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April 26, 2009 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Repentance Won’t Kill You
(But It Might Hurt a Little)

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

1 John 3:1–10
Luke 24:36–49

“And he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

Luke 24:46–47 (NRSV)

The family needs a home, a fit environment in which to develop its proper relationships. For the human family, this home is the Earth, the environment that God the Creator has given us to inhabit with creativity and responsibility.

Pope Benedict XVI

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I’ve never seen a ghost. I know people who claim that they have, but I’ve never seen one. I met a vampire in New Orleans last year, and while that is an interesting story for another time, I didn’t see any ghosts while I was down there.

When I was young, I went back and forth between being genuinely frightened at the prospect of seeing a ghost to genuinely wanting to see one. But as I’ve grown older, I suppose I’ve grown more and more skeptical about the existence of ghosts. Yet as a person of faith who knows that there are a lot of things out there that aren’t easily explained, I guess I still keep an open mind about ghosts.

But it seems that ghosts are somewhat passé these days anyway. Recent horror movies and fantasy books typically turn to much more interesting—or at least more sexy—monsters than ghosts. The popularity of the Twilight books and the HBO show True Blood brought vampires back into vogue over the past few years. But according to a recent article in Time magazine, even vampires have been eclipsed. “Zombies are the new vampires” and the “official monster[s] of the recession,” claims the entertainment essay by Lev Grossman (“Zombies Are the New Vampires,” Time, 20 April 2009). The pervasive presence of zombies in our popular culture—from books to movies to video games—says something about our current times, he argues. Zombies evoke both the dehumanization of the wars we fight and the faceless, unstoppable forces out there that threaten to consume us by eating our brains or, perhaps, our 401(k)s.

Not only this, we find that zombies fit perfectly with today’s focus on Earth Day. “[W]hat monster could be better suited to our current level of ecological anxiety?” writes Grossman. “Zombies are biodegradable, locally sourced, and sustainable—they’re made of 100 percent recycled human.” Who could ask for anything more? Perhaps, then, zombies are also the official monsters of Earth Day.

Surely such twenty-first century musings were far from the minds of the disciples when they encountered the resurrected Jesus, mistaking him not for a zombie (which would actually be a pretty good fit) but for a ghost, in their quaint first-century way. Had they only known how popular—and environmentally friendly—zombies would become in our day and age, my Earth Day sermon on the resurrected Jesus would be a slam dunk.

But, alas, we’re going to have to work for it a little bit this morning.

Which is, I suppose, the way it should be. The disciples themselves had to work at it. Time and time again in the stories of Jesus we find in the Gospels that they just don’t get it, or at best they are slow to finally catch on. Such is the case in today’s story, a story that deals with some pretty heavy theological stuff.

First of all, of course, just two weeks after Easter we are still trying to make sense of the whole resurrection thing, just as the disciples were doing in those first days after the first Easter. This particular story in Luke is at pains to prove that Jesus’ resurrected body was just that: an actual body and not just a vision or a spirit. By inviting them to touch him and then eating in their presence, Jesus gives the disciples proof of his physical resurrection and tries to calm their fears.

But why does this matter? Why is it so important that Jesus’ resurrected body is real?

The physics and mechanics of resurrection aren’t really the main point here. We can speculate all we want about the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body and, by extension, the nature of the general resurrection that the Bible points to in our own future. And I’m sure that there are some among us who question the historicity of these miraculous stories in the first place.

But these are not the issues I want to focus on this morning. Beyond questions of history (which we can never prove anyway) or arcane speculation about resurrection (which seems somewhat irrelevant in light of the more immediate problems of the world), what’s most important here is the theological claim that salvation is not about disembodied souls that go off to heaven after their bodies die. The good news of salvation we discover in Jesus is very much about the real, material world that we live in. It is about this physical place we call our home. It is about flesh-and-blood human beings, people who hunger and thirst and feel pain.

It has always been a temptation for the church to focus on otherworldly matters and thereby ignore the realities of the world in which we live. From ancient times to the present, some Christians are so focused on spiritual things that the material world is viewed as nothing more than a temporary holding place until we arrive at the “real” world beyond. But this is a mistake. This way of thinking ignores the goodness of God’s creation. This way of thinking denies the truth that God created us as whole beings—body and soul.

The biblical doctrines of Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection ground the gospel in the material world. When God is revealed to us in the person of Jesus, it is precisely as flesh and blood. When the crucified Jesus is redeemed from death, that too is as flesh and blood.

Friends, that’s some Earth Day theology we can sink our teeth into. Finally, after many years of neglect, the church is joining the worldwide environmental movement. In recent years, mainline churches like ours, evangelical churches, and the Roman Catholic church have all come together to proclaim that the earth is the Lord’s and that we have been charged to care for it. Salvation isn’t about escape from this world. Salvation is about the redemption of this world. That is what God is calling us to be a part of.

