Lent 3: Restless Hearts and Roadblocks to Repentance
TranscriptioN
I am so grateful to be with you this morning on this third Sunday of Lent. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, Father Morgan Reed, and it is good to be with you. As I think about the third Sunday of Lent, it's an interesting Sunday because it's far enough away from the beginning of Lent that the initial excitement that was in Lent has sort of worn off, but we're also still kind of far away from Holy Week. We're right there in the middle, but that is often where I find life is lived, right? We find ourselves in the place where the shininess of new things has worn off.
We're just kind of in the middle, and the things that we're really hoping for might seem far away, like they're unapproachable right now, and we find ourselves often in this place where we are perpetually in the third week of Lent. In our prayer book this morning, we prayed this call-act that if I'm allowed to have a favorite call-act, it is my favorite call-act in this third Sunday of Lent, that it reminds us of the ways that our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. It's a quote from St. Augustine, and we carry on in that restlessness quite often.
It reminds us that our rest is found in a person, not in answers that we so often seek, but in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And I was thinking about my own childhood this week. I have these vague memories of our grandparents driving down from Oregon.
We lived in California, and so they didn't come often, but when they did, you know, you'd look out the window in anticipation of grandparents coming to visit. I'd have these butterflies in my stomach, waiting with a nervous kind of energy. You know, you've seen children in that place of excited, waiting for something to happen, but you know, as a child, prolonged excitement for too long turns to despair really quickly.
What if they're never really gonna come? You know, and so that nervous excitement turns to angst and anxiety and despair pretty quickly. The nervousness and that restlessness might cause weird behaviors, like all of a sudden as a kid, I start pulling out toys I haven't played with in a long, long time, but I need to get my mind off of the fact that I'm anxious about them coming. I start doing meaningless tasks to get my mind off the fact that my heart is restless.
Until I see that vehicle drive up in the driveway, grandma and grandpa come out of the car, until my body is hugged by theirs, my body is restless, my mind is racing, my decisions might be sporadic or illogical, and then entering the arms of that grandparent becomes the thing that settles my body down into a state of rest. It's not enough to know when they're coming, and if you were to say, oh they'll be here in an hour, well that might as well be tomorrow, right? But just the presence of them satisfies all the restlessness of my little body. And you know, it's difficult, or it's sweet actually, when it's a kid in that scenario, and it's a very specific situation, it's sweet to watch that excitement, and then to find them finding rest in the thing they were longing for.
It's troubling and it's difficult when that state of anxiety and restlessness is the constant state of the human heart. It's troubling, it's distressing, and it's common that that is the constant state of the human heart. And it's a state of restlessness that when we're in it we create false narratives, and we start to believe things that aren't true out of anxiety or out of fear, keeping ourselves from being present to life as it is in front of us.
We distract ourselves with things to not be present to the anxiety that we're feeling. We fill our times with things that keep us from dealing perhaps with the real pain of something that's happening, or some urgent task in asking God for his mercy, and it is grace in our real need. Today's passages all have something to do with the compassion of God.
They all have something to do with the restlessness of the human heart, and they introduce this idea that there are barriers that we put up to repentance. Turning from these false narratives of anxiety and fear, the things that we've created in that space, the meaningless tasks, to turning towards the Lord where we find rest for our souls. What are these barriers? And all these passages have something to do with the restlessness of the human heart, the compassion of God, those barriers that we put up to repentance.
As we look at our passages this morning, let me pray for us. “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.”
The Compassion of God and the Old Testament Creed
Before we get into the the other two parts, the restlessness and the longing and the the barriers, let's talk about the compassion of God. We'll do a little bit of biblical theology this morning. And so even though in Judaism there aren't recognized creeds, per se, at least there weren't in Jesus's day, there is something of the name and the character of God that functioned like a creed throughout the Old Testament. We get a glimpse of it today in our Old Testament passage, which was read for us in the book of Exodus, where God reveals his name.
A few chapters later, in chapter 34, Moses is inscribing the law on the tablets, and God will make a declaration to Moses. God will say, God proclaims his name to Moses, and as he passes by Moses, what he says is, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. That phrase, the character of God, becomes like a creed in the Old Testament.
