April 29, 2007 Sermon

The Charge
Luke 24:44-53

We have spent three weeks working through the story of Jesus walking with his followers along the road to Emmaus. Today we reach the point of the whole event: Jesus’ instructions to preach repentance and forgiveness to all nations. Though we did not walk with him that evening his call applies to us: Preach repentance and forgiveness to all nations.

The trouble is, not only do not all nations want to listen, not even our nation wants to listen. Often, we do not want to listen. Repentance means taking responsibility for your sins and turning away from sinning in the future. This is not a popular message. Nevertheless: preach repentance and forgiveness.

The demented young man who killed so many at Virginia Tech belonged to a Presbyterian Church in Centreville, Virginia. Last week that church’s pastor and elders published a letter in which they confessed their own sin in sending out into the world from their fellowship such a broken person. The letter confused many who read it. It angered others. We live in a culture that teaches us to avoid guilt. There are healthy reasons for this. Some guilt serves no redeeming purpose. Some guilt destroys our self-confidence and our ability to maintain relationships.

But we all sin. And unless we accept responsibility for our behavior we can never work through to forgiveness. Those Korean church leaders understand this better than we ever will, God willing. A boy grew up in their midst. They confess, in their letter, that they could not seem to connect with him. He and his mother regularly attended worship services. They usually sat in the front row. He appeared to listen, avidly, to every word the preacher spoke. Occasionally he attended Sunday School. But try as they might, they could not draw him out. They could not engage him in conversation. He filled his heart with violent fantasies instead of with the peace of Christ and they could not prevent it from happening.

In modern America the accepted pattern for that pastor and those elders to follow, post-Virginia Tech, would look like this:

1. Tell in lurid detail every juicy tidbit you know about your experiences with the boy as he grew up in your midst. Spill your guts on television. Sell your story to a magazine. Rush a tell-all book into print.
2. Emphasize that though we all know the truth now, back in the day he fooled you into thinking he was not all that bad. If you play this trick just right you can make the world see you as his victim, too.
3. Call for your political agenda to get fast-track implementation in the wake of the shooting. Use it shamelessly to promote your issues, whether they be gun-control, or getting prayer back into schools, or whatever.

The Korean pastor and elders did none of the above. Instead, they confessed that God had placed this boy in their care and they did not successfully communicate the love of Christ to him. He had been a sheep of their flock and they failed to usher him toward spiritual maturity. They confessed their sin in permitting their busyness and focus on church goals to distract them from the needs of individuals. They had known he was troubled and, as they wrote in their letter, had done nothing more about it than pray for him in a perfunctory manner.

The tragedy at Virginia Tech was horrific. The shooter’s brokenness was demonic. Yet we differ from him only in the degree to which evil had gained control over his soul. We are all sinners. We all must repent of a long list of sins. We cannot receive forgiveness without repentance. And without forgiveness we cannot know freedom, joy, peace, love. Without repentance, in other words, we cut ourselves off from the things that make life worth living. Without repentance we become more obviously like the Virginia Tech shooter.

And not only do we need to learn this critical lesson, we have to tell the world about it. Jesus commanded that we do so. His walk to Emmaus with two followers took place at dusk on the day of his resurrection. He had just risen from the dead. He had permitted the Jewish and Roman authorities to crucify him. He had accepted the pain of death—a death he did not deserve—in order to accept punishment for the sins of the world. Twice that evening, once as he walked with two men and once after eating a meal with a whole crowd of his followers, he used Scripture to “prove how the Messiah must suffer and must rise from the dead three days later.” Luke the Gospel writer tells us Jesus opened his followers’ minds to understand that the road to forgiveness passes through repentance. The road to the peace of Christ passes through confessing our sins and turning aside from committing them again.

If we want to know peace; if we want our children to know peace; if we want our friends and communities and the nations of the world to know peace, we must preach repentance. But how shall we do this, when the world does not want to hear it? We must begin our preaching with action. We must walk before we talk or nobody will listen. “Do as I say, not as I do,” does not work. Try the “Do as I am doing,” approach instead.

Lord knows I sin as I try to do my job. Sins committed out of anger seem to be my specialty. I sin far more often than I repent. But when I repent it can produce interesting results. Usually my repentance takes the form of praying for strength, and then apologizing to a person I have hurt. Usually, that person responds graciously and forgives me. Then we both feel better. I believe this feeling is an experience of the peace of Christ. That peace empowers us to move on, to continue serving God together.

But occasionally when I repent by apologizing, the person I have offended appears confused. Sometimes they did not feel wronged, so my apology seems misplaced to them. But I have also had people tell me things along the lines of, “Look, why are apologizing? It puts you in a weaker position when you talk like that.” Penitence confuses our culture. In fact, most Americans probably do not understand the word “penitence”. They might think it refers to an order of the Roman Catholic Church whose members constantly whip themselves, as Christ was whipped before he was crucified. Silas, the killer monk in the Da Vinci Code, belonged to such a group.

The creepy image of Silas the Penitent perfectly illustrates how many people feel about repentance. They ask, why hurt yourself like that? Does God actually enjoy that kind of masochistic behavior? But these questions miss the point. Jesus called us to practice and preach repentance and forgiveness. Repentance means turning away from our sins, not whipping ourselves. It means confessing our sins, as those Korean Church leaders did, not to wallow in guilt but to free ourselves from it. We can find peace only through admitting our sins. As a pastor I try to live this way. I do it to receive the peace of Christ. I do it, also, to preach the message in obedience to Jesus’ call. Actions speak louder than words, especially when the message is hard to accept.

Jesus did not deserve to suffer the way he did. He did not sin; he had nothing from which to repent. But he accepted death. He did it in part to pay the price God’s perfect justice demanded for our sins. He did it in part to move our hearts to follow him. And he did it to model for us the path to knowing the peace only he can give. We all need the peace of Christ. Confess your sins. Forgive when others confess their sins against you. We pray it every week in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” What greater debt could we owe than that which we owe to Jesus? Let us receive his forgiveness with joy, and let us extend that joy to one another. Repent. Forgive. Know the peace of Christ. Live it, and others will, too.

And that would please Jesus.