When Man Repents

When Man Repents

Why this meme resonated with me?

Written by the Panhandling Philosopher

 

 

            The above meme appeared on my Facebook wall, posted by Rev. Kenneth Tanner. In crediting him with being the one who posted this meme which I found enlightening I would also encourage others, if interested to find Kenneth Tanner on Facebook or follow him @kennethtanner on Twitter.

            I am writing this particular blog to describe why this meme resonated with me at this point in time, whereas a few years ago I would likely have thought it represented something of a wishy-washy liberal denial that each and every human being needs to repent individually of their sins. Today I see this as something at the core of what it means to bear our burdens while also bearing one another’s burdens. Just as importantly today I see repentance not only as something I do in response to Christ’s Gospel, but the work of Christ which I enter when I am called to repent, believe, and follow Christ. So let me explain a few changes in my perspective that have brought me to this point where I see these words by Zacharias of Essex and find myself saying with a loud reply, “YES. AMEN.”

            The first truth to be thought about in connection to this meme; is to ask ourselves how do we imagine the work of repentance to which a Christian is called. I think for many of us we think of repentance as an individual’s independently chosen response to the call of the Gospel. We hear a message and are called upon to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Simple isn’t it? But maybe it is not as simple as that. Maybe our repentance has always been meant to be connected to the work of repentance which Christ began for us and which Christ will complete within us.

            Think of John the Baptist’s ministry. He came to Israel to prepare the way for Messiah. He proclaimed repentance and baptized a baptism of repentance. Along with his ministry of baptism for repentance he proclaimed that one was coming who was greater than he was. The day came when that expected one came to John in the waters of baptism. Jesus prepared himself to be baptized by John. John paused. He knew Jesus was the one. Jesus did not need baptized by him. John was the one who needed baptized by or into Jesus. He paused. Did Jesus really mean to be baptized in John’s baptism? Jesus told him that it was necessary to bring about all righteousness.

          We need to realize how our repentance is connected to Jesus’ taking on the work of repentance for us.

            There is a simple reason Jesus wanted to be baptized. He was being baptized into repentance on our behalf. The call of the Gospel that calls upon us to take up the work of repentance is issued to us as an invitation to enter into Jesus' work of repenting on our behalf. We enter that work as followers and co-laborers and participants in his work of redemption. This should influence how we regard baptism and repentance. We do not repent as people independently responding to the Gospel by concentrating on our works of repentance; rather we find our work of repentance in following Christ who is now the focus of attention as we seek God. We enter a work of repentance initiated by Christ that we enter into. It will be worked out in us until it will be completed by him in the day of Christ's exaltation. The Christian call to repent is itself a gracious call to find our repentance in Christ's determination to repent on behalf of our sin stained humanity.

            There is something more we should consider.

 The sin for which there needs to be repenting is a sin that exceeds individual dimensions. Sin has entered our humanity both individually and corporately in connection with the whole of humanity.

            God created us in his image. Within Christianity we recognize that part of being created in God’s image is that God is Trinitarian. He exists simultaneously as one and many. He is one God revealed in three everlasting persons. We believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; who are one. Yes it is a mystery. But the mystery extends to our creation. God, according to the Scriptures created Adam and then from Adam formed Eve. They were made; she from him that the two might become one. From their union as one came all the descendants we know as humanity. Perhaps this happened historically exactly as expressed, or perhaps this is a literary story conveying a truthful representation of the human story. Whichever it might be, the Bible is telling us that God created us, in our humanity for unity within humanity, as well as for individuality. We as human beings are interconnected and are created for and from a human union. In the New Testament this is expressed not only in marriage, but more ultimately in the union of Christ and the Church. Think of what it means for our human unity to have been subjected to the presence and reality of sin.