The Lord, the Lord, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. And that declaration about God and his name functioned like a creed throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, in all the ways that Israel will be formed. And we read it again in Psalm 103 this morning.
We said it together. The prayer book has it as, the Lord is full of compassion and mercy, long-suffering, and of great goodness. This becomes a source of their poetic prayers in the book of Psalms, and it becomes the foundation for Israel to repent. Why can they expect God to respond when they turn from their sins? It's because of this idea, this creed of who God is. If there's any hope for repentance, it's because God is merciful, and he's full of compassion. So later on, as Israel moves along its history, we get into the book of Joel, where they haven't gone into exile yet, but they have gone into sin.
They've rebelled against God, and the prophet says to them, this famous verse, rend your hearts and not your garments. You may have heard that before. “Rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to Yahweh your God, because he is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” And then this addition, “and he relents from calamity.” So there's like a little addition to this creed as they move along. And after the people are exiled, they do eventually go into Babylon in exile, but God promises that they will return, and after several generations, God brings them back to the land under the Persian Empire.
And Nehemiah, the book of Nehemiah, is a reflection on God's faithfulness during that period. Nehemiah says in chapter 9, verse 17, as he reflects on Israel's history, and “they refused to obey, and did not remember your wonders which you did with them. And they stiffened their necks, and they raised up a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. And you, oh God, are ready to forgive, merciful and compassionate, long-suffering, and abounding in steadfast love.” And the addition, “and you will not forsake them.” And so I love that how this creed functions as like a drumbeat throughout the history of Israel's experience with its covenant God.
And I like how every part of their life together, there's a little bit of an addition, an expansion, a teasing out of the implications for each subsequent generation as they reflect on their relationship with their Creator and their King. So by the time that people have become so disobedient, that they find themselves functionally putting themselves back into bondage in Egypt, God's compassion is the foundation for bringing them back. And the reason why God delivers them, and he's willing to relent from disaster and not forsake them, is because of who he is.
His own reputation and his name is at stake. He is the compassionate and merciful God, long-suffering and abounding in steadfast love. And so that creedal foundation forms the background for the foundation of the work and the person of Jesus Christ.
It helps us to understand what Israel is processing as they look forward to the Messiah coming. It's because of who God is that we understand the ministry of the Messiah better. So Jesus comes as a new Moses to bring a new covenant and a new kingdom which delivers people out of a bondage that's far deeper than just enslavement to Egypt.
Roadblocks to Repentance
And with all of that in our background today, we get to the gospel reading which brings us to an encounter with Jesus preaching in the northern part of Israel in Galilee. As Jesus is preaching, there are some people who come and they ask him about this local tragedy. We actually don't know the exact events that are described there other than what's in the text, but it seems like what happened is there's a crowd of Galileans who are worshippers, they're Jews, they're going to Jerusalem to offer their worship.
Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor over the area, has them executed as they are coming to Jerusalem to offer their worship. And from what we know of Josephus, that is consistent with Pontius Pilate's character. He tests the Jews quite often, and this is exactly in line with the kind of thing that he would do.
So you can imagine that as they ask this question of Jesus, part of the question might be, you know, Jesus is somebody who is leading a group of Galilean pilgrims to Jerusalem. Are you not also worried that this might be your fate as well? That might be a question in their minds. Maybe, you know, as they start to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, they're asking this question because they're really hoping that as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem, that vengeance will happen, and that the enemies that had done this to these Galilean Jews will be crushed, and that God's name will be vanquished, and that the names of these people who were martyred will be vanquished.
And they're wondering also, you know, these are questions they might be, that different people might be holding in their heads. The one that presents itself, the one that Jesus addresses is, so Jesus, were these Galileans maybe more sinful than other people? Is that why they ended up going to Jerusalem and getting killed? They really want answers. They want answers for the pain that their hearts are feeling over these people they probably knew, or at least they knew their families.
