Time for a Change
Matthew 4:12-2
by Dr. David Rogne

Every year on Good Friday, the role of Christ bearing his cross to Calvary is reenacted in the village of Sartene, Corsica.  This has been going on ever since the Middle Ages, and it always draws a big crowd of villagers and thousands of tourists who come for the occasion.  Several years ago Newsweek magazine reported on what it called one of the world's most brutally powerful Easter Week processions.  They wrote:  "A grotesque lump of a man . . . . barefoot, masked in a blood-red hood with eye-slits . . . . staggered under the weight of a massive oak cross.  From his right ankle dragged a clanking, thirty-one-pound chain . . . . (He) grunted and puffed as he bore the cross along a mile-and-a-half route . . . . As he stumbled along dirt paths and darkened, cobbled streets, his bare feet began to bleed.  Three times he fell under his burden, and each time a fellow penitent, playing the part of Simon of Cyrene, whispered fiercely:  'Get up!  You asked for this!'

"The hooded figure was that of a conscience-stricken French sinner whose identity was known only to the local priest.  From wherever he had come, the man was there voluntarily to atone for his sins by enacting the role of Christ making his way to Calvary.  So popular is the part that it is booked solid for the next forty years by applicants from as far away as Madagascar.  The list includes gamblers, adulterers, ex-convicts . . . . all seeking peace of mind."

This event serves to illustrate what we already know, that many people carry around an enormous sense of guilt, and some are willing to go to great lengths to atone for it.  In the early days of the Christian church, the admission of wrong-doing as a start toward doing better was stressed a great deal.  The person who wanted to make amends for his sins was often given something to do as a penance.  For example, a penitent might be required to spend forty hours in prayer or to fast for three days in absolute silence.  It was difficult for people to do these things in their normal surroundings.  Therefore, many churches set aside a room for the purpose and called it a penitentiary.  After many centuries, this term came to be used for a place to put law-breakers.  As a consequence, penance is often equated with punishment.

The message of Jesus was more positive than that.  At the opening of his ministry he announced that it would be his mission to bring good news of God's love, not bad news of God's punishment.  He did not discount the destructive nature of sin and guilt, but he sought to focus on the corrective.  According to Matthew, when Jesus began to preach, his first word was "Repent."  It is that word I would like us to look at today, for it is so often associated with the idea of sorrow and self-reproach that it loses its healing possibilities and only deepens our feelings of guilt.

The first thing I want to say about repentance is that it requires us to acknowledge our involvement in the human predicament.  Most of us are willing to admit that the world is a sinful place inhabited by sinful people.  But, somehow, the sinfulness of others keeps us from acknowledging our own faults.  When David was king of Israel, he looked upon another man's wife, he desired her, he took her, there was a pregnancy, and he had the woman's husband killed to cover the act.  He was attempting to cover up, and each act only made things worse.  There was a rottenness in the nation from the top down.  Nathan, the prophet, came to the king and told him a story about a rich man who had taken his servant's only lamb, when the rich man had plenty of his own.  David became enraged and insisted on knowing who the culprit was, because he deserved to be put to death.  "You are the man," said the prophet, and the rottenness which preferred the cover of darkness, was exposed to the light of day.  David judged himself, confessed his fault, and the wound began to heal.

How much more open to healing we are when we recognize that we are included in the problems that afflict our race.  A man wrote a letter to a close friend, telling him how things were going in the writer's town:  "With all the major crises blighting our world and the minor crises and joys of raising five children, we are on a perpetual emotional roller coaster.  My next-door neighbor kicked her teenage daughter out, and they later found her unconscious on the street from a drug overdose.  Another neighbor, who is the mother of four, has had a mental breakdown.  A friendly couple down the street, it turns out, are alcoholics.  A man farther down the street was arrested for child molestation, and the man living on the opposite corner, deemed by everyone as the epitome of success, was picked up for embezzlement to cover bad gambling debts."  Sad as the letter was, the writer did not exempt himself from all that difficulty.  He concluded by saying, "What we all need here is to hear and to know God's promise of forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness, because we are all in the same boat."

Confession is one way we express our repentance.  James Neal, the government's chief prosecutor during the Watergate affair, commented on the spate of books written about the affair by the principals involved.  He said that the books were remarkable in their absence of any tone of repentance or remorse.  In summation of the books he had read, he said:  "Everybody blames someone else . . . . They all suffered, but no one repented."  Repentance involves saying, "I'm sorry."  And from that initial admission of wrong-doing, the climb to wholeness and right relationship with God begins.  The Biblical call to confession is not directed only to crooks and arch sinners; it is directed to all of us, for the Bible reminds us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  This does not mean that we have to see ourselves as the worst people who ever lived, nor even refer to ourselves as miserable worms, as some of our older hymns suggest.  After all, we are made in the image of God.  The image is flawed, but we are beloved children of God nevertheless.  That is our greatness and our tragedy.  Designed for a close relationship with God, we have let other things get in the way.  Those obstacles are removed by confession, not by cover-up.  Confession is our first step.