            Jesus told us of the sin of tying millstones upon another. Our sins are not merely individual. Adam’s sin has affected us. My sin affects others. Other sins have complicated my life and have given me tendencies towards the sins which were present in shaping my life. W.H. Auden in his brilliant poem regarding the beginning of World War II entitled “September 1, 1939” describes this phenomenon so well. He is describing how one day the historians would show how the madness of 1930’s Germany could be traced to Luther, but on September 1, 1939 Auden could only relate to the news of war thinking of a truth that children were taught to learn. Auden writes: “I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn, those to whom evil is done do evil in return.” Do we understand his words? The presence of evil shapes us and we struggle against a multiple headed serpent when we seek to repent from sin. We struggle with the sins that we imagine, the sins we choose, the sins which we imagine are ours individually. But we also struggle with the sins that have been imposed upon us in our being shaped by life. Furthermore we must repent not only for the sins we have done, but the sins which having gone out from our being have now become the millstone that shaped another person's sins. There is no fine line dividing individual from corporate sin, both have overcome us. Both need repentance. We speak only of individual sins only because we know we are incapable of offering a repentance to absolve us or our communities of our communal sins. But Jesus has come into the world and has entered John's baptism of repentance to fulfill the needs of righteousness.

            Jesus took on the work of repentance as the second Adam. He alone, as the second Adam, as the fullness of humanity from which a redeemed humanity shall be drawn forth from the water and blood of his wounded side; He alone is the fullness of humanity capable of repenting fully for both individual and collective human iniquity.

            That is perhaps the understanding that Zacharias of Essex drew upon in his understanding of the work of repentance. Repentance is something bigger than any of us can offer to God in our individual persons. Repentance is something that has to be connected to the Jesus who bowed down before John the Forerunner and entered the work of repentance for our lost humanity and for our individual needs as well as that of our collective humanity. He took upon himself the work of repenting for the whole Adam and for the whole of creation. He is the only who could do so. But when we are called to repent and believe and be baptized into him, we are called to enter that same work of repentance as his followers and co-laborers. We enter repentance not only for our individual sins but for the whole Adam and for the whole of creation. This repentance is worthy of the work of a great Savior who is the divine presence of God, who has made his eternal home in the humanity that was created as the image of God.

 

An encouragement for seekers

An Encouragement for Seekers

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            A few days ago I had a wonderful but brief online conversation with someone who described his/her self as a seeker. I thought about how seldom it is that people today regard themselves as seekers. In many of my circles the idea of one being a seeker is used to describe someone before they have come to a settled belief. But I think that may well be an artificial understanding of a seeker. Perhaps we ought to think of seeking using the idea of a tree whose branches stretch out seeking sunlight for photosynthesis and whose roots reach down and out for the nutrients and water of the soil. As long as a tree is living it is stretching and reaching for what it needs. Surely in the spiritual life, it is the nature of something spiritually alive to hunger and thirst and to seek. But I do understand that still we will often talk of one who is seeking as the one who has not yet come to a firm conviction regarding the one in whom they will have faith. After having the conversation I realized that I have never blogged on the subject of seeking. I thought that perhaps this conversation was in some ways an incentive for me to write on seeking.

            I suppose I could write on how one should seek. I would write about reading the Scriptures, especially reading the Gospels where one reads about Jesus. I could mention setting aside time for prayer. I could encourage one to seek to do the things they know they should be doing, like loving God, trying to be thankful for every blessing big or small, learning to grow in love towards God and neighbor. Finding a church where it seems like the preaching is teaching one about Christ and where the people seem to love one another. All of these things seem to be things that people do when they begin to earnestly seek after God. But mostly, what is on my heart is to convey an encouraging word about what people find who seek after God and find him. It seems that time and time again what people find is that when they seek God and find God, they find a God who knows us inside and out because he has been seeking us from before the time we began to think about seeking him.

            Maybe this shouldn’t be surprising to us. In our Western world where Christianity has had an impact for centuries there are few phrases that encourage us to seek after God, after meaning in life, after values, etc. than the phrase “Seek and you shall find.” But sometimes we don’t think of what it meant that the one who spoke those words was Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one, whom the Bible tells us came to seek and to save, to heal, to redeem. If we take those two thoughts together that Jesus came to seek and to save and that he has called upon us with a promise to “Seek and you shall find” we discover a beautiful liturgical response dance in the theme of seeking. Jesus leads off the dance, seeking and courting his future bride. He has come to seek and to save. He dances before us and now he looks toward us and wants to know our hearts in this matter and says “Seek and you shall find.” That makes it our turn to dance. He has drawn near to dance on our behalf and we will now answer back by seeking him in our dance. Perhaps this is an overly romantic way of describing the relationship between Jesus coming into our world to find and seek us and his then turning to us and calling upon us therefore to seek and we will find. But the idea perhaps with a bit less romance seems to be expressed in two people’s lives who had encounters with Jesus. Their different stories are told in the Gospel of John.

            In John chapter one, after Jesus is baptized he begins to call disciples to follow him. A disciple was someone who followed Jesus, studied his teachings, spent his life with Jesus, and accepted his call to be an apprentice relearning the art of life from the Master. One of the new disciples called by Jesus was a disciple named Philip. Philip had a friend named Nathanael and Philip went and found Philip and told him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” (John 1:46) Nathanael could tell that Philip was elated with what he believed he had discovered but he seems a little more skeptical. He asks “Could anything good come out of Nazareth?” There are theories why Nathanael had such a low view of Nazareth, but perhaps the most obvious question someone might ask about a messiah coming from Nazareth was why the Messiah sent by God would come from such a small village where few people would ever meet him. I came from about a mile outside a village with approximately 13 homes in the village. We would never think of someone great and important, the one who would be the central figure of history coming from our little village of common people. We would think that God would have set this person down in a great city or a city with great historical importance that pointed to such a figure. Not Manville, not Nazareth, can anything exceptionally good come from this village?

            Nathanael went with Philip to investigate Philip’s claim. As Nathanael approached Jesus, Jesus said “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” Nathanael must have thought he fit this description and he replied, “How do you know me?” That is when Nathanael had an answer that made him feel he knew this was the one he was looking for. Jesus said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree I saw you.” Such knowledge was too wonderful for Nathanael to dismiss. Nathanael confessed that Jesus was the one, the Messiah, the Son of God.” Whatever it was that Nathanael was doing under the fig tree, the fact that Jesus mentioned it was understood by Nathanael as indicating that Jesus knew him in his inner being.

 

“Before Philip called you,

When you were under the fig tree,

I saw you.”

 

            A similar story is told about a very different person in the fourth chapter of John. Jesus decided that he needed to take the direct route from Judea to Galilee, directly through Samaria. Most Jewish travelers avoided Samaria. But Jesus decided on this occasion to go right through Samaria. He reaches the town where it was understood that the well the villagers used was a well that Jacob of the Old Testament had dug. Jesus was traveling alone, as he sent his disciples to get supplies. He came to the well where a Samaritan woman was drawing water and Jesus asked her if he could have some water.

            The Samaritan woman was curious why Jesus, a Jewish man was asking her for water, since Jewish men usually didn’t converse with Samaritan women. Jesus told her that if she knew who it was speaking to her, she would ask him for living water. He told her he offered living water that would spring up to eternal life.” She perhaps thought of him as some elixir salesman and said “Sir, give me this water so I won’t have to come to this well again.” At this point Jesus said to her, “Go get your husband.” She told him she had no husband and he told her that she was speaking honestly for she had had five husbands, but the man she was with now was not her husband. With this she accepted that he was a prophet.

            I am not sure how comfortable she was at this point in time. She would tell others how Jesus told all that she had done in life. It wasn’t the way she probably wanted to think about herself. Perhaps at this point she felt unworthy, or perhaps free not to have to pretend she wasn’t anyone but who she was. She eventually reached a point where she said the one thing that she seemed to know from the faith. She said, “I know that Messiah is coming, and when he comes he will teach us all things.” It was at that very point after he had told her about what she would call all things in her life that he said to her in a way that gave her new hope in life – “I who speak to you am he.”

 

She said,

“I know Messiah is coming,

 and he will teach us all things.”

And He said to her,

“I who speak to you am He.”

            In both of these person’s encounters with Jesus, they discovered that as they sought to figure out who Jesus was, they discovered that he was the one who had known them from before the time they had known anything about him. He was the one who had known all about them and had been looking forward to the opportunity to converse with them and to bring to them the abundance of life that God had always intended for us when he planned our creation. Seek and you shall find. You shall find him who from the moment of your creation has been seeking you. He is the one who has said to you, “Seek and you shall find.”