And it makes total sense that they would want answers, but that search for answers is leading them astray and distracting them from the interior work of the kingdom of God that Jesus is coming to do. Jesus is going to use this opportunity to invite them into repentance, to turn from one thing, to go to to the kingdom of God, to think differently about the kingdom that he's preaching. Jesus is not going to go to Jerusalem just to overthrow the unjust Roman authorities.
That is way too small of a vision of the kingdom of God. But this might be on their minds, and so he's expanding their vision for what the kingdom will be. His kingdom isn't won through the sword.
And these were not worse sinners than others. He makes that very clear. Their suffering is not an indication that they were worse sinners than other Galilean Jews.
In fact, the focus on the trying to find the answers is for why these people died under cruel human injustice is actually a distraction. Now what that doesn't mean, or I should say it this way, it is good, and it would have been culturally appropriate and right to mourn, to grieve, even to lament, right, how much of the Bible is written in the form of lamentation. But know that God's promising his presence among them.
He's not promising answers to why the suffering has happened. And so their search for answers and the causes for the pain might distract them from the answer for which their hearts are longing for, which is God's very presence among them. And to seek for answers rather than to seek for rest in Jesus's presence is going to contribute to the restlessness of the human heart, and that can start to distort our views of what God's doing inside of us and what he's doing around us and what the work of the kingdom is.
And so Jesus brings up another disaster that the crowd may have in their minds. So that was one. This disaster that they had just brought up was a disaster that happened under human injustice. Another one was a natural disaster, and he brings this up for the crowd to ponder. There's a tower of Siloam, which is part of Jerusalem, and it seems to have crumbled and those within it all died, about 18 people. Everybody knows about this story.
And Jesus assures them again, this isn't because the people who were in the tower are worse sinners than other peoples. Not so. But injustice and natural disasters should be something that reminds us of our urgency to search our hearts and amend our lives.
So he sort of says, I'm not going to give you answers to this, but I want you to see those things and note the urgency of repentance, that we need his presence, and to note the restlessness in our hearts and to find rest in God. You know, we should often be careful not to place blame and causes on people's suffering. That's not helpful.
But these things, when they happen, they become a marker of repentance, that God is asking us to look inwardly and what is he doing in our hearts? How is he rightly ordering our disordered lives? And so these people were thinking that they could overthrow an earthly empirical power by the sword. They too were on shaky ground, like this shaky tower, and at the risk of all their theological edifices falling and crumbling beneath their feet. And so they should repent, and they should turn to the Lord, who, like our Old Testament biblical theology today, reminds us is compassionate and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in love.
This is the God Jesus is calling them to come back to, and he follows this up with a parable about a fig tree. There's three years this fig tree has not produced fruit, and so the gardener, the owner of the vineyard, is wondering, it's using up the soil and the nutrients, let's just tear it up and get rid of it. And the gardener says, the vine dresser says, well before you do that, let me try something, let me dig around it, let me clear the soil a little bit, add some nutrients, amend it, and then we'll give it some more time.
And if in a year it doesn't produce anything, then it can be destroyed. And then that's one parable. He continues the logic of this parable into a real-life scenario, so not just a parable, there's this woman who has been bent over in pain for 18 years. Eighteen years! And those Jesus is calling to repentance now, he's being backed up by a miracle that he's about to do. What he's showing them is the freedom that exists in the kingdom of God.
He is about to deliver this woman from a bondage that, well, she was probably very aware that she had, but maybe the crowds weren't aware that she had. And those whom Jesus called to repent, you know, they're the ones saying, why would you do this on the Sabbath? And he calls them out for it and says, you know, you're happy to unshackle and untie your animals on the Sabbath and to bring them to water. This woman on the Sabbath has been feathered to the kingdom of darkness, and I am unfettering her on the Sabbath.
There is no better ministry on the Sabbath than to free people from the kingdom of darkness. And so he calls these people out as hypocrites, and before we're quick to point the finger at them, I would remind us that often we are hypocrites too. This is where Jesus, you know, says, look at your own heart, and he calls them to repentance.