But this resurrection account from Luke doesn’t stop there. After Jesus shows his disciples that he is still flesh and blood—like them still, yet also different—he goes on to teach them the scriptures one last time. In Luke’s story, according to Jesus’ interpretation of the Bible, these things that have happened to him were ordained by God, written into the prophecies of ancient Israel, and revealed through his life, death, and resurrection.

Then Jesus goes one step further: it is not enough to just understand these things—a challenge in and of itself, to be sure—but we are also called by God to proclaim the good news of repentance and forgiveness of sins. This brings Jesus’ message full circle. He began out in the wilderness with John the Baptist, who was preaching repentance and forgiveness. He now finishes his time on earth by charging his disciples to carry on that message, to proclaim it in his name and in his place.

It strikes me as remarkably significant that these are essentially Jesus’ last words in the Gospel of Luke. “Go out and proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins.”

We don’t talk about repentance all that much in churches like ours. I’m not sure that if I were to summarize the gospel as I’ve heard it proclaimed in Presbyterian churches that repentance would be all that central. We’re all about acceptance and grace and forgiveness, but not so big on repentance. Yet this is the very thing that Jesus specifically tells us to go out and proclaim.

No doubt our aversion to preaching repentance comes from our negative reactions to those Bible-thumping fire-and-brimstone preachers out there that give Christianity a bad name. You know the ones I’m talking about. They get all red-faced and angry talking about sin—or at least their narrow definitions of sin—and tend to leave their followers feeling guilty and paranoid. Their message is harsh and off-putting. They love biblical passages like the one we heard earlier from 1 John, passages that suggest a deceptively simple black-and-white view of the world: you’re either a sinner or saint; you’re either a child of God or a child of the devil; you’re either with us or against us. Then—as scandals become more and more difficult to hide in our media age—when it turns out that they are sinners too, just like us, it makes us all look like hypocrites and frauds.

But that’s not what this is about. Far from it. Proclaiming repentance is about recognizing the pervasive power of sin in the world and the reality that each and every one of us is implicated in that sin.

Sin is anything that runs counter to the way of God. Through the study of scripture and the discernment of how the Spirit is moving in the world today, we have a pretty good idea what God’s way is. Proclaiming repentance is about reminding ourselves that we are not always following that way and about making a course correction to get back on track.

Two weeks ago we confirmed our eighth graders at the Easter Vigil. As part of their public profession of faith, they were asked to answer three questions. The first of those questions was this: “Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?” That is what repentance is all about. Repentance is about recognizing the presence and power of sin in the world, turning away from that, and turning toward God. Yet even more than simply turning toward the way of God, repentance is actually walking down that difficult path.

Forgiveness is easy. Repentance is hard. It’s easy to come in here each week and to seek forgiveness. It is easy to confess our sins. The hard part is doing something about it. Yet that is what God is calling us to do. When we seek God’s forgiveness, our burdens are lifted, but we still have responsibility. What God is looking for in our lives is transformation. That is the way that we participate in the redemption of the world. The resurrected Christ is a testament to the truth that redemption is possible. Christ’s call to repentance is the way we get there.

It’s not hard to see the possibilities and opportunities for this kind of redeeming repentance in our world. Just look at the economic crisis we’re facing. While there is certainly plenty of finger-pointing and scapegoating happening in our political theater, there’s little question about what got us where we are: unchecked greed and overconsumption. Now that there is finally some public recognition of this, the question is, what happens now? Do we have the discipline and courage to actually change our ways?

Or today, as we celebrate Earth Day, what are we really willing to change about the ways we live our lives? It’s not just enough to come here on one Sunday a year to recognize Earth Day if we go right back out there and live our lives as usual. Of what value is our belief in God’s good creation if we won’t take action to participate in the redemption of God’s world?

Confession is easy. True repentance is difficult. We use a lot of disposable cups and plates in this church. Those of us that work here are well aware of the contribution this faith community makes to landfill waste. Just this week we learned in our staff meeting that it would double our paper goods budget if we transitioned from foam cups and plates to something more sustainable. It would probably double our volunteer needs to use and wash real china. Are either of these options something we are willing to do? Are we willing to sacrifice something from our lives for the greater good?

On this and on so many other fronts, the church needs to be leading our culture rather than trailing behind and trying to catch up. At the very center of our good news is the concept of repentance, so we better start doing some repenting ourselves.

At least on the environmental front, the Roman Catholic church is doing it. Pope Benedict has been called the “Green Pope,” and the Vatican has become remarkably progressive in this regard. Ancient buildings have been fitted with solar panels. Granted, it is quite small, but the Vatican is the world’s only sovereign state that is carbon-neutral (“The Green Pope,” Newsweek, 17 April 2008). Friends, here’s a little Reformation table turning: if the Catholic church can change, surely we can change too.

But Earth Day and environmentalism is only the tip of this melting iceberg. Look anywhere around you and you know that we live in a world in need of redemption. Look in your own heart and you know that you’re in need of redemption too, just like me, just like every one of us. You don’t need a red-faced preacher to tell you that. Today Jesus teaches us that the way to that redemption is true repentance.

“Thus it is written,” says Jesus, “that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to these things.”

And so we are. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church