Repentance

In my first five sermons this fall, I am preaching about some of the essential marks of authentic Christian living. What distinguishes us as followers of Jesus Christ? Last week I discussed Community: we are a community who gathers to celebrate what God creates and recreates in our lives. Next week we will talk about Wealth: how do we live faithfully with our affluence? In subsequent weeks we’ll think about Hope and Tradition. But this morning we take up the subject of Repentance: what does it mean to be a repentant person or a repentant community?

We will look at two texts this morning. First, a few verses from the apostle Paul’s letter to Timothy and second, some verses from the lectionary’s gospel text for today in Luke 15.

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

If you have heard me preach more than a few times — as most of you have — you know that I am not a “hellfire and brimstone” kind of preacher even though that style of preaching remains quite popular today. Some preachers get up week after week and spew a hellish fire all over their people about their sins. I have not done that. I will not do that. I cannot do that.

But … (and this is a BIG but … ) I do think that sometimes as a people we become terribly complacent about our salvation and because of that complacency we are very undisciplined, even lazy in our Christian living. Maybe the problem is that we’re basically nice people and we’ve never sinned in huge ways and we’ve never been, as the text mentioned, blasphemers, persecutors, and people of violence. We’re just folks who do the best we can and figure that’s enough.

Sometimes I think this leaves us not much better than the old joke about what you get if you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with an atheist. You get someone who goes around ringing doorbells but doesn’t know why. Sometimes we behave like that. We are nice folk who are moderately religious, would certainly consider ourselves Christians, but hardly know why. How important is our salvation? That’s the question we need to grapple with today.

To understand the importance of salvation we need to take seriously the significance of sin. The text said, “the saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the foremost.” Jesus Christ came to save sinners. So understanding salvation means taking sin seriously and let’s begin by asking, who is the worst kind of sinner?

Are the worst sinners the petty thieves and thugs who plague our lives, steal our cars or other things, and make us feel unsafe on city streets or even in our own neighborhoods? Are they the worst sinners?

What about the young and rebellious, so filled with testosterone that they function not much more intelligently than animals, wreaking havoc and grossness wherever they go?

What about tyrants and terrorists, drunk on power and hatred, the Hitlers and Stalins and Bin Ladens?

Where do we rank killers? How about adulterers? Where do we rank drug dealers, cartel bosses, hitmen, and hitwomen? What about gossips, drunk drivers, and people who steal from their employers? Where do we place those who cheat on their income tax or who break the speed limits and run yellow lights? What about child abusers and wife beaters? Those who perpetrate corporate fraud? Pollutes, corporate or individual? What about those who cover up shoddy workmanship that causes ceiling panels to fall and crush people or lead-painted toys to poison kids? Are any of these the worst sinners?

What about blasphemers — if it’s even possible to blaspheme today? Where do we rank idol worshipers and what do we consider idolatry? How evil are those who don’t go to church or synagogue every Sabbath?

Asking who is the worst kind of sinner is a tough question, isn’t it? It’s tough because we don’t like to think about such things. It’s tough because our culture has lost almost all consensus about moral shamefulness. And it’s tough because when we talk about sin and start pointing at sinners, at sometime — if we are honest — we are going to be pointing at ourselves. Nobody likes to do that.

The ancients were less reticent. For example, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle divided immoral behavior into three categories.[1] The first kind of immorality was what Aristotle called “incontinence” which includes all wrong action due to inadequate control of natural appetites or desires. The second category of immorality was called “brutishness” or “bestiality.” Aristotle said this was characteristic of morbid states in which what is naturally repulsive becomes attractive. The third and worst category was “malice” or “vice” which consists of those evil actions which involve the abuse of the specifically human attribute of reason.

Many moral philosophers base their thinking on Aristotle. An example is The Divine Comedy, the medieval masterpiece of Dante Alighieri. I haven’t read much Dante since I was a freshman in college, more than 40 years ago. But lately I’ve found myself reading The Divine Comedy again. For those of you who may have never read it, let me remind you that Dante pictures Hell as a giant pit at the bottom of which is a three-faced Satan, frozen from the waste down in a lake of ice, chewing eternally in each mouth one of three of the greatest sinners, the chief of which is Judas. (I mentioned this in a Holy Week sermon a couple of years ago.) Dante pictured nine descending circles of Hell, each punishing a worse kind of sin. His circles were based on Aristotle’s categories but worked out in greater detail and precision.[2]

In the allegory Dante journeys through Hell, then Purgatory, and finally sees the true God in Heaven. His description of sinners and their eternal punishments is particularly vivid, even by our standards. For example, in the Eighth Circle of Hell, here is what Dante saw:

I saw it there; I seem to see it still—
a body without a head, that moved along
like all the others in that spew and spill.

It held the severed head by its own hair,
swinging it like a lantern in its hand;
and the head looked at us and wept in its despair.

That is one of the most gruesome and famous images in all of literature. Dante goes on:

And when it stood directly under us
it raised the head at arm’s length toward our bridge
the better to be heard, and swaying thus

it cried: “O living soul in this abyss,
see what a sentence has been passed upon me,
and search all Hell for one to equal this!

in duty and in love, I bear my brain
divided from its source within this trunk;
and walk here where my evil turns to pain,

Here’s the point. Sin needs to be taken seriously because Dante’s horrible image shows the outcome of sin: sin splits apart our true selves. It destroys what God intends. It severs us from the source of life and all that is good and true and beautiful.

