pagan Gentiles on to the one true tree of Israel (11:24); in which he reassures his readers that by dying with Christ, we rise (6:1-11); in which he describes the whole of God’s creation groaning with anticipation for the day of salvation (8:19-23).

This is the letter where Paul insists that nothing whatsoever can ever separate God’s creation from the love of God in Christ (8:38-39)—and this is the hope, he declares, that the scriptures (like the stuff that wild and crazy Isaiah wrote) are supposed to inspire in us (15:4), the hope which we cannot see but without which we cannot live, the hope each of us needs, desperately.

But wait. Why is hope so vital, so mission-critical?

Because without it, we could never take seriously the question Tolkien’s Gandalf poses to every generation: what will we do with the time that is given us?

In these days, in this time that has been given us, the answer to Gandalf’s question will likely be very difficult to utter much less live. It will mean the kind and depth of repentance few have ever attempted. It will mean living in radically and dramatically different ways.

It will mean tapping into hope as if our lives depended on it.

Because they do.

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Messy Bodies, Smelly Dogs, and the Christmas Gift of Repentance

Many Christians were launched into this third week of Advent with the fiery rhetoric of John the Baptist. He’s an odd figure, in more ways the one. His desert roaming and locust-eating offer a stark contrast to inflated Santas on glittering front yards and reindeer shimmering on rooftops. John_baptist

John stands as a forerunner, a figure preparing the way for Jesus. Not so terribly odd for this season, except for the grating substance of his message: repentance.

That word more than merely grates. Repentance is one of those words that makes a growing number insist on being spiritual but hell-no-not-religious. It qualifies as one of those “trigger words,” especially for those who have heard it only in tirades of condemnation.

As a gay man, I heard that word as a young adult not only as judgment on my sexual desires but for my bodily self, who I am in the world. I came to internalize that judgment, thinking of my very own flesh as wrong, bad, even disgusting. This is what leads a shocking number of young people to suicide; one would be too many. Quite frankly, I am astonished with gratitude that I am still alive after those many years of suffocating religion.

My life changed dramatically in my mid-twenties, when a dear friend recounted the confession he made to a priest about being gay. In essence, this was the content of his confession: “I confess that I have been rejecting the goodness of my sexuality and the divine gift of my bodily desires; I repent.”

My friend told me this, transforming entirely my concept of sin and repentance, not to mention my image of God. Repentance, I realized, is not primarily about remorse; or rather, such regret is not its purpose. The word itself means turning, changing one’s mind, shifting the course of one’s whole life. To repent is to turn away from shadowy realms and toward the light, toward the light of thriving, flourishing and fleshy life, a life of joy, just as God intends.

This Advent season, now on the brink of the Christmas season, is drenched in bodily stuff, in flesh. Biblical writers don’t often dwell on abstract concepts but turn often to bodily images to convey spiritual insights – particular places, landscapes, banquets, other animals. Christmas celebrates newborn flesh in a manger, a feeding trough for cattle and sheep. Bodily, fleshy stuff matters, more than we can imagine; it’s precisely there, in bodies, where we encounter the mystery of God.

Here in the United States, we’ve been living through a period of rather intense moments of bodily stress. The killing of African Americans by law enforcement officials over the last few years has brought black bodies newly onto center stage. The seemingly unending wave of sexual misconduct cases has brought bodily vulnerability and bodily power into the spotlight of our entertainment industry and Congress alike. The entire planet is becoming increasingly aware of the many bodies living in the midst of a climate crisis; the body of Earth itself is groaning (as the Apostle Paul noted many centuries ago). Bodily, fleshy stuff matters – more than we can imagine.

These are indeed distressing moments but perhaps also fruitful ones of repentance, of turning around and changing our minds about flesh and bodies. This matters in Western culture where bodies of all types are objectified, categorized, made into commodities to buy and sell. Perhaps BlackLivesMatter and the flood of “metoo” hashtags and starving polar bears can prompt a profound moment of repentance, of turning toward the flesh once again, not as a consumer product but where the One who creates it is pleased to dwell, with abundant joy.

We need to be intentional about this. It won’t “just happen” on its own. And this is why, in part, I live with a dog. My Australian shepherd dog Judah will not permit me to sit in front of my computer forever; he insists on hikes, playing, wrestling, running down a beach, getting dirty, smelly, and covered in sand and mud and ocean foam. He stands panting after all that rolling about in the muck, panting happily as he stands there as a complete and utter mess; it’s glorious.

judah_rodeo_090916 (2) I actually love the smell of a wet, dirty dog. I sometimes bury my nose in Judah’s furry neck and relish that earthy, canine odor. It speaks flesh, a word made flesh, and there I remember: God really does love this glorious mess – God loves me.

On the endless list of things we all need to do in this “holiday” season, I would add one more and put it at the top. In your encounters with others, all of them, notice that we are bodies with flesh. With colleagues, reach out a hand to touch a shoulder; with strangers, shake a hand and feel your skin against skin; with friends and family, make sure you embrace them – a lot. And don’t ever miss an opportunity to fondle the silky ears of a dog, scratch the chin of a (willing) cat, or take delight in that tumbleweed of animal fur rolling through your living room.

All of this seems ridiculously inconsequential, hardly the revolution we now need. But it matters more than we can imagine, this regular, deliberate, intentional reminder of the flesh we are, the flesh God loves.

There are many reasons why physical touch has become risky these days. There are many more reasons why it is so urgently necessary, the reminder of our fleshy bodies, the stuff through which God chooses to speak and be known.

Repent, turn again toward the flesh, where God takes great delight to dwell, with an abundance of (messy, smelly, confounding, liberating, intoxicating) joy. That’s the gift I wish I could place under every single tree – wrapped in Judah’s beachy scent.

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