A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

I’m not sure how to begin. I need to talk about repentance, which, of course, in turn requires me to talk about sin. But that puts me in a bind, because I’m convinced that our sense of what counts as sin, and what should be done about it, is seriously warped and almost entirely untrustworthy. In an earlier draft of this sermon, I said that nothing is more sinful than what we’ve said about sin and what we’ve done in the name of our hatred for sin. I stand by that claim. But on its own, as I had written it, it was too straightforward, I think. It suggested I’m not as confused as you, or at least that you and I are more enlightened than “them.” It’s hard to talk about sin without sinning!

Obviously, we’re all familiar with the traditional language of sin and repentance, forgiveness and obedience. We all know we’re supposed to confess our sins and give thanks to God for his mercy. “There but for the grace of God go I.” But what if our familiarity works against us? What if the ways we’re using the language we’ve received keeps us from discerning what is truly wrong in and between us? Unless I’m badly mistaken, our consciences, yours and mine, have been profoundly malformed by the way we’ve learned Christianity. As a result, what we think and feel and do about sin tends to be radically individualistic, self-absorbed, and naïve. More often than not, we’re concerned about sin, our own or others’, only insofar as it threatens the prosperous, gratifying future we want for ourselves. And we’re concerned about repentance only insofar as it re-secures that future.

But insofar as that is true, we cannot truly turn from our sins until we’ve faced the fact that we’ve used our obedience disobediently, repenting in ways designed to hide the truth, rather than lay it bare. In that earlier draft, I wrote this:

We’ve cared more about appearances than reality, straining at gnats while swallowing camels, obsessing about trivialities while neglecting the weightier matters of the law. In direct contradiction to the wisdom of Scripture, we take part in and benefit from systems that favor the powerful, overlooking or even excusing their abuses.  We allow violence after violence to be done in our name and God’s. We’re nice, but not kind; indulgent, not compassionate; precautious, not tactful; careless, not openhearted; permissive, not forgiving. Instead of hopeful and forbearing, we’ve been punitive and exacting, demanding what God has not required. And instead of feeling real alarm about these sins, and instead of committing ourselves to making right what our wrongs have done, we’ve recoiled in contempt from our neighbors or lashed out at ourselves in disgust—as if God were pleased by our shame and self-loathing.

I’m not sure that’s fair; after I wrote it, it struck me as accusation. But I know this: I don’t know myself well enough to repent as I should; the heart is deceitful above all things. But there is hope, in spite of everything: God tries the heart, seeking out its secrets. Therefore, he can save us from our sins, even the sin of false repentance.

Today’s Psalm reminds us that we’re not made to sin. Doing wrong is bad for us. It pales our humanity, strips us of our dignity. We can’t not do it, but we hate having done it, and we hate having it done to us. Today’s Psalm also reminds us that we sin because we are sinned against. We bear the weight not only our own guilt, but also the guilt of fathers and mothers, the guilt of our ancestors, first to last. We bear the weight of the long history of violence through which our species has evolved. Who knows how this has shaped our consciousness, our perception? Evil has wounded us, as it has wounded all things, at the source, at the heart of our existence. We do not exist as we should in full, unstinted flourishing. We exist in fragments and remains, estranged from ourselves and others. Our depravity arises from the fact that we are deprived of the care we need, the care we deserve, from others. But they too are deprived. And so are the ones who damaged them. So, we’re caught in a trap we cannot escape, sick with a sickness for which there is no cure. This is what it means to be “fallen.” As the Orthodox theologian, Olivier Clément, explains in his remarkable book On Human Being:  

From our own experience and from our observation of others we are aware that human nature is damaged. Damaged, first of all, within each one of us: the “self” is a shadow theater of neurotic characters, and it is they who are pulling our strings instead of the other way about. Our faculties are disunited and out of order. While the rational intelligence is busy making distinctions, the “heart,” in obedience to dark subconscious forces, is obliterating them. We are turned this way and that, lacking any center of balance. Not only are we disunited as individuals, we are the same in relation to each other. Whether we are alone or involved with others, we remain separate and hostile, alone even in our involvement.