Are we the kind of sinners who a modern-day Dante would place in the Eighth Circle? Probably not. But Dante’s image of Hell ought to impress upon us that sin is a slippery slope. Some sins are worse than others, yes, but they all slide us in the same direction. Who is the worst kind of sinner? The truth is that as far as each of us is concerned, the worst kind of sinner is the one who looks back at ourselves in the mirror. For our own sin is what must most concern us.

Now you may be thinking, Hey, Bill, you’re sure starting the year off on a downer. But I mention all this about sin because if sin is serious — and it is — then we must be abidingly and overwhelmingly joyful that God has saved us. So let’s finish up today by asking, what does it mean to be saved?

The text said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” We can best understand that today by setting alongside it the gospel text where Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep and the searching shepherd. We need to remember that in the first century shepherds were considered to be horrible sinners. Herding sheep was listed by first-century Jews as a condemned trade. Among other unethical practices, shepherds were notorious for hiding part of their flock to evade paying their fair share of temple tax assessments.[4] We may think of shepherds as cute. In Jesus’ day, they were despised.

So the inclusion of a shepherd in the parable was a satirical poke in the ribs at all who are self-righteous or think themselves morally superior. That would include most Presbyterians and, of course, the Pharisees.

In addressing his parable of the lost sheep to Pharisees, Jesus unsettled the distinctions between righteous and unrighteous by considering Pharisees as shepherds whom Pharisees disdained: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep … ?” No self-respecting Pharisee would have even one sheep let alone a hundred. This was as insulting to a Pharisee in that day as it would be to say to someone today, “Which one of you having lost one of your prostitutes would not leave your other ninety-nine prostitutes … ?” The person might respond, “I am no pimp,” just as the Pharisee might say self-righteously, “I am no shepherd!”

In the parable, the shepherd who seeks the lost sheep represents God who seeks the lost sinner. Jesus told the parable to shake us out of our self-righteous complacency. If God can be pictured as a shepherd, we know that God cares for the lowly and the lost. That is the power of the Christmas story when poor and lowly sinners — shepherds — came to Jesus before the wise men. This gives hope to all sinners. Our father John Calvin noted in one of his sermons that shepherds came to Christ before kings. In Jesus Christ, God is the Good Shepherd who saves sinners. Being saved simply means rejoicing and living in the light of this amazing grace.

I know I haven’t treated these texts adequately but we’re out of time. Let me end by going back to Dante, this time quoting from his description of the highest Heaven where he finally sees God as dazzling light.

So dazzling was the splendor of that Ray,
that I must certainly have lost my senses
had I, but for an instant, turned away.[5]

… Oh grace abounding that had made me fit
to fix my eyes on the eternal light
until my vision was consumed in it![6]

There is an amazing insight here. Would not God’s light blind Dante? Or us? Would not we turn away from such light? But Dante said that he would lose his sense had he “but for an instant, turned away.” In other words, we can see things as they really are, we can see ourselves and others as we really are, we can understand the world as it really is, only when we look fully into the light of God’s presence.

I don’t know if the hymn writer Walter Chalmers Smith had Dante’s vision in mind. But the images of his great hymn are the same.

When we look at the light of God we see clearly and know the wonder and joy of being saved by God.

Finally, notice this. I said this sermon was about repentance and I’ve not mentioned it at all. I’ve not mentioned it because repentance is less about what we do in life and mostly about our direction in life. To repent means to turn around, to turn from going our way to going towards the light, towards God. “To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ than to the future and saying, ‘Wow!’”[7] Because when we are repentant people, our future is the glorious light of God.

[1] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed trans.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1950) 3.

[2] The Carlyle translation notes that other moral philosophers expanded Aristotle’s three into seven (indicated by Arabic numbers below). “Opportunists” are in the vestibule inside the Gate of Hell but not in Hell proper or in one of the circles. So Dante’s moral categories are 9 + 1. Opportunists are noted as [0]. The hellish circle is indicated in brackets.

A. Incontinence

Heathen [1]

1. carnality [2]

2. gluttony [3]

3. avarice [4]

4. anger [5]

Heretics [6]

B. Violence or brutishness

5. Violent

a. against neighbor [7]

b. against self [7]

c. against God [7]

C. Fraud or malice

6. Simple

a. seducers and panderers [8]

b. flatterers [8]

c. simonists [8]

d. diviners [8]

e. peculators {embezzlers} [8]

f. hypocrites [8]

g. thieves [8]

h. evil counselors [8]

i. sowers of dissension [8]

j. falsifiers [8]

7. Treacherous

a. against kin [9]

b. against country [9]

c. against hospitality [9]

d. against lords and benefactors [9]

[3] Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Mentor, 1954) 239. The person Dante saw was Bertrand de Born (1140-1215), a great knight and master of the troubadours of Provence. He is said to have instigate a quarrel between Henry II of England and his son Prince Henry, called “The Young King” because he was crowned within his father’s lifetime. This was in the Ninth Ditch of Malebolge, the Eighth Circle.

[4] Kenneth Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) 147.

[5] Ciardi’s notes: “How can a light be so dazzling that the beholder would swoon if he looked away for an instant? Would it not be, rather, in looking at, not away from, the overpowering vision that the viewer’s senses would be overcome? So it would be on earth. But now Dante, with the help of all heaven’s prayers, is in the presence of God and strengthened by all he sees. It is by being so strengthened that he can see yet more. So the passage becomes a parable of grace. Stylistically it once more illustrates Dante’s genius: even at this height of concept, the poet can still summon and invent new perceptions, subtlety exfoliating from subtlety. The simultaneous metaphoric statement, of course, is that no man can lose his good in the vision of God, but only in looking away from it.” (366)

[6] Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Mentor, 1970) 362-363.

[7] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (New York: Harper & Row, 1973) 79.