Repentance
June 10 , 2007
Acts 3:17-26
Today we come to one of the most acerbic words on the rolodex of terror. This word has been used by the church and church leadership to shame, divide, hurt, cast out. This word has been used to plant the corrosive seed that our very beings are not good. That God created us bad and we’ll never be good enough. The word is repentance. Dacia is away camping this weekend but when we were talking about the passage for today and today’s service, she said, “Yeck!” I recognize this is not a topic most of us want to touch because of it’s heinous history. But it is our work, not to be avoiding something out of fear. We are not the people of fear, we are a people of faith. A people who believe in a loving and compassionate God. A people who believe in a relational God who is indeed still speaking. This means we can not take up this text and throw all that out the window. Instead, we must walk through our hurt, our fear this morning and re-examine this concept of repentance.
The Scripture passage itself is littered with words that seem condemnatory and hurtful. Ignorance, sins, wicked ways, wiped out…it’s strong language and a difficult combination. But if we could simply name that, then put them over here on a shelf for a moment. OK? Take a deep breath, we put them back up on the shelf. We also have: time of refreshing, raise you up, covenant, all families blessed, blessed. We have such hard wiring about the R word that we miss most of this passage. And, I’m arguing this morning, we’ve been hardwired for so long with such literal translations of repentance, we have no sense of the commonality and opportunity of this concept. Repentance is NOT a term of judgment. Repentence is a term of journey. Repentance is about allowing the blessing of new direction, new hope, new opportunity, new life to re-direct your pathway. Repentance is about being refreshed, raised up, blessed. If the outcome of what the leader or the church is doing in the name of God doesn’t lead to refreshment, raising up out of a dark place or being blessed, I am boldly proclaiming today this is not the work of repentance. We are a covenantal people, getting thrown out of covenant is not possible, God is with us. We can attempt to pull our journey away from the Creator, however, the creator will wait with us, wherever we are on the journey until the u-turn comes into view.
Two weeks prior to Saturday, I walked into the office and smelled smoke. I inquired. I smell smoke. No one else could smell it. I looked at the park, when people grill out, sometimes it smells like smoke in our building. No one was grilling. Every new person, I inquired, “Do you smell smoke?” No one. On Sunday, again, the smell of smoke, Chuck looked around, Aleeson looked around. Nope. Monday is my day off, so I wasn’t here and then Tuesday, I walk into the library and bam, BIG smoke smell. Now, this has been happening for days, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this, because it’s worse now than ever! “Christy, do you smell smoke?” “Yes!” she said, “Thank God!” I said. She had walked around the exterior of the building, she had checked out every room, she couldn’t find smoke, she didn’t smell it in the neighborhood, she couldn’t see smoke. Maybe it’s the airconditioner, the HVAC unit that needs to be replaced in the FH. We went over and shut it off. Kathe Padilla from the Zambian Children’s Fund shows up in our office, “It smells like smoke over there”. Christy and I burst out laughing. “Thank God!” “Yes…we just shut off the air, let’s see if that helps.” “Kathe and Barby come back in an hour noting it’s worse and the fire department is called. When they arrive, our old floresent lights in the Lunch Room are over 300 degrees and melting the plastic backing attempting to burn the ceiling materials behind them. Some times it is not enough to keep gathering materials, some times it takes a complete U Turn to get where you need to be. We in Tucson, can appreciate this. Making the U turn is a part of every driver’s day here. It doesn’t make us wicked or shameful people, it just means you can not take the same path you are on to arrive where you are going. If I had kept asking, “Do you smell smoke” we could have burned to the ground! It took Barby and Kathe’s intervention and insistence to get us to call the Fire Department. We had to go a completely different way to solve the problem. Hallelujah! They smelled smoke and wouldn’t let it go. Chuck, Carly, Jonathon, and Aleeson spent the entire day here last Saturday putting new lighting into the Lunch Room, the library and the Spiritual Direction/Youth room.
