Repent & Believe
Readings: Mark 1. 9-15 & 1 Peter 3. 18-22
If you were stuck on a desert island, what would you want to have with you? Have you ever been asked that? It’s a really interesting question to ask people as it starts to give you some insight into who they are, what they like, what matters to them. Or an insight into how much of a smart Alec they are when they respond ‘a boat’ or ‘a satellite phone’.
Lent is a remembering of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness as we heard in our Gospel reading today, albeit briefly. It’s a time when he went without anything at all, when everything else was stripped away and he spent the time in prayer and fasting. And so for Christians Lent has often been a time of stripping things back and getting back to the essentials, dispensing with much of what we might be used to in order to better focus on the key parts of our faith. And in doing so we’re looking to ensure that our foundations are secure, that our faith and trust in God are in good health. And at its heart is that first proclamation of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, the first words from his mouth ‘The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news’.
Since the days of Jesus the Kingdom of God has been near, both here and not yet here, both now and not yet. We were thinking about those themes back in November you might remember. So what are we to do with this knowledge that the Kingdom of God is near? Jesus tells us; Repent and believe.
So repent. I wonder what imagery that word conjures up in your mind? The word literally means to turn around. There’s this sense that we’re all headed somewhere, all making a journey through life headed in some sort of direction, and to repent is to realise we’ve been walking the wrong way, are headed in the wrong direction or have got lost entirely, and so are getting back on course, headed back in the right direction. And one way to examine which way we’re headed is to reflect on what is at the centre of our life? What occupies that key place in our hearts?
There’s much that is good in our lives. Much to love and be thankful for that might include friends, family, home, job, stable finances, good health. But what matters most? Is it your faith? Is it your relationship with Jesus? Is that in the central spot or is it something else? If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring one thing, what would it be? Something to strengthen our nourish your faith? Suppose God’s presence was not on this island, not that it’s possible but let’s imagine it is, that it’s beyond his reach unless we consciously choose for him to be there as our one thing. What would you choose? Whilst I’m sure many of us would want to say God, of course it’s God, is that really true? You sure you wouldn’t rather bring a friend, a family member, a boat? None of these are bad things, they’re wonderful things we should give thanks for. We’re supposed to care about these things, even love some of them. But they’re not made for the central spot.
Let me give you an analogy a friend used in college. Suppose you came to Church one Sunday and I’ve taken away the altar, it’s gone from its spot at the front and I’ve chucked it in a corner somewhere. And in its place I’ve put something else, my friend used the example of his motor bike. And I said to you, we’re no longer about gathering around God’s table to meet with him, we’re now focussed on this bike, or bikes in general.
How would you feel? How would you react to that? I’d imagine there’d be outrage, I’d imagine I’d be getting rather a lot of emails and phone calls, if I even made it back out the door. But how much do we do that with the altars of our hearts, place something else in the key place, the place where we focus the prime of our time and attention.
And the problem there is that none of the other things, family, friends, finances, etc, none can really fill the space where God is meant to be. They’re wonderful things, lovely things, but they’ll either drain us of all our attention and effort and time as we seek to find satisfaction in them, or we’ll drain them of all joy and life as we try to get from them what they cannot offer.
So Jesus, in telling us that God’s Kingdom is near, that God’s reign is breaking through, tells us that now is the time to repent, to turn back from pursuing those things which cannot satisfy, to put them back in their proper place and start heading the right way. This Lent examine your heart, examine what is at the centre of your life, and if it isn’t God, if it’s not Jesus, perhaps you need to do some rearranging.
But Jesus doesn’t just tell us to repent, that we need to stop doing things, he tells us there’s something we should be doing, that we also need to believe.
And actually believing makes repentance easier. If your approach to stopping a certain sin, trying to put God back in the centre of your life is to focus on the sin or the stuff that’s actually as the centre, you won’t get very far, because that’s all down to trying not to love those things so much, and that’s very hard. What we actually need is to fix our eyes on Jesus and find ourselves loving him more.
Why is Jesus in the desert? For you. Why is he being tempted by Satan (and if you read the other Gospel accounts, when he is hungry and tired at that)? Because he’s refighting the battle that we lose every day with temptation, and he’s winning, for you.
Why does Jesus go to the cross? Why, in the words of 1 Peter, does he, the righteous one, suffer for us who are unrighteous? To bring us to God. The one who always went the right way, the one who always had God in the central spot, he comes to suffer for our sins, for all those times we go the wrong way, keep God away from that central place, he comes to suffer the punishment for those things, pay the price once and for all.
And why does he rise from the dead? To assure us that our sins are forgiven in him, and to assure us that we too, should our faith be in him, will rise with him. To assure us that as he has gone through the waters of death ahead of us and we, being baptised into his death, putting our whole faith and hope and trust in him, we too will pass through the waters and out the other side like Noah in his ark and find new and everlasting life with him. So that on the last day when all sin and guilt are purged away, we will pass through as God’s people, cleansed from sin and alive in Jesus.
Once you get a really good look at Jesus, once your eyes are fixed on him, once you are transfixed by his majesty and humility, by his glory and love, by his justice and mercy, by his perfect goodness and his grace. Once you encounter in him the living God, the one who dies to save you. Once you get a good look, everything else starts to fall into place. Slowly sin seems less appealing, the taste of it becomes bitter. Slowly those other things in our lives find their proper place orbiting around him. With our relationship with God secure, firmly resting upon Jesus and what he has done, the love we receive from him can flow into our other relationships. Knowing that he is the one who holds our future we can hold our finances and our homes and our possessions a little looser. By fixing our gaze on Jesus we find that we slowly give to him that central place, and as we do so everything else finds its proper place, everything else starts to make sense.
So, my brothers and sisters, this Lent, as we strip everything back, as we get back to basics, who or what is at the centre of your life? As we seek to put our lives back on the firm foundation of Jesus, of the Good news of his death a resurrection for us, fix your eyes on him and what he has done for you, for there is no other way to grow in holiness, no other way to eternal life but through what he has done for you, so in him place you whole faith and hope and trust.
Amen.