Repentance Revisited

Repentance Revisited
A Sermon by Chris Hensley
Based on Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1 – 9
Presented to Sardis Baptist Church
March 23, 2025

I am a pastor’s kid, or a PK in some circles. Now, my father always served more moderate leaning congregations within the Baptist tradition, or that was his aim as that was where he found himself. This meant that, when the topic of repentance came about, I never heard him specifically utter any of the following phrases which I have heard and seen in certain circles of Christianity. “Turn or burn,” “fly or fry,” or “you’d better repent before you die.” Phrases such as these and others like them carry some sense of trauma for untold numbers who have been reared under the steeple of many a Christian church within our society. I share this with you to undergird the idea that I approach the topic of repentance gingerly and intentionally.

One needn’t look far within the Christian scriptures – either the Hebrew Bible or Christian Testament – to find the topic of repentance front and center. In fact some Hebrew Bible scholars summarize portions of the book of Judges as fitting into the SER cycle or sin-exile-repent/return. This is a theme which is prevalent in the Torah or the Pentateuch as well as throughout the Prophets as revealed in our Hebrew Bible reading for this morning in Isaiah. Repentance is thrust to the fore within the Christian Testament as well and it is a prevalent theme throughout the Gospel according to Luke beginning as early as chapter two and Mary’s song.

When we are discussing the topic of repentance it behooves us to remember with intentionality what it is from which we are repenting and why. Generally, and this is true throughout both the Hebrew Bible and Christian Testament, the people of God are called to repent from a specific behavior. This behavior is typically summarized as behavior which does not reflect a genuine relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who calls followers into right relationship with the Divine, with others, with the self, and with creation. These relationships are marred by things like selfishness and cruelty motivated by an innate desire to belong to a specific crowd, the crowd most often being those in power and with influence which comes through marginalizing other people groups and individuals by way of exploitation and/or subjugation.

The Hebrew prophets, like ours this morning in Isaiah, were most often concerned with calling the people of God in Israel back to right relationship with God, each other, and creation through an act of repentance. A turning back to God which meant that the people would actively turn their backs on the behaviors and actions which represented an unintended way of living. Most often the prophets targeted the wealthy, the religious and political elite, and those with influence and power in the here and now. If we were to extrapolate these calls for repentance to our own cultural context, then the prophets would be speaking to folks who look and sound very much like me and many of our political and religious leaders here in the US. That said, it is a fools errand to read the scriptures and only apply the warnings and calls to repentance to individuals who we think ought to hear the messages and not apply those calls and warnings to our own spiritual journey. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler point out that for Christians and Jews repentance is a personal act of worship. It is an act of turning toward or returning to God from a period in the individual’s journey which is steeped in selfishness and a lack of intentionality on the part of the individual in terms of their relationship with God, with themselves, with others, and with creation.

During this season as we are revisiting the idea of salvation – which for Christians and Jews has been the work of the Divine – we must also look to revisiting repentance as intentional work on our part in the Divine-human relationship. Nothing in either the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Testament would suggest, upon an honest reading, that salvation in whatever form that it may take, comes to anyone solely through the actions of God and without intentionality on the part of the individual. That to say, when we talk about salvation, we also talk about repentance. When we talk about the Divinely intended order of creation, we talk about how humanity is intended to function within that order. Salvation is based on a relationship between God and the individual, and like all relationships, it is a two-way street. Let us not confuse things, this is not a transaction, this is a cooperation. Further, the actions to which we are called in the realm of repentance are not necessarily confession of sins and walking the aisle for baptism and making a public profession of faith with weeping and gnashing of teeth. What we are talking about is performing self-reflection and recognizing where we have individually disrupted the intended order of things and turning from that behavior.

How have we perpetuated systems of racism, sexism, classism? How have we damaged creation?  Could go on, but I do not need to brow beat you, neither do we need another doomsayer. Instead, I encourage reflection and genuine repentance. And, in an effort to avoid feelings of overwhelming guilt and shame, identify one or two ways which you can work towards repentance in your life and work towards enacting that repentance in your journey this season. Go with this assurance, as you work toward that repentance – because it is a journey – rest in the knowledge that God is working toward your salvation and the salvation of others in the here and now. Jesus tells us in our Gospel reading that God’s justice in the here and now is not to smite those in need of repentance – there wouldn’t be anyone walking around. Instead, we should use the time we have in the here and now to go about working to bring justice into the world by repenting of the shortcomings of which we are guilty.

 

References

Levine, Amy-Jill & Brettler, Marc Zvi, The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently, HarperOne, New York, NY, 2020

Vinson, Richard B. Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary: Luke, Smyth and Helwys Publishing Inc. Macon, GA, 2008

 

Repentance Revisited