5 Years ago the Southwest Conference of the United Church of Christ, which we belong to, in fact all the UCC churches in Arizona, New Mexico and El Paso we all belong, we began to vision the next ten years of our Conference. Listening sessions were held in every region, information was collected, a new vision was created and at the Annual Meeting in 2005, the Rock the Future vision was voted in as our work for the next 10 years. Our Conference Minister, Rev. Cally Rogers-Witte was clearly at the helm and we were embarking on a new adventure. Two weeks after that meeting Cally resigned as our Conference Minister and accepted a call as a member of the Collegium which guides our National Church leading the Justice and Witness ministries team. The first part of Rock the Future had a capital campaign drive. We were going to raise a couple of million dollars to fund revitalization, identity, education, and justice and witness work all over our conference. However, no one would give. It was the first sign that, something is wrong. Finally, yesterday over two years after the annual meeting where Rock the Future was embraced and 7 years after the process began, we declared that Rock the Future was dead. When leadership changes, visions must change. When leadership changes, new opportunities arise. It doesn’t make the previous part of the journey a mistake, it simply means it is time we go in a different direction. And, going a different direction, also does not mean you throw everything you know out the window. It simply means, you go a new way, inspired by the information you have collected.
It’s funny, but in both of these instances, the burning lights and the Rock the Future campaign, we had a hard time naming that we weren’t going in a direction that was going to bless us, raise us up, or help us feel refreshed. In fact, in both situations it was harder and harder to ignore the truth…the smoke and the lack of commitment or even knowledge of the Rock the future campaign by our local churches. Those were both very real truths. But, we were plugging along, we had things to do, we were going places, and to change directions now, that seemed too much to ask. Even thought the pathway was a myth. I mean how long can you ignore smoke? Everyone in this building ignored smoke for 4 days! 4 days! Was it really so important the work being done we didn’t stop everything to find the fire? If we had kept going the whole place would have gone up. For Rock the Future, we had and have people who have worked so long and hard on it. 7 years is a long time to hatch a plan. People were vested. But, our local churches, our communities none of them had bought into the plan. None of us were willing to talk about it, give money to it, or bring it into being. How can we have a vision if no one can see it? No one believes it? No one will support it?
When that Pentecostal wind came blowing into town, it changed things. People felt changed. Giving up an entire Saturday to put in new lighting did not sound like a fun way to spend a day off. However, the new lighting is gorgeous. The building being intact, glorious and the pride from a job well done feels great. To see the reality clearly, to be able to name what’s happening allows new life to emerge. Yesterday’s Board of Director’s meeting was our first one of the year with many new board members. We had to deal with this corpse we were carrying around known to some as Rock the Future. It was a frightening task. It was holding up our search process. It was mucking up our interim work. 29 people came to the meeting, and the tone in the room was uncomfortable and unsure. Who was to blame, whose fault was it going to be. Blame is not part of this story. We have taken that moment of recognition…this isn’t the right way, I need to turn around…I smell smoke, there must be fire…we have this beautiful vision but no one will fund the project…We take that moment of recognition and cheapen it by inserting shame and blame into the process. I believe that’s a human construction, not part of our covenant with God.
All families will be blessed. All families. We can not have a concept where blame is part of the ritual. We can not have a concept where shame is the result of the work if all families are blessed. Where we feel raised up and refreshed. When, I found out that those lights were over 300 degrees and we didn’t burn to the ground…Hallelujah! I felt refreshed! When we talked with one another on the Board of Directors. When the difficult words were spoken but heard. When we did the hard work of naming where we were and where we needed to go we all felt raised up out of a place of no direction, no voice, no hope. We felt in covenant and blessed from our time together. It was a sacred moment of beginning again in a way that we can all begin to own. I think this is the real work of repentance. It is about that very personal and private moment we come to realize, oh, I need to go a different way. Different isn’t bad, isn’t shameful, just means different, because we couldn’t get where we needed to go heading the direction we were going. I pray with every U turn we make in Tucson, we’ll consider having the courage to honor those internal moments when a new direction must be taken. From the less risky knowing when a fire is taking place, committing to a vision to the more risky needing to change a job, fight an addiction, heal a wound. However, and wherever it is that a U turn comes it comes to refresh, bring new life and bless. If these are not the outcomes perhaps it is time again for yet another U turn. Let us pray.