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Sermon January 22, 2023
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, MSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
https://lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi3_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Eucharist__January_22__2023
Video: https://youtu.be/3LPEWhjPtBs
From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Matthew 4:17
I’ve often spoken about the youth group I belonged to at my church. About once a year we went to New York City. That was such a fun trip. We often stayed at a Lutheran Church in Greenwich Village and participated in a program they had to keep young people from running away from home.
One year, however, we started going to the theatre on the Saturday night we were there. That first time in 1973, we went to see Godspell. The musical is based on the teachings of Jesus, especially from the Gospel of Matthew. It was written by John-Michael Tebelak as his Master’s thesis at Carnegie Mellon. Six of the eighteen songs are exact Episcopal hymns. Steven Schwartz, brought in as the composer for the New York City production, wanted to give these “stodgy” Episcopal hymns an update ala 1970.
By the way, Godspell is the old archaic English spelling of Gospel.
One of the songs, based upon Ezekiel 18:30 is from a hymn from our 1940 hymnal, Turn Back O Man, (forswear thy foolish ways.) This hymn sung to a tune from at least 1551 was updated to be quite sultry. But the message is the same. Repent – turn around – turn back.
From our Gospel reading today from Matthew, we learn that at the start of Jesus’ ministry, he “began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
As I thought about repentance this past week, I believe that when we can repent…when we can turn around from moving away from God and move towards God once again…we experience the kingdom of heaven.
But what does it mean to repent and how do we do it?
Well, nearly each week we have a corporate confession as part of our service. We understand we have sinned against God in “thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.”
We get specific in saying that we have not loved God with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
Then we say we are sorry and humbly repent. We ask for forgiveness. We even vision the kingdom of heaven in a way when we ask that through our repentance, we may delight in God’s will and walk in God’s ways. The kingdom of heaven.
We also have a private rite of confession in our prayer book known as The Reconciliation of a Penitent. The Rite begins on page 446 in the Book of Common Prayer. Notice the note:
“When the penitent has confessed all serious sins troubling the conscience and has given evidence of due contrition, the priest gives such counsel and encouragement as are needed and pronounces absolution. Before giving absolution, the priest may assign to the penitent a psalm, prayer, or hymn to be said, or something to be done, as a sign of penitence and act of thanksgiving.”
Remember hearing about sin offerings made in the Temple in Jerusalem for atonement or forgiveness? Sometimes it was an unblemished animal or it could be flour. Not only were these offerings or repentance for an individual; sometimes, they were done on behalf of an entire community. There was a process for things done intentionally and a process for things done unintentionally.
In other words, ongoing self examination is important. This is emphasized over and over again throughout various facets of life. For instance, in 12-step groups, step four of the twelve requires a person to take “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of themselves. Step five requires admitting “to God, ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” The steps go on to a process of asking God for help and for making amends for harm done. Step Ten is about the daily process of confession, “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”
So an important feature required for repentance is to name what we have done or maybe what has been done on our behalf. Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative says this about his project to tell the truth about lynching:
“We cannot heal the deep wounds inflicted during the era of racial terrorism until we tell the truth about it. The geographic, political, economic, and social consequences of decades of terror lynchings can still be seen in many communities today and the damage created by lynching needs to be confronted and discussed. Only then can we meaningfully address the contemporary problems that are lynching’s legacy.”
I mean, why do we teach history in our schools? Because we can learn from the past. Because the past is the foundation upon which we live in the present.
Another important feature of repentance, as you noticed from The Reconciliation of a Penitent, is that the person confessing, must “give evidence of due contrition.” We must be sorry for what we have done, as we say in our confession each week. Yet, we must go further. How do we make sure this does not happen again? How do we “repent and return to the Lord” as our Baptismal promises say? How do we repair the breach that has been created by what we have done wrong or what has been done wrong on our behalf?
That can be a sticky problem. This making amends as it can be called, can take many forms for sure. In some cases, we go directly to the person or community we have harmed. We apologize and say what we did wrong in very exact terms and we say or show what we have done and will do to try to make sure it will not happen again. Sometimes the repair requires a financial commitment or contribution.
The work on restorative justice can provide some guidance. In restorative justice the goal is for people to share their experience of what happened between them and to talk about who was harmed and how. Then the discussion turns to what can be done by the offender to repair the harm from the offense. According to the definition:
“This may include a payment of money given from the offender to the victim, apologies and other amends, and other actions to compensate those affected and to prevent the offender from causing future harm.”
As daunting and difficult as this process can be, repentance is life-giving. It is freeing, especially because in our faith tradition, we know we are forgiven. It is the way to turn back and return to God. It is freedom and joy and letting go of deep burdens. It is seeing and living in the kingdom of heaven, right here and right now.
Turn back…‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’
Amen
“Turn Back, O Man” https://artandtheology.org/2020/09/24/turn-back-o-man-as-motet-and-showtune/
Bryan Stevenson: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/acknowledging-past-shape-present
Restorative Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
