Have any of you heard of the sport of Orienteering? I only did it once, way back when I was in Boy Scouts, and that was a way of learning how to use a map and a compass. It is a kind of race that involves both physical stamina and navigational skill. Here’s the way it works. Somebody makes stations in the forest or a field, and there is usually a box with a special stamp or a punch that you have to find. At the beginning of the course you are given a topographical map with the location of the stations marked on it, a compass, and a card to record the stamp or punch to prove that you had found the station. You have to orient the map figuring in magnetic declination, then follow a compass line to find the station. The person with the best time who has found all the stations wins.
It sounds straightforward enough – orient the map, follow a compass direction, and you should find the station. But of course it gets more complicated. Sometimes there is an impenetrable swamp in the way, or a tangled thicket, or a ravine, and so you have to plot a compass line around the obstruction. You have to decide if you will make better time going around an obstacle, or going through it. Sometimes you have to change directions to get where you want to go.
John the Baptist might have appreciated a map and compass as he wandered in the wilderness. But it was there in the wilderness that he found his true direction, his true North. He realized that he was called to let others know that they were headed in the wrong direction. Later, he would point his own disciples to follow Jesus. John the Baptist became the compass, pointing in the right direction. Repent, he said, Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Sometimes you have to change directions to get where you want to go, he said.
Now when we hear the word “repent” we usually think of words like sin, and remorse, and confession. In the New Testament, the Greek word for repent is metanoia, which literally means to change one’s mind. It is a turning away, a change of direction from the way we have been going. When we hit the impenetrable swamp or the tangled thickets in our lives, we will only get ourselves deeper and deeper in swamp water, even more tangled, even more lost, unless we have a clear idea of our direction or someone shows us the way out. For some of us the path to the kingdom of God is not straight and smooth. We hit rough patches. We find obstacles that we have to find a way around. We find ourselves tempted to plow right through, and we get bogged down. Perhaps the wonderful feeling of being invited and accepted into Christian community begins to dim, as we enter into the hard work of reconciling relationships, of not getting our own way, and we get bogged down in resentment and misunderstanding. Some even leave the church. Or perhaps, life suddenly seems unfair – a missed promotion or lost job, the untimely death of a loved one, a slander and loss of reputation, an addiction. We are overwhelmed by the obstacles and we lose all sense of direction, forget where we want to go. We need each other to help point the way. You see, sometimes we have to change direction in order to get to where we want to go.
Or perhaps our path is straight and level, without an obstacle in sight. That can be tempting in orienteering, to take the path that is easy to walk, but it may lead us in a direction away from our goal. It is easy for us to walk the path of popular culture, to fit in with those around us. It is a comfortable life, filled with nice possessions, approval of friends, accomplishment at work. It may be that the path to the kingdom shares that path for a time, giving us opportunities to point others along the path. But at some point, the path diverges, turns toward the kingdom, because Christianity is profoundly counter-cultural.
So if repentance is not just feeling sorry for something we have done, if repentance is a turning away from the path that leads nowhere, perhaps we have to look at the meaning of sin in a different way as well. We tend to think when we repent, we are feeling sorry for particular pecadillos, breaches of the commandments. It becomes easy to justify ourselves by saying, I haven’t murdered anyone (lately), that’s one sin I don’t have to worry about. I haven’t had an affair, or stolen anything, and I love my parents. I’m not so bad. But Jesus said that if you carry hatred in your heart, then you have murdered in your heart. We begin to think those little things we have done are not all that important, they are just little sins. But Paul says that if we break one part of the law, we break it all. We tend to think that the only sins that matter are the sins of commission, those bad things that we have done. We haven’t done such bad things; we’re not such bad sinners. But the Prayer Book confession says forgive us for what we have done and for what we have left undone.
At the last general convention of the Episcopal Church a resolution was passed that apologized for the church’s participation in the institution of slavery in this country. Some of the parishioners at my last church were incensed. They had nothing to with it. They weren’t even born yet. Why should they have to apologize? I can sympathize with that reaction; it is hard to feel responsible for something we haven’t ourselves done. Friends of ours come from a family with a tradition of priests and bishops, and they were appalled to find out that their family profited from the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Episcopal Church condoned slavery for quite a long time. Who should apologize?
I don’t often have people come to me asking for private confession and absolution in the sacrament of reconciliation. Most people prefer our general and communal confession that we say every week before Eucharist. There may be a number of reasons for that. Perhaps we don’t want to embarrass ourselves in front of a priest. Perhaps we don’t want to think too deeply about our sins. Perhaps we are overwhelmed by those things in which we are somehow complicit, caught up in the power of the culture, and we feel powerless to change them. If we have a communal confession, perhaps we have to think more carefully about the communal sins that we are part of. Perhaps we have to think more about those things we have left undone.
John the Baptist ends his speech with words of judgment. We cannot escape the theme of judgment in the Advent readings and the weeks leading up to it. How do I account for judgment if I believe in God’s unrelenting grace and forgiveness? It’s in there in the scripture, and I can’t avoid it. This whole sermon this morning about sin, and repentance, and changing direction, is not meant to be a downer. It is not to depress us or discourage us in our inability to right the wrongs of racism and slavery, and manifold other problems. It is meant to help convince us that sin is built into our lives, we cannot be right all the time, we cannot be pure. If you think you do not sin, then you need to widen your perception of sin.
So yes, we are all sinners, we are all judged, we are all guilty as charged. All that remains is to carry out the sentence. But you see, that’s where the wonderful part happens. That is the very point where grace happens, for God is a merciful God, and we are pardoned, forgiven, made clean to start all over again. And in that act of mercy, God calls us to be in relationship with him, to love him. To be in relationship with him we have to turn toward him. He calls us to repent, to turn, metanoia, to come to him where are hearts will find true rest. You see sometimes you have to change direction to get where you want to go.