
(James 4:7-10; Luke 18:9-14)
Sun, Oct 23, 2016 – UBC Digby – J G White
Repent, the End is near.
Repent, before it is too late.
Repent or perish!
So say the occasional signs along the highways and byways.
Someone this week asked me if I would be pounding the pulpit, preaching fire and brimstone, when my topic is REPENTING. No.
But, Church, we still need a turnaround. That’s what repentance is: turning around. Turning away… turning to.
Ever missed your turn-off while driving down a highway? Oops, I missed my exit. Hmm. Do I wait until the next exit? It could be a ways down the road. Do I pull over and do a U-ie? That’s not always safe… or legal. But I need to turn around!
Repentance is turning away and turning to. Lamenting where we’ve been headed – being sad about our sin. Mourning it – what we’ve done, who we’ve been, what we’ve lost, who we’ve hurt. Weeping – real sorrow that expresses our weakness and need to God, who hears our tears.
Linda read for us some warnings and strong advice from James 4. The little book of James is FULL of advice, if you have not noticed. Lament, mourn and weep, we are told. But, let’s hear these particular phrases again, now put into English, in his usual creative way, by Pastor and author, Eugene Peterson. From James 4.
Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. Hit bottom, and cry your eyes out. The fun and games are over. Get serious, really serious. Get down on your knees before the Master; it’s the only way you’ll get on your feet.
My daily email from the Center for Action and Contemplation so often hits on this theme. The spiritual theme of hitting rock bottom in order to be lifted up. Richard Rohr’s book, Falling Upwards, is all about this.
And so is Jesus’ parable of the two people praying in the Temple. This is our last Jesus story for the fall, our eighth week in Luke’s Gospel. Next weekend we will celebrate Reformation Sunday with Romans 3, and then have a few Old Testament weeks.
Today, a parable of Jesus that has a clarity and directness about it. Get your prayer attitude right and your attitude about yourself and others right. And let’s hear this one afresh, from Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Version of Luke. (1969)
Two men went into the chapel to pray. The one was a church member, the other was an unsaved man. The church member stood up and prayed to himself like this: ‘O God, I thank you that I’m not like other people — greedy, mean, promiscuous — or even like this unsaved man. I go to church twice on Sunday, and I am a faithful tither of all my income.’ But the unsaved man, standing way off, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes, but knelt down and cried, ‘O God, have mercy on a sinner like me.’ I’m telling you, this man went home cleaned up rather than that one. For everyone who puts himself on a pedestal will be laid low, and everyone who lays himself low will be put on a pedestal.
Repentance must stay in our vocabulary with God. We who are Sunday morning people, pew people and pulpit people. We, more than the non-religious, should know how to pray these ways. These ways Jesus taught, in parables.
So, what are our personal prayer habits? When we are on our own; and when we are together here, or in a small group? What is your praying and my praying really like? How much time does it take? How much concentration? What happens when you bow your head? Our attitude comes out: what is it like? Is there any lamenting, and mourning, and weeping? We each have our habits. And we each may have little tools we use.
The devotional booklet The Daily Bread is very light on prayer. Some days include a short prayer. As I looked through October, there seemed to be one day out of 31 that had a prayer of confession. October 12.
I’m selfish sometimes, Lord. I get more concerned with what I need than what others need. Give me a heart of integrity and compassion.
November looks like it will have four days that suggest prayer of confession.
Other prayer resources that I have found helpful seem to have more repentance, more lamenting and mourning and weeping over sin. A classic is John Baillie’s A Diary of Private Prayer, 1936. A little volume with 64 prayers for morning and for evening, each day of a month, and one extra day. About one in three days, the evening prayer is about repenting.
On the 18th day, the evening prayer includes these confessions:
For my deceitful heart and crooked thoughts :
For barbed words spoken deliberately :
For thoughtless words spoken hastily :
For envious and prying eyes :
For ears that rejoice in iniquity and rejoice not in the truth :
For greedy hands :
For wandering and loitering feet :
For haughty looks :
Have mercy upon me, O God.
A newer book of prayers I recommend is Dr. J. R. C. Perkin’s Prayer Diary: short prayers for busy people, 1998. I know from using it that it frequently encourages a humble attitude. I skimmed through October’s prayers, and, like Baillie’s book, Perkin’s has confession one third of the days. Here is part of October 25ths prayer, for this coming Tuesday…
Forgive me, Lord, that I am often unwilling
To undertake lowly tasks within my capabilities,
But seek to do important things
For which I am not properly equipped.
In his book simply called, Prayer, Richard Foster gives four steps in ‘turning around,’ repenting. I’m going to expand on this with six steps. May these be helpful.
One. Awareness of wrong.
There is a type of praying that gets called the prayer of examen. Sort of an unknown term, but it really is about asking God to examine you from the inside out. It’s the theme of Psalm 139, which ends:
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
24 See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
You study in school, and there are exams. You go to an MD to get checked out, and he or she puts you through a physical exam. You do some housecleaning, and find a long lost object in a closet: you examine it closely.
To be aware of our wrong, our sin, the knots that tie us up inside, we sometimes need the prayer of examen. Often, the simple way to see inside ourselves is to ask for this blessing from our Master. Show me, Spirit. Shine Your light inside.
Two. Ask for a contrite heart. There’s another old-fashioned word. But we see the meaning in the praying sinner in Jesus’ parable. The tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ This man had a definite attitude of regret and repentance. We might have to ask for help to get to this stage. We may need definite time alone to open our hearts to God… and ourselves.
In all the centuries past, when people were converted to Christ, the deep sorrow about their own sinfulness always was there, coming to the surface. Often the regret and lamenting would last days and weeks. Here’s a bit of the story of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard coming to faith, at age 22.
As I stood… there [by the seacoast] alone and forsaken, and the power of the sea and the battle of the elements reminded me of my own nothingness, and on the other hand the sure flight of the birds recalled the words spoken by Christ: not a sparrow shall fall to the ground without your Father: then all at once I felt how great and how small I was; then did those two mighty forces, pride and humility, happily unite in friendship. (The Journal, 29 July 1835) Out of a time of inner darkness, Jesus reached him.
Three. Confess. Actual, specific confession of failures. We could skim over this step, thinking, well, our gracious God knows it all already – everything about me. No wonder the example of scripture includes: cleanse me from hidden faults (Ps 139). But we are unlikely to skip deep confession of the details if we have already seen what is wrong and have a heart that regrets it.
There is a role for you and me with each other. As the book of James says in chapter 5, …confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. (J 5:16) It is a ministry of reconciliation, as Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5 in the Bible. Next week’s sermon – about the reformation of the Church – is going to make mention of the value of this ministry. Watch for it.
Four. Ask for mercy.
What was the prayer of the tax man in Jesus’ story? ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
This depends, of course, upon if we think of God as the source of mercy we need. There is a problem if we decide just to be merciful to ourselves, or we find some person who will be easy on us and tell us, ‘There, there; everything is going to be all right.’ But, if we have seen our problem, and truly felt badly about it, we are likely to be deeply asking for mercy, a mercy we cannot make for ourselves. Only from God. Only from the Cross.
I am not usually a lover of really simple, modern Christian songs. But one I always appreciate is Michael W. Smith’s Breathe.
This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me
This is my daily bread
This is my daily bread
Your very word spoken to me
And I, I’m desperate for You
And I, I’m I’m lost without You
Five. Receive.
The promises of the Word are incredible for us. 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is what we receive.
Here is another personal story, from the conversion of John Bunyan, as he told it himself…
Suddenly there fell upon me a great cloud of darkness, which did so hide from me the things of God and Christ… I was as if …my hands and feet had been tied or bound with chains… After I had been in this condition for some three or four days, as I was sitting by the fire, I suddenly felt this word sound in my heart, I must go to Jesus; at this my former darkness and atheism fled away, and the blessed things of heaven were set within my view… (Grace Abounding)
After dark, regretful days, Bunyan saw he could receive Jesus and His great gifts.
Six. Obey.
Turning away is always a turning to a new way. Christ’s actings here on earth tell us sin and wrong and evil are not a dead end. And when the healing forgiveness is applied to our souls, Jesus is the way. The new way for life, the new path, and our Guide.
Shall you Repent, for the End is near!? That is up to you. Yet we should also say Repent, for the beginning is near. That’s what a friend suggested to me the other day… and he was right. Repent, for the beginning is near!
Evil and wrong in life is no dead end. A U-turn is possible – make legal, safe and secure by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Saviour.
What did Christ preach? Repent, for the Kingdom of God has come near.
Repent, for the beginning is near. The Gospel we preach does not end with a happy ending, so much as it ends with a new beginning. Let us pray.