Back to Center

Lenten Vespers, Week Five: Repentance

Reading: Mark 1:4-15

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance. —Luther, 95 Theses

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Over the last five weeks, we have discussed the great pillars of Lent: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, as well as the importance of reading the Holy Scriptures. Tonight I want to look at the theme that binds them all together: repentance.

Repentance has kind of a negative, moralistic connotation to it. “Stop doing bad. Start doing good. Or else!” And certainly there’s something to that. Certainly we as Christians are called to be Christ for one another and for our neighbor in his need. The Old Testament condemns stealing, adultery, and murder, while the New condemns selfishness, lust, and hatred. The Gospel doesn’t do away with moral law. If anything, it calls us to a higher and a purer moral law.

But the root of that word “repent” doesn’t simply call us to guilt or regret. It literally means to be brought near again, to be called close again. To repent is to be turned, turned away from the false and ephemeral, turned back to God in Christ Jesus. We might think of it as re-centering, coming to our senses, coming to ourselves again.

Why do we fast? So that we can know that spiritual needs, spiritual strengths, are just as important as physical needs, physical strengths; indeed, more so.

Why do we pray? So that we can experience what is truly real, truly true, beyond the distractions and diversions of this frenetic, fallen world.

Why do we give alms? So that we can cease loving things and using people, and begin again to use things in order to love people.

Why do we read? So that we can find our place in the great Story of God’s love for His people, the Word of God speaking to us here today.

All of it has to do with coming back, coming home, to God. It is a return to our Baptism, washing away the dirt and the dross of the accruing years, drowning everything within us that is not properly ours, is not properly God’s. And then we rise from those waters, rise from that tomb, having been reborn and remade, one now with Christ, one with His people, one now with God who has called us from nothing and made us His daughters and sons.

I hope that these 40 days have brought you closer to the God who draws nears us in Christ. I pray that any disciplines or fasts you’ve undertaken have strengthened your spirit and your soul. My own paltry attempts have produced mixed results. Maybe you didn’t manage as well as you’d intended. Maybe the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. Maybe you never got around to observing Lent as you’d hoped.

Little matter. Christ comes to us all the same. When we will not be turned to Him, when we as sheep have gone astray, He turns Himself to us, bends His brow from Heaven to earth, and seeks us out as a Shepherd seeks His flock, as a Mother Hen gathers Her chicks, as a Father runs out to rejoice at the return of His prodigal son. Lent is not about what we would do for Christ. That comes later. Lent is about what Christ has done and is yet doing for each and every one of us: creating, redeeming, forgiving, suffering, dying, rising, conquering, claiming us all as His Bride, His own.

He is not far. He is closer to us than our own jugular. All we must do is turn—or rather, must be turned—to see again the face of God, to know His love, to gain His life.

Come back to yourself. Come back to your center. Come back to Christ. When He is the center, all things come together. Repent, and believe the Good News.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.