Repentance also calls for a change of heart.  We tend to be satisfied when we have addressed a person's actions.  When I was a child in Sunday School, we used to sing a little song:

                        "Little hands, be careful of the things you do;

                         Little feet, be careful where you take me to."

That may be all right for children, but adults should know that there is more to it.  The trouble is not only with our hands that hit and steal; it is not only with our feet that take us to improper places; it is not only with our mouths that lie and say hurtful things.  The trouble lies deeper, in our inmost hearts, for the heart is the rebel that will give rise to the actions again if there is no change inside.

In our home we have a cuckoo clock that we picked up in Germany some years ago.  For years it kept good time, but increasingly it ran slow or fast or was unwilling to work at all.  When it was working, I would set the hands to the correct time each morning, and it proceeded from that point to keep time as it chose.  We didn't want to get rid of it because it reminded us of a pleasant trip.  But the trouble was not really with the hands.  The trouble was deep inside.  Its movement had become all gummed up with oil and dirt.  What it needed was a good cleaning inside.  When that happened, it began to work dependably again.  Our lives, too, need more than just an occasional adjustment.  They need a cleansing that begins with the heart.

Confession, for example, does not cleanse unless it comes from the heart.  I grew up as the youngest child in the family.  My brother is seven years older than I, and we were frequently at odds.  When I got angry at him, I couldn't lick him, so I called him names.  If I were foolish enough to be standing close, he could grab me and hit me or twist an arm until I would take back the name and say I was sorry.  Then, when he let me go, I would run away and call out the name again from a safe distance.  I said I was sorry, but there was no change in the heart.

Sometimes God is depicted as a big bully who demands that we repent and conform or he will punish us in hell.  But really, any outward conformity on our part that is motivated by fear cannot be called true repentance.  One hymn writer understood that when he wrote:

                        "My God, I love thee not because I hope for heaven thereby,

                         Nor yet because if I love not I shall forever die."

From the writer's point of view, God was to be loved for himself, not for reward or fear of punishment.

A man had a son who was constantly getting into trouble.  Still, his father gave him a home and tried to lead him to better ways.  A friend of the father said, "Why do you put up with that no-good son of yours?  If he was my son I'd throw him out."  "So would I," replied the father, "if he were your son.  But he isn't yours, he's mine.  That's why I keep him, reason with him, love him--because he's mine."  So God deals with us.  Not by arm-twisting or threatening us with hell, but as a patient father.  And when we come to our senses and turn to him in repentance, it is prompted by a change of heart that has been won by love, not subdued by threat.

The third thing I want to say is that while a change of heart is important in repentance, so is the change of conduct that follows from it.  We do not just say we are sorry and give no demonstration of it.  Over a period of twenty years a carpenter had been taking items home from the job every day--a box of nails, a few feet of lumber, a can of paint, a length of wire.  One day he looked at his collection and felt guilty.  He went to confession seeking forgiveness.  As he enumerated the things he had taken, the priest became alarmed and said, "At first I was going to prescribe a few Hail Marys and a few Our Fathers, but this is serious.  For all this I think you will have to make a Novena.  You do know how to make a Novena, don't you?"  "No, Father," the man replied, "but if you've got the plans, I know where I can get the material."  It is not enough to confess our guilt.  We need to be prepared to take some positive steps in the other direction.

Repentance begins with the heart, but it is expressed by the direction of our life thereafter.  If we have been running away from God, repentance may call for a full 180 degree turn around as we orient ourselves toward God.  For others, the alteration called for may be less radical, but there ought to be some visible movement in a new direction.  A college class was graduating on a lovely, but very hot and humid day.  As the graduates trooped across the platform and received their diplomas from the college president, he very graciously shook hands and said in a loud voice, "Congratulations."  Then, in a tone of voice that was more firm and less patient, he would say to each graduate:  "Keep moving!"  That is where Jesus' call to repentance finds us.  Have you made confession with your mouth?  Congratulations!  But keep moving.  Has God's offer of acceptance touched your heart?  Congratulations!  But keep moving.  Have you started to redirect your life down some more rewarding path?  Congratulations!  But keep moving.

When I last visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, I noticed that there were a number of paintings which have been X-rayed in the process of determining authenticity.  The X-ray photographs are posted next to the paintings.  They reveal that in many instances an artist has started out with one scene or perspective, but in the course of painting he has changed his mind, sometimes radically.  The process is called pentimento, meaning that the artist was going in one direction, but repented, or changed his mind, and moved off in another.

That is the essence of Jesus' message to us.  In our lives we may be moving along on a plan that eventually becomes dissatisfying, perhaps because it leaves God out of the picture.  Jesus calls us to repent, to a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of direction.  For some of us the change will be quite radical; for others it will be modest; but for all of us it involves a change of direction, a new way of doing things, and the stern command:  "Keep moving."