That brings me back to the point: we cannot save ourselves from this trouble; we need God to deliver us. Not to overlook our sins, but to see to our renewal, and the renewal of all things. Not to forgive us, merely, but to heal us, to alter our condition so that we can make restitution for our wrongs. We need God to be generous, not permissive; kind, not nice; annihilating everything false in us, everything corrupt or diseased; creating cleanness in us; obliterating all separateness and hostility; and enlivening us with the clarity of his own life, so that we can live as we long to live, as we are meant to live—in perfect mutuality and shared delight.

As we heard in today’s OT reading, God has promised to do exactly that: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33). And the NT reading (Heb. 5:7-10) tells us how God has accomplished it:

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

If we want to be truthful, if we want the truth to transfigure us, we have to attend to the strangeness of these claims. We can’t rush ahead as if we’ve understood what it means to say that Christ’s obedience, learned through suffering, saves us. How could what happened to him make such a difference for us? And are those of us who believe in Jesus’ intercession actually better for believing it?

As Jennifer McBride has observed, the cross tends to function for many in Evangelical circles as a symbol in a doctrinal system, rather than the bodying forth of a way of being in the world. Accordingly, what matters, ultimately, is that I believe in that doctrinal system. God rewards my belief in that system, treating me as if I had obeyed as Jesus obeyed, so that I enjoy the blessings that come with pleasing God. But Jesus’ obedience, suffering, and death are not symbols in a system of belief. If our faith is not a fantasy, then they are the acts of God, constituting a new humanity, a new creation. Jesus, the eternal Son, the Father’s and the Spirit’s equal, takes on “flesh,” assuming as his own our humanity, our creatureliness, infusing it with the clarity and spiritedness of his own life. As Cyril of Alexandria said, he became our “second beginning,” counteracting our disobedience and undoing our abandonment.

Theologically, everything depends on this truth: nothing happens to God; God happens to all things; therefore, what Jesus experienced did not change him but was changed by him. He heals whatever he assumes, and there is nothing he has not assumed. So, when he learned obedience, he did not become more faithful; faithfulness became possible for us. God’s law was written on our hearts by what happened in his. His “loud cries and tears” not only provided an example for us, not only provoked us toward imitation, but enacted a new reality in us. He entered deeply into our sorrows, into the very depths of the depths, far deeper than we dare to imagine, and he generated in those depths a godly sorrow, which “leads to salvation and leaves no regret,” awakening in us God’s own longings, “the readiness to see justice done” (2 Cor. 7:10-11).

Jesus did not sin. He did not repent or ask to be forgiven. But in his obedience, suffering, and death, he opened up a way for us to find ourselves, to return to what it is that makes us whole. As Clement says, love responds to love, and “the awareness of being loved and the response that it unlocks are the only criterion of repentance.” So, when we respond to the call to repent, we do not try to feel sorry for what we’ve done; God does not need to be convinced to pardon our wrongs! Instead, we contemplate Christ’s passion, allowing the sorrow of God to bear us back to our neighbors, to carry us back into the flow of our shared existence, so we can love as we are loved, bringing God’s goodness to bear in the lives of others so they come alive.

Lent, as we know, is a season of repentance. The Ash Wednesday liturgy includes a litany of penitence, which begins with the confession that we’ve not loved as we should and ends with a request: “Accomplish in us the work of your salvation that we may show forth your glory in the world.” When it’s finished, the priest declares this absolution:

Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live, has given power and commandment to his ministers to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. He pardons and absolves all those who truly repent, and with sincere hearts believe his holy Gospel. Therefore we beseech him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do on this day, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy, so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Notice, penitence is essential to restoration. Pardon and absolution do not happen apart from our willingness to face the truth. Turning from our wickedness is inseparable from returning to God. But this is not something we can do on our own; it must be granted to us. And what is granted to us is nothing other than God, the Holy Spirit. In spite of what some of us have been told, then, we’re not forgiven because we repent; we can repent because we’re forgiven. We’re forgiven in such a way that amendment of life becomes possible. Not merely pardoned and absolved, we’re given God’s own nature and character. Time after time, as often as needed, our lives are re-aligned with his, so that we can live as he lives and die as he died. That, and nothing less than that, is what we’re promised.