Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
We have entered into a time when rational thinking, reasonableness, honesty, truth, and even humility is considered substandard; considered to be the enemy of progressiveness, seen as distasteful even. We live in a time where feelings, where emotions, where personal opinions trump truth, and the only way to balance the scales, if you will, is to raise up this false god, this idol called tolerance.
In other words, we cannot call a spade a spade; we cannot call sin what it is – because to do so would be intolerant, and hurting the feelings of another over something like stealing or slandering...
Look at our government. Our politicians, the people that WE elect, they can get away with just about anything. And instead of fessing up to what they do, they evade or they point their fingers and say “well what about that other party, what about that other politician?”
Feelings and opinions have trumped truth and reasonableness. Even in our schools, truth isn’t taught. Sure 1+1 is still 2, but how much history has been lost or reshaped in order for some group or some agenda to be pushed? How often is a hypothesis or a theory taught as absolute fact and truth rejected and trivialized and called things like “archaic” or “unprovable” or even “laughable”?
Rather than speak the truth, rather than say “we are wrong”, groups and organizations and individuals spend immeasurable effort on trying to make the other group, the other organization look like the villain.
Ask a college student today “what is truth” and they will likely answer “whatever you make of it”, or “there is no real truth, only opinions”. Ask a high school or college student the difference between right and wrong, and they’ll say “it doesn’t matter – because it’s all about what makes you feel good.”
Some of the most reviled pastors and Christians in this world today are the ones that say and echo John the Baptist’s word: “repent”, “change your thinking”, “change your direction”.
You know even in the church repentance has become an unpopular word. You would be surprised to know that there are a LOT of churches in this nation and throughout the world that have concluded that sin is not that big a deal; they have changed their definition of sin, of good and evil, redefining it in a culturally relevant and less offensive way.
Instead of calling people to repentance, to confession, to admitting their sinful state, church leaders will say “eh, it’s not that bad; you’re not hurting anyone; Jesus loves you and doesn’t want to pressure you or cause you any offense or make you uncomfortable.”
Remarkably the LCMS is one of the few church bodies left in the world that has not succumb to the pressures of compromise when it comes to sin, to repentance, and to God’s Word. However, this also shows in our dwindling membership nationwide; the truth is a hard thing to swallow and people would rather believe a lie than face the truth.
John the Baptist’s message to repent was a rejected message during his time – rejected by the proud, the powerful – and it is a message that is rejected today.
But the truth is – the reality is – God’s Word does not change. We can change it! I can take my bible right now and rewrite, reduce, redact, take out all the uncomfortable stuff, the hard to swallow stuff, the stuff that makes me feel bad – but it doesn’t matter, God’s Word doesn’t change.
And John the Baptist’s cry to repent also doesn’t change. Just as the message of repentance called from the wilderness some 2000 years ago, the same message “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” still cries out to us today.
Most people don’t care. Most people would rather justify themselves, justify their lifestyle, justify their thinking and their feeling, try to prop themselves up while making everyone else look bad. And that’s because repentance is a need, a necessity, which cuts to the hearts of the human condition, which reveals the weakness and the frailty that is humanity, and it calls all mankind to trust, not in the self, not in reason, not it personal strength, but to trust wholly on God and His mercy.
But what is repentance? Why bother confessing sins if God is love? Well the truth is that confession and repentance is a work of God – a work done to us, in our lives, by His Holy Spirit. We confess, we repent, because by God’s grace we know our fallen state. We know that without God we would be lost and condemned creatures. We know that without the work of Christ on the cross we would be as good as dead, that every moment of our lives would be meaningless, would be shameful in God’s eyes, and would be a disgrace to His kingdom.
This is why, at the beginning of our service, we corporately confess our sins. It’s not just a thing we do, not just a tradition, or some repetitive thing that takes up a few minutes of our time, no. But our public confession, and our private confession is a gift God has given to us. When the whole world refuses to admit that before God it is judged unworthy and condemned, God has given us the gift of acknowledgement. Repentance isn’t a one-time thing, or a once-per-week thing, but it is a state which we are in every day.
We always know that we do not deserve God’s love and grace, and we always know that we’ve received it freely. And repentance is not a “first this, than that” sort of thing. Repentance isn’t a work. Repentance is a reality – a way of life, given to us by God Himself.
