Repent Good
Jeremiah 18:1-11; Luke 14:25-33

September 9, 2001

Today is our convocation. That does not mean we are beginning again or graduating, but that we are being gathered together to renew our vocations, our callings. The universities are the usual institutions which conduct convocations, yet they got the idea from the church back in medieval times. It's time to revive this practice and examine our calling, our vocation, as a Christian. Actually, that should take quite a while, but we can begin again.

Preachers always have liked this parable of Jeremiah regarding the potter and the clay he makes and remakes into pots. God sometimes has to lump a misshapen people and begin molding them into shape all over again. I have seen one too many potters with their wheels and clay get up before a group to demonstrate Jeremiah's vision. Most people seem to remember the pot, rather than the parable of which it was the illustration.

What strikes me here is that God repents. In this instance God repents of the good God was going to do to Israel. In the story of Jonah God repents again, but then of the evil God was going to inflict upon the nasty Ninevites.

Repenting means turning around and heading off in a different direction. Changing your mind, changing your life kind of stuff. What kind of God repents? Don't we expect a stable, unchanging God? What kind of people accept a God who repents?

The God who repents is an absolutely free God, who "will be what I will be." Too many Christians insist that God is now obligated to act in a certain way. Evangelicals are the worst sinners, believing that a contract has been signed between God and the faithful which God must forever honour. But even liberals will indignantly declare that they cannot believe in a God who is cruel in such and such a way. Our God repents of good and repents of evil - both directions.

The people who accept such a God are those who have come to recognize that God's grace is surprising, infinitely amazing, and completely beyond our wishes and control. It is our wonder and joy to go where this repentant God leads.

To repent as the first step and the thousandth step in the Christian life is a far more radical phenomenon than being born again. All too often, the case is that being born again only requires an emotional change, not a change in direction. You don't have to do or be anything different when you are being born again, for inside, in your heart, you are different.

However, to repent means you have already started off on that different road, and it is no time to be looking back.

When Jesus was traveling towards Jerusalem, there was a large crowd traveling with him. What a show it must have been. What great rhetoric and wonderful teachings and incredible healings! There were lots of people who wanted to be near the big action, but Jesus then told them that there is a cost to discipleship. If you really go about being a disciple, you will end up becoming divorced from your family, you will find yourself bearing a cross of suffering, perhaps even death, and you will get rid of all your possessions. Good bet that the large crowd had thinned by the end of Jesus' little talk.

There's real repentance for you. It's the difference between being a student and a disciple. The first hears the lesson and thinks it's a wonderful idea. The disciple listens and knows the lesson is meant to be lived out, and by no other person at the moment than him/herself.

As a coach I've received irate phone calls from parents, but never really one like that from a parishioner. A Presbyterian minister once received such an irate call from a parent in his congregation.

"I hold you personally responsible for this," the father said. "Me? What for?" the minister replied.

The father was upset because his daughter, graduate school bound, was "throwing it all away" and going down to do mission work with the Presbyterian Church in Haiti. "Isn't that absurd! A B.S. in mechanical engineering and she's going to dig ditches in Haiti."

"Well, she's a quick learner, so she should get the hang of digging ditches in a few months," said the minister.

"This is no laughing matter. You are completely irresponsible to have encouraged her to do this. I hold you personally responsible for this," the father angrily snapped back. "How?" replied the minister.

"You ingratiated yourself with her, filled her head with all that religion stuff. She likes you, and that's why she's doing this foolishness."

The minister had had enough. "Now look, buster. Weren't you the one who had her baptized?"

"Why, yes."

"And didn't you read her Bible stories, take her to church and Sunday School, let her go skiing with the Youth Fellowship?" "Well...yes...but...?"

"Don't but me, it's your fault that she believed all that stuff, that she's gone and thrown it all away on Jesus. It's not my fault! You're the one who introduced her to Jesus, not me."

"But all we ever wanted her to be was a good church-going, Bible believing Presbyterian."

"Sorry, you messed up and made her a disciple."

A sacrament is a dangerous act. To bring a child forward for baptism is not an indifferent act. It will send you off repentant in a direction you have either scorned or never imagined.
We have started something in the church that is not safe if being safe is our primary concern. Repenting, like our God, is not guaranteed to make us comfortable, successful, or secure. Usually, it does the exact opposite. But we want to be disciples, to be shown infinite, remarkable grace by a God so free of human manipulation that this God can and does repent - and seldom when we want God to do so.

Let us eat now bread for the journey, the simplest and most humble of meals. The words that are said as an introduction are words which call for discipleship, being born again, repentance. They were spoken first, remember, by a host of that Last Supper who would be betrayed and killed within hours. We still use these words to set our new directions.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan