One of the real delights about moving
house is that you tend to discover just how dirty your home is. You have much loved items of furniture, which
you’ve lived happily alongside for years – and then you move them. Suddenly, you see all the dust and grease
that has accreted around them. No longer
the loved items of furniture you’ve happily lived with…they are festering piles
of goo…and you have to overcome the urge to take them all to the tip and start
again!
Take my freezer, for example. I have been cheerfully loading and unloading
bags of food from my freezer for years.
But it was only this week that I noticed that all around the edge of the
door, a dirty film of filth has accumulated.
How did it get there? It’s not as
though I’ve been wiping lumps of ice-cream up and down the edge of the door
every time I use it! But there it was, a
great sticky mass of slime, that had to
be scraped off with a knife, and one of those green washing-up pads.
You see, I couldn’t just leave it
there. I had been alerted to a new
reality. No longer was my freezer the
bright shiny receptacle for lovely things that I had always believed it to
be. Suddenly, I had been given a very
different view of it…I had to wake up and smell the coffee. I had to get real.
I had to turn around the way I looked at my freezer, and embrace the reality of
the situation.
When Jesus came along, and cried out
‘repent’ – he meant something similar.
He wasn’t thinking about freezers, of course! The word he used was ‘metanoia’ – which has
many complex layers of meaning. But
those meanings coalesce around the notion of turning around, facing in a new
direction, changing one’s mind about things.
Our English word ‘repent’ doesn’t really do justice to metanoia. Repentance is about feeling sorry for past
actions. It’s a Middle English word with
a Latin and Old French root – paenitere (pen –i-tere) – which was all about
feeling remorseful.
But Jesus was calling for something
rather more radical than just feeling sorry.
In fact Jesus didn’t seem to be all that interested in remorse. To the woman caught in adultery he simply
said ‘Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin
no more’. Rather, Jesus was calling for
a complete change of mind. He wanted his
followers to wake up and see the world for what it really is.
You see, most of us go around with
quite a complex set of delusions, about the world, about other people, and
about ourselves. Jesus’ radical notion
was that we should begin to see those things as God sees them; not as we
limited human beings perceive them through our limited eyes, ears and brains.
Jesus had a short-hand for the way
God sees the world…he called it ‘God’s Kingdom’. When we begin to glimpse the world, ourselves
and other people as God sees them; then we begin to live as people of the
Kingdom.
Let’s do a little thought-experiment
together. What do you think the world is
like? The answer you give to yourself
will depend a great deal on your experiences of the world. If you have only every lived on a tropical
island, with food hanging ripe from every tree, then the world will seem a
pretty wonderful place. If, on the other
hand, you have lived in a dry desert, or had your house torn apart by a
tornado, your view of the world will be something quite different.
The reality, of course is that the
world is something else altogether. We
need to look realistically at the world.
God didn’t create the world to give you and me a luxury dwelling, and a
guaranteed safe future: he made it to
offer us challenges, to help us grow spiritually and emotionally, as we learn
how to care for each other, for other species, for the very environment of the
Earth as much as God cares for them.
Let’s try another thought
experiment. Picture in your mind someone
who really annoys you. They might be a
family member. They might be a church
member! Hopefully, on my first Sunday,
none of you are thinking about me yet!
Let yourself, just for a moment, feel some of the anger that you have
about that person. Aren’t they just so
annoying?! They are so smug! They always think they are right! They never say sorry! They have no concept of how much they hurt me
that time! And now…Stop.
Stop and wonder how God sees
them. Could it be that God sees them as
a Father sees a child? Could it be that
God sees them as still needing to grow into all that they can be? Could it be that God sees all the things
they’ve been through in their life that has made them like they are? God was watching when they were taught how to
behave by a dysfunctional parent. God was
there when they were abused, or bullied, or deprived, or used. God saw how the character they have today is
a result of all that they have been through and the environment in which they
first grew.
And how does God react to them?
God loves them. Those ‘other people’ – especially the ones
who really rile you – they are not saints.
But that doesn’t stop God loving them, nor caring for them, nor wanting
them to grow as human beings to become all they can become.
And that’s also how much God loves
you! With all your faults and human
weakness. God loves you. Get rid of that delusion that you are somehow
perfect…that weird delusion that you’ve never done anything to upset anyone
(which is where your anger about other people comes from). In the eyes of God, you and I are no better
than anyone else…and possibly a little bit worse than some.
Yet he still loves us. By offering us the free gift of forgiveness,
he restores our self-respect. He removes
the need to justify ourselves.
In Lent, Jesus encourages us to ‘Get
real’ about ourselves. Only when we’ve
learned to see ourselves as God sees us, and learned to see the world as God
sees it, will we ever truly understand what it means to ‘Love our neighbours as
we love ourselves’.
Get real, in Lent. Turn around, and see the world as it really
is. Wake up and smell the coffee. Then, you will be eager to love your neighbours. Then you will be eager to pass on some of the
love you have experienced in Christ.
The kingdom of God has come
near. Turn around, repent, and believe
the Good News. Get real about yourself,
the world and others. Forget the dream
world of self-created fantasies, and join in with God’s activity in the real
world he created – which is the only place where true joy can be found. Amen
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