The other thing you must know about repentance is that it’s not a mandate from God to get everything right, fix yourself, stop every bad habit right now, start doing the right things or God will not love you. That theology, that understanding of God and His work of salvation is so far, so far from the truth.
You can’t fix yourself! That’s the problem, you see. No amount of browbeating, no amount of guilt tripping, and no amount of threating with the fires of hell is going to make you or make me decide that we’re going to start doing the right thing.
January first is coming up and a tradition in America and other parts of the world is to make resolutions for the coming year. And of course the big joke is that you make your resolution to change your diet or to stop swearing or to show up for church more often, and after a month you’re back to the same old unhealthy food, you’re back to cussing with your friends and you’ve not gone to church once since the new year.
And you see New Year’s resolutions is a blazing example of our sinful state. We can make all the promises and give all the assurances we want to, but the bottom line is it takes a force, a power outside of us to actually change our lives, to make us truly repentant. Sure we might have a little will power. We might be able to stop smoking, to stop swearing, to stop driving like the sky is falling and we need to get to our destination as fast as we can, but none of these things are ever enough to truly save us.
If repentance were something that God left up to us, that God said “you gotta figure that out on your own”, then the whole Christian faith would be a lie.
What sort of questions immediately come up as soon as we see repentance as our own work? How much do I have to repent? How long do I need to be repentant for? What do I need to repent of? How do I know that I’m truly repentant? How do I know God considers me truly repentant?
Such questions haunt the back of our minds and we are never comforted, never assured.
And this is why true repentance, true Christian, biblical repentance turns around and comes right back to the very same truth which all of Christianity celebrates. Repentance is a gift given to us when God’s Word enters our hearts.
What does Scripture say? It says that God’s Word does not return to Him void. When God created Adam and Eve, he breathed into them, in other words His Spirit and His Word went into them and created life. When God spoke to Abraham it caused faith in his heart and he believed and he was righteous. When God told the young shepherd David that he would be king of Israel, that word, that message, changed the heart of David and he believed. When John the Baptist proclaimed the coming Christ, calling people to repentance, washing them with water and Word, the power of God’s Word penetrated their hearts, convicting them of their sin and cleansing them from their unrighteousness.
Repentance isn’t about covering all your bases or anything like that. Imagine going through life always looking down at your feet to make sure you aren’t stepping on any cracks or on some old gum. Imagine all the wonderful things you’d miss. That’s not the path of the Christian faith God has given us! That’s not repentance.
Anyone who says to you “you can’t drink alcohol – it’s a sin!”…they don’t know what they’re talking about; they don’t know the Gospel. Anyone who says to you “women can’t wear pants, only dresses, otherwise it’s a sin”; they have no idea what God’s Word means. The true sin is disbelief; not trusting in God’s grace and mercy, but trusting in your own works, you own ability, your own attempts to repent.
Look at our confession of sins that we used earlier: Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We say that because it’s true! We have sinned against YOU in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We say this because it’s true – it’s not magic; not magic words. We have NOT loved you with our whole heart; we have NOT loved our neighbors as ourselves; we DO justly deserve your temporal and eternal punishment. This IS reality!
But it is also true that we are sorry for these sins, and that we truly repent of them because, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, God has had mercy on us, and has forgiven us, and renewed us, and continues to lead us, and by His grace alone we are able to walk in His ways and delight in His will to His glory.
This is true – this repentance is true – and because it is true it is also true and most real that you are absolved of you sins. It’s not a magic thing that the pastor says which magically forgives you of your sins, but what it is is a promise, a guarantee, that the forgiveness of God on account of Christ is for you, and is complete and total with no strings attached; and it’s for me and it’s for pastor Piotr as well.
And you see this is what John the Baptist preached – this is what he did. He came calling people to repentance, proclaiming the Word of God, washing them of their sins, preparing them for the coming Christ.
And part of this Advent season is about that – a time of preparation and repentance. A time where we look back, we look to the now and we look ahead. Looking back to the Christ child in the manger, looking to the now and recognizing what He did for us on the cross, and looking ahead to when He will come again in glory to lead us home.
May God continue to prepare us for Christ’s return through repentance, confession, absolution, through Word, through sacrament, through prayer, through fellowship, and through Christ our Lord, Amen.
