St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
March 20, 2022
Year C: The Third Sunday in Lent
Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Remorse, Repentance, Penance
One of the great privileges and heaviest responsibilities of my job is being with, and hopefully comforting, people during some of the most difficult and frightening moments of their lives:
The doctor delivers a dire diagnosis, or there’s been a terrible accident, or a heartbreaking betrayal, or a job has been lost.
As human beings, we love to look for cause and effect. We search for patterns. We want to solve mysteries.
So, even for people of deep faith and with relatively clear consciences, in those terrible moments it’s common to ask:
What have I done to deserve this?
Why is God punishing me – or why is God punishing this person I love?
Judging by today’s gospel lesson, apparently people were asking those same kinds of hard questions two thousand years ago.
Today’s lesson begins with some people telling Jesus about an instance of Roman brutality, one that would have been especially horrifying to Jews. Apparently, Pontius Pilate slaughtered some Galileans while they were at the Temple, and their blood was mixed with the blood of the animals sacrificed there.
Without waiting to be asked, Jesus assures the crowd that the poor victims of this brutality were not worse sinners than everyone else.
And then Jesus brings up another event of suffering – one that might be the result of human error or neglect rather than cruelty: the tower of Siloam fell and killed 18 people. This must have been a terribly shocking and sad loss for the families and friends of these victims, who perhaps wondered why they were being punished when so many other people walked by that tower all the time.
But, again, without waiting to be asked, Jesus says that these poor people were not worse sinners than everybody else.
As an aside, except for the mentions here, we don’t know anything about those Galileans massacred in the Temple or the fall of that tower. Since there’s no evidence outside the gospel, some might question the historical truth of those events. But I think it just points to the hard truth that so many terrible things happen all the time that we can’t remember them all, most of tragedies are forgotten by most of us almost immediately.
Just think how quickly tragedies move from the front page, to the back pages, and then they’re gone and forgotten by most of us.
For example, I had forgotten about the shootings at spas in Atlanta until the other day, when the news reported on the one-year anniversary of that tragedy.
One year and forgotten.
But, although Jesus acknowledges that sometimes – often – bad things happen to good people, or at least to people no worse than the rest of us, that’s not his whole message today.
No, Jesus gives a stark warning: although the people who suffer may not be worse than anyone else, unless we repent, we will surely perish.
To get ready for our Lenten book study, I recently reread Barbara Brown Taylor’s Speaking of Sin. I guess I’ve read it three or four times now and I find it really holds up, offering insights that are timely and fresh.
One point she makes is that we often kid ourselves that just feeling bad about what we’ve done – just feeling remorse – is somehow sufficient.
We seem to think that if we feel bad – or, if we say that we feel bad – and ask forgiveness, well, we can then move on and never speak or think of this unpleasantness ever again.
Well, I suppose it would be nice if that worked, but Barbara Brown Taylor is clear that it won’t – and Jesus is clear about that, too.
Instead, the way forward out of our sin and guilt and back to wholeness and health is remorse, repentance, and penance.
Remorse we know.
And hopefully by now we know that repentance is more than just saying we’re sorry – it’s a change of direction, a commitment to changing our hearts and minds, with God’s help.
Remorse, repentance…and then there is penance.
When I got to that part of Speaking of Sin, I was immediately transported back to my Roman Catholic childhood in Jersey City (the college basketball capital of America!).
For us Catholic kids, “making our sacraments” was a big deal.
First Communion was a festive occasion for us second graders, with the girls wearing white dresses and veils and the boys looking very sharp in white jackets and black pants. I don’t know, there may still be pictures of me in my Communion outfit but, unfortunately, I just haven’t had the time to look!
Anyway, while receiving Communion was exciting, making my first confession in fourth grade was a scary experience.
I’m not sure how much we fourth graders understood about all this, but we knew that we would be one on one with a priest and would be expected to tell him our sins, such as they were.
I can still remember the day.
We were all in church and one by one we went into the confessionals.
I remember carefully watching my classmates as they came out, searching their faces for clues about just how terrifying it had been.
I remember sitting in the pew, trying to come up with what exactly I was going to confess – probably disobeying my parents and being mean to my sister.
And then, it was my turn.
In this case, the “confessional” was just an ordinary room in which there were two chairs, separated by a mesh screen with a kneeler, though I’m not sure how much privacy that actually afforded.
I don’t remember much about the confession itself, except that when it was over, I, like everybody else, I guess, was assigned what was called “penance” – which simply meant saying a number of “Our Fathers” and some “Hail Marys,” and then I’d be good.
How and why that worked, I’m not sure I ever understood.
Looking back on it now, as scary as that first confession was, the stakes didn’t seem very high – and so I’m sure that, for most of us confession and penance never became a big part of our lives.
And yet, Jesus warns us that, in fact, the stakes are as high as they get: unless we repent, we will surely perish.
That perishing is not the result of cruelty or disaster or even illness.
No, that perishing is a living death of carrying around sin and guilt in our hearts, and not taking steps toward healing, wholeness, and new life.
As is often the case, the Church can learn, or, actually, relearn a lot from the Twelve Steps of AA, especially Steps 8 and 9, which call for taking stock of all the people we have hurt and then doing our best to make amends to them.
Obviously, penance – which really is more about making amends than saying a certain number of prayers - is very difficult work – and it’s work that often remains unfinished, because some wounds just can’t be healed, some broken pieces just can’t be put back together.
But, this is what all of us sinners are called to do – and Lent – which, I’m sorry to tell you, is once again slipping away very quickly – Lent is the perfect time to get started.
So, with God’s help, we can follow the way of remorse, repentance, and penance – we can follow the way back to health, to wholeness, and to new life.
Amen.
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