Christ's Call For Repentance

Speakers:

Fr Peter Ries

Category:

Sunday Homily

Lectionary: Matthew 4:12-17

As we wrap up the holiday season, it becomes clearer and clearer each day that we are moving firmly back into our normal lives, back into the regular cycle of the year. The Christmas tree comes down, we return to a regular fasting schedule. Even these white vestments that I am wearing will be gone after today. We’ll be back to gold, and we will seemingly be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Back to the grindstone of Life. Back to our normal workweek, our responsibilities, all these things that define our routine throughout the normal time of year. And this can be a bit of a letdown. Because the Festal season feels so special, it’s such a special time. Christ’s birth and baptism are so beautiful and so transformative for us.

And yet here we are: seemingly back to where we were before. We’ve ascended the heights of the Feast, and now we are descending. It can feel like going back to normal is going back to something that is fundamentally less. So can’t we just linger in the Feast a little longer, brothers and sisters? Can’t we just enjoy this for a little bit longer?

Well, Christ seems decisively to say: no!

He tells us just now “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand!”

C’mon, Lord. Can we just have a moment? Do we really need to move right to this Repentance stuff, already? You were just in a manger. Do we really have to start thinking about you, up there, on the Cross? It is tempting to become discouraged. To look at this transition from Feasting to Repentance, from joy to apparent sorrow, and to wonder if this change is also somehow less than what we had before.

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But as Christ goes out in to all the world and calls for Repentance today, he is signaling NOT that things are somehow back to normal, NOT that we have returned to something that is less. No, brothers and sisters, He’s telling us that things are never going to be the same, and that’s precisely because this Christ is here! Being born, God becomes man, but instead of changing Himself in some fundamental way, this act of Incarnation fundamentally changes mankind instead.

For instead of blindness and despair with no way out, which is what mankind has fashioned for itself through Sin, we now have before us this perfect man as an example to lead us: Jesus Christ. And as he lives, he cleanses, and he heals, and he transforms. And despite descending from Heaven and condescending himself in the humble way that he does, the Son of God does not arrive diminished, or weak. He arrives with all his Glory and his Divinity intact. He is still God, and yet somehow he walks amongst us. And so he shows in his Incarnation, that he can descend without becoming less, and that this emptying of himself is not a loss at all, but rather a gain. For this self emptying, this becoming man and then living and dying for us, this is actually a sharing of his Divinity, a sharing of his perfection and his holiness, with all of humanity itself. And so what that means, brothers and sisters, is that as Christ goes out today into the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, he brings his light and his glory wherever he goes. Everything and everyone that comes in contact with him is forever changed, imbued with light by coming into contact with Christ.

Everything Christ touches now becomes a tool for blessing, everyone he meets now becomes an image that reflects his Godliness back out into the World. So, when Christ, today, says that the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand, he’s not warning us. He’s not bringing us down. He’s not threatening us. He brings us good news. He is telling us that he has come, and he has brought the very kingdom of God with Him! For God has not left his throne vacant while he goes to save mankind. He has brought his throne, his power, his Divinity along for the ride. And having come, Christ then gives us a gift. He gives us something as a tool that we can use in order to participate in this Holiness that he has brought for us. Christ knows that we need help in order to be cleansed of our fallenness, that is why he is here.

And so He fashions for us a manner, a blueprint, by which we can shed the sinfulness of this world, a manner by which we can let go of corruption and pain and death. Something that helps us leave all of that behind. What He gives us is Repentance. And he does this precisely with his sacrifice upon the Cross. For by bearing all of sin for us on the Cross, Christ has now created a place where we can let go of our Sin. We don’t have to hold on to it anymore. We don’t have to let it destroy us. Instead, we place it all on his shoulders, by admitting that we cannot do this on our own, and by asking him for help, by repenting of our sins and letting him bear those sins for us, on that Cross. This is what Christ tells us today. Now that he is here, nothing is the same. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, ready for us to participate in it, in its peace, and its sanctity, and its joy.

And in his infinite mercy, God gives us a tool to destroy those sins that are keeping us from participating in this Divinity.

Therefore, this call to repentance is in no way a call to return to what was before. It’s an acknowledgment that we don’t have to go back! We can stay in this Festal spirit forever. We don’t have to return to fallenness, and brokenness, and pain. By using the transformative power of repentance, we take our baptisms, which are direct imitations and expressions of Christ’s own baptism, and we renew them. We renew them through Repentance. In the waters of Repentance, we are made clean, with no fear of shame, no anxiety or guilt. Repentance is a poignant and explicit expression of God’s love for us, of his infinite mercy. It is proof that there is no depth in which he fall that God can’t get to us.

So let us repent of our sins, let us make amends with one another. Not because we have to, but because we get to! Because it is precisely the gift God has given us to overcome Sin. Christ has come into the world and given to us Repentance as this transformational gift. By letting go of our sin, we allow Christ to carry it for us, and to replace it with peace. By letting go of our earthly cares, we make room for the Kingdom of God to dwell within us.

So we go out into the world today, and we seek repentance. We seek peace with our fellow man, harmony with our loved ones, and holiness in our thoughts. Let us forgive those who have wronged us. Let us seek forgiveness from those we have wronged. Let us flee from judging those we meet, let us instead pursue knowledge and understanding of one another. For living in this way expresses the Truth, that we leave this place imbued with the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and whatever that Spirit touches is transformed and made holy, sanctified for the Glory of God.

What exciting news Christ brings us today, that we are invited to participate in the Kingdom, in this very moment, simply by emulating the Spirit of Repentance that he has already given to us, through his own merciful sacrifice upon the Cross.

Glory to Jesus Christ!