repentance | this is eric case

The second word I want to take a look at is laden with all sorts of negative connotations. I don’t know about you, but my university came with its own street preacher (remarkably free-of-charge). His favorite place was on the median of University Avenue in Fort Worth, where he was free to ply his trade:

“WHORES!”

“FORNICATORS!”

“SODOMITES!”

How pleasant. A great way to wake up on your way to your afternoon geology class.

“Repent” is a word that seems to be usually associated with fundamentalist street preachers: they scream at people to repent so that they won’t be burned up in the fires of hell. The way they use it, it’s a challenging and divisive word that puts people decisively on the defensive. Ears are closed, boundaries go up, and dialogue is unthinkable.

In this paradigm, when Jesus shows up in Mark 1 and says—before anything else—“Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand,” the subtext or paraphrase is something like this: “Everyone better believe in my death and resurrection (which, um, hasn’t happened yet) or I’m gonna burn you all of you suckas up with … fiyahhhhhh!”

In this view, Jesus’ main agenda is to find people to condemn.

Except that doesn’t really seem to be the way Jesus operates. By contrast, the common people seem to really like Jesus, and for his part he seems to be quite gentle with people who, by all accounts, are complete moral failures. Rather, Jesus reserves his “condemnation” for folks who are actually the religious elite who have it all together and have all the answers.

Ironically, they would probably rather resemble my street preacher friend.

So what does Jesus mean by “repent”? The Apostle Paul says it too; what does he mean? (Surely Paul will back the fundamentals: everyone knows that Paul wanted to throw people into hell for not believing in Jesus’ atoning death.)

The word repent is actually a really rich and powerful word. The Greek word is metanoia. Perhaps the most literal translation is change your mind, but a better way to translate it might be, “reconsider your life” or “think differently about reality.”

In the context of Jesus’ statement in Mark 1 (or similarly in Matthew 4), you could paraphrase his statement like this:

Hey the Kingdom of God is here and available to EVERYONE—even the spiritual losers (check the Beatitudes)—so think about your reality differently. You can live your life now completely differently, with transcendent and life-giving spiritual power. You don’t have to live the way you’ve been living; You don’t have to be trapped by the things that have trapped you. It’s available now.

Now, this doesn’t mean that “repentance” doesn’t come with a cost. To really change one’s mind about reality, one needs to jettison the programs that we have grown up with; our knee-jerk (and often unhealthy) reactions to others’ efforts to control or dominate us. This is certainly difficult, and costly.

But then again, culture’s patterns of addiction and unhealthy obsession would seem to indicate that not repenting has its costs as well. In fact, one could make an argument that living with our compulsive spending, eating, and medicating is a form of death.

So indeed, repent or die: just not in the way you think.

Hey! You can also read “Words: Good News”

5 Day Pressure Forecast, Public Domain www.wikipedia.org

5 Day Pressure Forecast, Public Domain http://www.wikipedia.org

A couple of my favorite “odd” history books were written by a guy named Erik Durschmied. One was called The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History. The other book was called The Weather Factor: How Nature Has Changed History. Both were about how seemingly “unrelated things” (random chance or weather patterns) can forever and unalterably change the course of history.

Before Jesus is crucified, he tells his followers that he is going to send them another “counselor” who will help them in a variety of ways (John 14-15). He’s talking here about the Holy Spirit, who comes in fantastic power in Acts 2, and at that point takes up residence in God’s people (the church). If you read Acts, and even most of Paul, you find that the Holy Spirit is really the thing for us today. It’s the presence of Jesus with us (and in us!), and is the power for the church to achieve his work in the world.

When the Spirit is at work in our lives, we are able to see more, be more, and do more than we would otherwise. As Paul says, this is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.

And we have access to that.

Wha?

Sadly, it seems that most of us don’t even approach that level of power and freedom in our lives. Instead, we limp around in our sins, content to screw up, confess, and repent, and wonder when (or better yet, if) we will ever “get better” and be able to live a life that we see occasionally in the New Testament: a life that can suffer gracefully, that can forgive lavishly, that can give freely, that can dream radically.

Where do we start to get that kind of life?

Recently, I heard a professor give this metaphor.

One of the Biblical images (and words) for the Spirit is “wind” (Hebrew ruach). Now, Wind has a pretty peculiar, but somewhat predictable, behavior. Weather systems are made up of “high pressure” and “low pressure” systems; these variable levels of pressure force weather and wind around the environment in a constantly moving and evolving system.

Now here’s the interesting part…

Weather, or “wind”, always flows from “high pressure to “low pressure. The absence of volume, or pressure causes air to flow—sometimes quite intensely—into the area of low pressure.

If you want the wind to flow into your life, you have to create a low pressure atmosphere in your life.

So, what creates low pressure atmosphere?

You have to get rid of what’s occupying the space.

You have to get rid of yourself.

Self—our ego, our preoccupations, our demands, our agendas, etc., etc.—keeps our lives in a “high pressure situation.” There’s simply no room for the Spirit to come in.

This is repentance on a whole different level.

This a willing abandonment of our need for security, esteem, approval, and anything else apart from God.

Confess your sins? Yes.

Repent? Yes. Absolutely, but make sure your repentance involves an abandonment of your ego, and your demand to have your way in the world.

Then the wind can come in. Then the Spirit flows in. It’s as if God says, Finally, this is something—someone—I can work with.