What Repentance is FOR

A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on December 6, 2009 (II Advent) at teh Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV.

Collect: Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings:
Baruch 5:1-9
Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.
Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God;
put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting;
for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven.
For God will give you evermore the name,
"Righteous Peace, Godly Glory."
Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height;
look toward the east,
and see your children gathered from west and east
at the word of the Holy One,
rejoicing that God has remembered them.
For they went out from you on foot,
led away by their enemies;
but God will bring them back to you,
carried in glory, as on a royal throne.
For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low
and the valleys filled up, to make level ground,
so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.
The woods and every fragrant tree
have shaded Israel at God's command.
For God will lead Israel with joy,
in the light of his glory,
with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

Luke 3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:‘Prepare the way of the Lord, [1]make his paths straight.5 Every valley shall be filled,and every mountain and hill shall be made low,and the crooked shall become straight,and the rough places shall become level ways,6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

Something to Sing About
When I was young, my parents would often take us to a performance of the Messiah at Christmas time. One famous pair of arias from that work is: Comfort, ye my people/Every Valley Shall be exalted. - based on Isaiah 40:4. It's for a tenor voice, and there's this wonderful way that Handel treats the melody.

When he gets to the world 'exalted', the tenor sings exal-al-al etc. The song itself imitates the nature of what the Lord will do. The valleys will be exalted, every mountain and hill made low, the cro - oked straight and the rough places plain.

There's also a dramatic part in Comfort ye my people". The music pauses and the tenor sings: "The voice of one crying in the wil-derness, Prepare ye the way of the Lo-rd. make straight in the desert, a high-way. For our G-od! (Bum-Bum.)

As Christians, we've learned to associate the 'one crying in the wilderness' with John the Baptist. He was crying in the wilderness - and the people were going out to him to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. His was a ministry of calling people to repentance - of asking people to make their hearts straight before God.

John is not a real warm-fuzzy kind of guy. It's true he did wear wild animal pelts for clothing, but his demeanor was not exactly meek and mild. It was more like,

"COME OUT HERE YOU MISERABLE SINNERS! CONFESS YOUR SINS! FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME! - RIGHT NOW!

Maybe the closest thing that many of us can relate this to would be going to the principle's office to be rebuked for some infraction. I remember one time when I was in junior high school, acting up in class and being sent down to Mr. Maturen's office. (He was actually the Vice-Principle). It wasn't a real pleasant experience.

I think John the Baptist was his cousin.

He was kind of a hatchet-faced sort of man. He didn't smile very much, and you wondered whether or not his face wasn't permanently cast into a frown. When you went to Mr. Maturen's office, you knew you were going to be "called on the carpet" - 'dressed down' - 'taken down a notch'. Yelled at!

Believe me, when I went to his office, I was not rejoicing that I was going to get the book thrown at me. Being happy or joyful was the farthest thing from my mind at that time. And believe me, too, that I wasn't so much interested in confessing and repenting of my sins, as I was finding a way out of the trouble!

By way of contrast, Cindy tells about one of her sisters, who seemed to have a penchant for being bad at times. When the tension would get too great, she would almost beg to be whipped. She just wanted to hurry up and get it over and clear the air, so things could get back to normal. (Both Cindy and I were amazed by that behavior.)

Cindy's sister probably had a better understanding of repentance than either Cindy or I: Confess the crime, take the whuppin', cut the tension and get back on the right track! She knew there was something on the other side of repentance - in her case 'normalcy'. But thinking about it as Christians, we know God wants something infinitely better for us: JOY! And that's what we are going to talk about today: Joy - because that's what repentance is For.

Baruch, Jeremiah and Isaiah
Now let's go back and look at our texts. There's an interesting similarity between our reading from Baruch and the quotation from Isaiah found in our Gospel reading: Baruch says, "For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground"...

Sounds pretty similar to the text from the Messiah aria from Isaiah 40:1 quoted in Luke: "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low. The crooked straight, the rough places plain..." ( KJV) Some writers think that Baruch's writing depends upon the book of Isaiah for its content - and judging from the two sentences we just quoted, they're probably right.

At any rate, Baruch was Jeremiah's scribe. He was the one who actually wrote down the prophecies. The book that bears his name is from the Old Testament Apocrypha. Scholars call it a 'deutero-canonical' book. That means 'second-string' - not quite up to snuff, not accepted by everyone. Although his book has some beautiful and powerful passages, and we read it out in church, yet it is not included in the canon of scripture. In this case, it's likely because Baruch was the scribe, not the prophet himself and so his work lacked prophetic authority.

Regarding the circumstances of Baruch's writing - he was with Jeremiah from before the siege of Jerusalem, when the prophet tried to warn the people of what was coming: wrath, destruction of the city, and exile to Babylon.

Sadly, the people ignored the warning and disaster came upon them. The city was destroyed and the best of the people were exiled to Babylon. After the destruction, Jeremiah continued to live in Palestine for a time, and then went to Egypt, where he probably stayed until he died. Baruch was likely taken to Babylon and lived their until he died.

His words that we read today are addressed to the Jewish people in the midst of their bitter captivity. They are words of hope, words of promise to a beaten- down people, words that indicate that the tide is about to turn in their favor.

"Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.
Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God;
put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting;"

Take off something and put on something. Take off sorrow and mourning and put on joy. This sounds similar to Isaiah 61:3: "To grant those who mourn... a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning..."

The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting (NASB). Joy and Gladness; these are the results of Repentance. These are the things that the Lord wants us to have in abundance.

In our readings today, we can also see several other marvelous things He wants for us:
Beauty
Glory
The Robe of Righteousness
Splendor
Peace
Godly Glory
Joy
Mercy
Righteousness
Laughter
Grace
Peace
Purity
Blamelessness
The Fruit of Righteousness

Quite a list, eh?! These things add up to more than just mere happiness. They indicate something deeper than pleasure when something goes right at work, satisfaction when you've had a fun day, or excitement when Marshall or WVU wins a game. These characteristics are indicative of being reconciled with God - something that only comes about through repentance.

Now the most dramatic story of repentance I can think of in the Gospels is the story of the Prodigal son. When this young man got to the lowest point of his life, He came to his senses and went back to his Father and said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”

As we know from hearing the story many times, the father " felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. He told his servants to bring the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, so they could celebrate (Lk. 15:11-32). The son came into his father's joy after he had repented.

In the story of Job, a righteous man loses everything. He longs to plead his case before God, but when God shows up and starts asking Job questions, such as: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?Tell me, if you have understanding" (Job 38:4), Job can only respond by saying:

..."I have uttered what I did not understand,things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
I had heard of you [God] by the hearing of the ear,but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself,and repent in dust and ashes.”Job 42: 2-6).

It's the Hebrew equivalent of saying, "Well, shut my mouth!"

Most of us can relate to this. I see it all the time in my counseling practice - especially as people deal with sexual abuse in their backgrounds. They suffer, and God doesn't respond to their suffering the way the think He should. They withdraw from God, and seek solace in material things, promiscuous relationships or drug and alcohol abuse. And then, during healing prayer, when we invite Christ to come into a picture of the abuse, invariably they say, "I see him now....He was there all along, I just couldn't see it."

How often we do this. We jump to conclusions about things we don't understand and we get all bollixed up and stuck. This is a clue to repent - to be like Job and say, "Shut my mouth!" - To give up trying to make it come out the way I think it should - to acknowledge that God is God and I'm not. To repent of our Pride and Self-Sufficiency.

We need to get to a place where we can be like the psalmist who said,

"O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me. (Psalm 131:1,2)

This is what it sounds like to be repentant: calm and quiet, unstuck, In that quiet place of listening all of a sudden you can realize that God is in charge after all.

The psalmist admonishes us:
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. (Psalm 131:3)

In other words, Repent of the Sin of Frank Sinatra! Stop doing it your way! Put your trust in the Lord. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your paths straight. Prov. 3:5)

The Bible promises us that when we repent, when we turn around and walk the other way, that he will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We might have to take a whuppin like Cindy's sister did, or get dressed down, like I did in Mr. Maturen's office, but the goal is not to weigh us down and discourage us, but to lift us up, to turn us around and get us going in the right direction, to to lead us with joy, in the light of [God's] glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him, to exalt every valley, bring down every mountain, straighten the crooked, smooth out every rough place and to 'restore to us the joy of our salvation" (Ps. 51).

Jane's Story
Last week, we received an amazing phone call from a woman we have known for many years. Let's call her Jane. We met Jane and her husband 'John' through church during our days at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Jane had grown up in a very rigid environment and struggled with being rigid and obsessive herself. John too was rather compulsive and driven, having been raised in poverty. Money and security were very important to both of them, but it was also obvious they had a heart for ministry.

Despite their strugles, they really were kind and gracious people and we hit it off with them as a couple. We spent a lot of time with them when we lived close and after we both moved away, we've have been as involved with them as you can be when you live hundreds of miles apart from each other.

Up until about ten years ago, John always worked in the business world and he had well-paying corporate type jobs. But we always knew his heart was in ministry. He finally became sick and tired of the work that he was doing and launched into full-time ministry - much to Jane's consternation. She just couldn't see how they could support their family and make it financially with him in this very insecure ministry.

Sure enough, finances became very tight, and they didn't make it very well financially. Jane's world began to crumble and she began to lose hope that things would ever be different. When we talked to her she sounded flat emotionally and she began to develop some real severe emotional problems. Her husband questioned whether she was actually a Christian, and we wondered ourselves.

Some time in the last six months, Jane reached a breaking point. Everything within her just came to a screeching halt. In her desperation, she finally broke down and called out to God. She told Cindy that her prayer went something like this:

Jane's Prayer:
"God, I'm not even sure you're out there, but if you are, will you reveal yourself to me, even if it means tearing down everything I have ever believed about you? "

She said that after she prayed that prayer, she was emotionally spent and numb. As she sat there, exhausted, she began to have a dawning realization that she wasn't alone. Over the coming days and weeks, God began to show her, in many small ways, that he really was there with her and for her. She began to understanding that He is actually taking care of her.

He also impressed upon her this profound truth: "Ultimately, all anger is anger at God."

This allowed her to repent of her anger at God and become like that weaned child on its mother's lap. So, even in her pain she began to have joy. Even though her marriage was teetering on the brink of failure, God began to minister hope to her and give her a will to go on. He began to lead her to books that taught her about His true nature. He gave her a close friend that she could confide in - an Anam Chara - who listened well and kept her confidence. Her walls began to come down, and now, by God's grace she is starting to sound like a faithful Christian for the first time in her almost six decades of life!

And it's all because she was willing to repent, to say to God, "Shut my mouth! - and teach me about You!

God is answering her prayer - because He wants her to experience JOY! He is helping her to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain, to enlarge her heart so that she has a place for Jesus, a place where the God of the Universe can love and nurture her as one of His own dear children. This is what repentance is all about - what its' FOR - in a word, JOY!

Friends, this same God is calling out to you. Today, if your hear His voice speaking to you, I urge you, like the Psalmist, not to harden your heart as the people of Israel did (Ps 95), but to repent - so that you may know JOY!

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.