So this passage calls us to look inwardly, it calls us to look at the systems, the structures, the rhythms, and the habits that maybe we've set up or that we're a part of that perpetuate spiritual bondage or keep us bound from experiencing the freedom in the kingdom of God, or other people as well. And it challenges us not to obsessively look for answers to the causes of suffering, but to invite people into the presence of the one who heals. I often think of that as our evangelism ministry.
We are creating context to invite people into the presence of the God who loves them, and the one who heals them and wants to deliver them from the kingdom of darkness. And so repentance, then, is about turning away from our bondage to the kingdom of darkness right now to claim that freedom that Jesus has delivered us into through his death and resurrection. And the things that kept Jesus' hearers from pursuing repentance was this fear, maybe, that Jesus was probably less powerful than the empirical powers and the Roman authorities.
It was scrupulous searching for answers to questions that they were incapable of answering. And so that, for me, is I was thinking about the things that were keeping the crowds from asking the questions about what to repent of, what to turn from to enter the kingdom of heaven. What is the thing that keeps us from repentance? Another way I think of that is what things are keeping us from seeing the world as God sees it, and from learning to love the things that God loves.
What do we need to turn from? What keeps us from that? During the season of Lent, one of the books that I love, that I pick up quite often, is a book called St. Augustine's Prayer Book. It's a nice prayer supplement to the Book of Common Prayer, and in it they have something called an examen. And in the examen, it walks through the seven deadly sins that are part of the church's tradition, and it teases out some of the implications of those.
And I want to read you a little bit of one so you can see kind of how granular this gets. Under the sin of greed, there's this subcategory. So it has subcategories of these things.
One of them is domination, and under domination it says, “…seeking to use or control others for our own ends or needs, overprotection of children or other dependents, refusal to correct them for fear of losing affection, insistence that they conform to our ideal…” You get the point. These are all things that as you hear that you go, yeah, I've probably done that maybe this week, maybe this morning.
And so, you know, I find this examen such a helpful tool to get down to the granular of saying, Jesus, what keeps me from seeing your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven? What keeps me from repenting? What keeps me from loving the things that you love? And these seven deadly sins are not often at the forefront of my imagination or teasing them out. So I find it helpful during Lent to make a habit of getting down to the granular details. It's kind of like driving a car where the window gets slowly dirtier and dirtier, and we are in the the yellow dust season where eventually our cars will be covered with a thick film of pollen, you know, and you look through your window and there's just a yellow haze and you can't see quite so clearly.
And so the examen I find is kind of like shooting a bunch of windshield wiper fluid onto the window for God to just take the windshield wipers and clear off that layer of dust and pollen. You and I, we need God's help. And because over time the distractions of the world, the distortions of the world, our disordered loves start to twist the affections of our hearts, and our hearts become restless until they find rest in God.
Conclusion
And so the examination is kind of like a recalibration. And so if you're not familiar with those deadly sins, I'll read them out to you. They are pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, and sloth. So each of those you can think about as some sort of, you know, demonic agent, or in the church tradition they call them a passion. They try to bind us to the kingdom of darkness through self-deception or deception from outside, creating false narratives when our hearts are restless. And we cling to these things for security and safety.
And to frame it in other words from our colleague today, like each of those sins becomes something that creates a restlessness in the human heart. And so when the initial moments of excitement from the beginning of life with Jesus start to fade, before we can see the hope of the things that are to come, we find ourselves in the middle. Right now, in this place of restlessness, this almost perpetual third week of Lent, and we are restless.
And so in this third week, the thing that will help us is honesty, vulnerability with God about the things that have become disordered, consistency in coming to Jesus, and looking for the so that Jesus becomes the person who reintroduces us to this God who is merciful and gracious, who's slow to anger, who is abounding in steadfast love. And it's in the person of Jesus, in his presence, that not in the answers of why suffering persists, but in Jesus's presence, Jesus himself, who is given for us, that we find the rest that our hearts are longing for. And so today is this call to trust Jesus, to join in his divine life, and it's in his presence that he teaches us to love what he loves.
Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Look with compassion upon the heartfelt desires of your servants, and purify our disordered affections, that we may behold your eternal glory in the face of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Author.