This morning, I’d like you to get out hair coats, your sack cloth and ashes, and put them on because I am going to talk about repentance. I did think of growing my hair and coming up here with locusts and honey to eat, but I couldn’t find any. Even though it is Lent, locusts seem to be out of season.
My primary message is that for repentance to have any meaning it must be sincere. Let’s see what the connection is between that message and the parable from Luke that I read this morning.
Fig trees and vineyards which could bear fruit but are barren are a common theme amongst the prophets in the Old Testament and Jesus’ disciples and those listening to him would have understood the allusion. The fig trees or the vines which don’t bear fruit, as an analogy for people who don’t behave according to God’s edicts through the prophets, usually suffered a pretty dismal ending. Isaiah says “let it go to waste” and Hosea said “woe betide them when I turn away from them”, meaning when God lost patience. In a different context, Joel says “they have laid waste my vines and left my fig trees broken”. In the New Testament, Matthew in his Gospel says, “The axe lies ready at the roots of the trees; every tree that fails to produce good fruit is cut down and thrown on the fire.” In the Gospels, the “good fruit” from the fig tree is repentance.
Before we think about repentance, what about fig trees planted in vineyards? What is a fig tree doing in a vineyard? It is common enough to find olive trees in and around vineyards because they both require similar ground and climate. Olive oil is often a product in the same regions as you find grapes and wine. I remember visiting one vineyard and the olive oil was for sale right beside the wine. But what was a fig tree doing in the vineyard? A fig tree would be the odd man out, something unusual in a crowd. It is not stretching a point too much in this secular and at the same time pluri-religious society to say that the declared Christian is the oddity. Cheryl and I are going to my Godson’s confirmation later this month and his response when he heard we were coming was “Oh good, you are the only people coming who actually have any religious faith!” I don’t know if that is literally true, but it says a lot. So let’s think of ourselves as fig trees!
So if the fig trees are Christians, what is the good fruit? In this case, the good fruit is repentance. And what is repentance? I looked it up in the source of all accurate information, Google. There are many definitions available but the one I thought was the most appropriate for this morning was quite long. Repentance is and I quote “Turning away from sin by changing one's actions to obey the teachings of Jesus Christ.” Ok, I understand that; it’s pretty general. But it continues “The repentance process consists of feeling sincere regret or sorrow for doing wrong, confessing the sins, asking for forgiveness, making restitution for any damage done, and promising not to repeat the sin.” End quote.
That’s quite a lot to achieve. However, we do have some leeway. Firstly, the owner of the vineyard looses patience only after three years. And then the gardener obtains another year of respite for the fig tree. So we have some time to get our behaviour straight, to get our house in order.
I remember a woman who came to one of the Musical Celebration services at Holy Trinity a while ago. After the service, she came up to me and asked to be kept in touch, as she wanted to come to the services and get more involved. When I sent her the notice of the next service I heard nothing, and I heard nothing from her for quite some time. Then, when I sent out the schedule at the beginning of the next year, she wrote back saying that her life was a bit of a mess but to keep sending her the information because when she got it together she would be back. About two weeks ago, as a result of an e-mail about the Boken Report, she re-surfaced saying now she had some specifics to contribute and when could we talk.
Sometimes, patience can be the most important factor in re-establishing a relationship with someone, whether it’s in the church or not. And sometimes we need to nurture like the gardener, digging around and fertilising until the other person is ready to come back into the relationship, with you or with God. The woman from the Musical Celebration just needed a contact every now and then to nurture her desire to get involved with the church again.
The repentance process consists of feeling sincere regret for doing wrong, confessing the sin, asking for forgiveness, making restitution for any damage done, and promising not to repeat the sin.
Last year in one of my sermons in Holy Trinity I said that my mother always told me that if I broke something and told her, she would not be angry, not matter how valuable it was. If I did not tell her, she would be angry no matter how inexpensive it was. That’s a start because acknowledging the wrongdoing is the beginning. It is hard to be remorseful if you don’t acknowledge the act as being wrong. And acknowledging it to yourself is the first step to confessing or owning up to the wrong act.
Does it matter if anyone else knows? Do we have to tell anyone else? I think that’s a judgement call and depends on the circumstances. If no-one else has been hurt either because no-one else is involved or because those who could be hurt don’t know, then maybe no, no-one else need know. But the acknowledgment, the regret and the confession all have to be genuine.
If others have been hurt then I think it is whole other story. It is hard to see how you can resolve your regret without talking to those you hurt. Tiger Woods seems repentant but the genuineness of it is known only to him and those close to him! We are all capable of a public relations repentance in which we seek forgiveness from others without necessarily feeling real remorse, so we should be careful with our criticisms and judgement.
The last two steps in repentance process are tough; making restitution and promising not to repeat. Let’s go back to Tiger and the example of cheating a spouse, not that this applies only to Tiger. If it happens once and remorse is genuine, then forgiveness by God is possible (and, who knows, maybe by the spouse, but I am on dangerous ground here!) But if it happens again and again, not only does forgiveness by the spouse become less and less likely but so does forgiveness by God. You cannot just say “Well, I’m sorry” and then do it again. It doesn’t work that way. In the end the fig tree will get cut down if it doesn’t bear fruit.
This is what makes it so hard for people like Earl Jones, Bernie Madoff and the Norburg guy whose name I forget for the moment, people who have committed financial crimes which robbed people of their savings and in some cases their pensions. They reduced the life styles of hundreds or even thousands of people. Feeling sincere regret for doing wrong, confessing the sin, asking for forgiveness and promising not to repeat the sin in a case like that would probably lead to, at least, a guilty plea in court. Making restitution for the damage done is pretty much impossible.
Now what about the fruits that the fig tree was supposed to produce? How do we feel when we are genuinely sorrow or remorseful for something we did? And we owned up to ourselves or to someone else. And we made restitution, whatever that was. And we really meant that we would not do it again. What might the fruits be? From the hymn we just sang, seeds grow to “fruits of love” and “the fruits of peace and joy”.
We feel relief. A burden has been lifted from our backs. Instead of walking around like an ox bent over by its yoke, we can stand up straight again, metaphorically speaking. There is lightness in our step, a sign of spring in our attitude. Just like we are feeling these days, with the bright sunshine and gleaming snow. We look to the future with joy.
Relief also brings peace. Our hearts are calmer instead of turbulent, pounding a mile a minute through fear of being caught or the tension of deciding what to do. It is much easier to love when we have joy and peace.
Let’s scale down the sin a bit to something more everyday. How about you are supposed to take the dog for a long walk while your spouse is out because it has not been out all week. Instead you watch the hockey game or your favourite series and have a beer or a glass of wine. Not that I have ever done this, but I can imagine that it might happen. You know you’re going to get it when you spouse comes home. So do you come clean, genuinely repent and mean you won’t do it again, catch hell from your spouse but forgiveness from God. Or do you lie? Your spouse is happy, you look skywards and wink, but you know that although you have avoided catching it from your partner, all is not right.
In summary then, the repentance process consists of acknowledging a wrongdoing, feeling sincere regret, confessing the sin, asking for forgiveness, making restitution for any damage done, and promising not to repeat whatever you did wrong. Without all of these, repentance is hollow. But with them, there is relief, peace and joy.
Amen
Hugh Mitchell
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