Sunday: Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Reading: Acts 9:1-19; Matthew 4:12-23
Preacher: S. James Steen

"From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near."" Marcus Borg, in his recent book on Jesus as a religious revolutionary, provides thought-provoking insights into Jesus' message of repentance. After observing that, in contrast to its constant use in much contemporary Christianity, the word "repent" is seldom used in Scripture, Borg then asserts that the biblical meaning of "repent" has little to do with the self-flagellation and feeling guilty for one's sins that are so commonly associated with repentance today. In place of this view, he offers two ways of looking at repentance that he believes go to the heart of Jesus proclamation.

First, the concept of repentance grew out of the Jewish experience of the Exile, when much of the population of Judea was carried off to Babylon in chains by their captors. So great had been the Jewish experience of the homeland and the Jerusalem Temple as God's dwelling places that the Jews wailed, "How can we worship God in a strange land?"

Borg says that the idea of repentance grew specifically out of the end of the exile when the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and the holy land. According to this definition, "Repentance means to return, and in particular to return from exile."¹ Repentance is about coming home; or as Borg puts it, it's about ending our spiritual exile and "returning to God through a deep centering in God."² "From that time Jesus proclaimed, "Come home, for the kingdom of God has come near."" Homecoming is a wonderful image for transformational human experiences.

When I was a child I didn't like church much. I didn't like worship in the tradition in which I grew up because I was bored by the long sermons. I didn't much like the Episcopal Church, where I often worshiped with friends, because I was bored by the long prayers that the priest read from the Prayer Book. Then, one Sunday when I was a teen-ager, during a service in the local Episcopal Church, I had an experience that I have always described as a homecoming. I can remember every detail, like where I was sitting. During that worship service I felt the presence of God in such a way that I knew I was where I belonged; I was at home. Paraphrasing the Gospel, I knew then that the kingdom of God had come near to me.

Besides calling for repentance in today's Gospel, Jesus calls his first disciples. "Follow me," he says. "Immediately they left their nets and followed him." In his presence, they must have had an intense sense of homecoming, of the kingdom of heaven coming near. Today we also celebrate the Conversion of our Patron, Paul - Paul who was blinded by the light and fell to the ground. Having spent God only knows how much time persecuting the followers of Jesus, Paul, too, came home from exile.

If the idea of repentance as homecoming grew out of the Hebrew tradition, Borg tells us that there is a second meaning, this one suggested by the Greek word used for repentance in the Gospels. Its roots mean "to go beyond the mind that you have."³ So, to repent is to acquire a new mind; it is to be given a new way of seeing. Paul's conversion provides a beautiful metaphor for this definition. For Paul was literally blinded by the light, and after three days, when his sight was restored, it was a new sight, a sight that freed Paul from seeing Jesus as a threat to seeing that for him, too, in Jesus the kingdom of God had come near. And after that, Paul devoted his entire life to inviting Gentiles - the outsiders - to discover that new way of seeing which had become so precious to him.

Images of exile and homecoming, of blindness and then seeing in a different way, confront us in a short story called A Temporary Matter. It appears in a Pulitzer Prize winning book, Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri. The author tells the story of Shoba and Shukumar, Harvard graduates living in Boston whose first child has been stillborn. The event is so traumatic for them that the couple, who had been passionately in love, become like two strangers - living in the same apartment but constantly avoiding each other - unable to risk the intimacy that would bring with it the necessity of facing the enormity of their sorrow. For a long time they remain stuck, living in a kind of spiritual exile, unable to move forward as individuals, or as a couple. They busy themselves with work; they time their days so that they never have to eat together, which would force them to talk to one another. He never leaves his computer. She spends long days at her office and when she comes home, she edits papers.

Then, because of a nearby repair being made by the electric company, there comes a time when the lights are out for several days at dinner time. And in the dark, illumined only by candles, they begin talking again. My romantic mind thinks, "Isn't this lovely. The muting of intensity that the darkness provides is freeing them to establish intimacy once again, perhaps even a new level of intimacy." That's a nice thought; but it's when the electrical repairs are completed and, more importantly, when Shoba chooses to turn on the lights - that's when they reveal things that are truly honest. But the things they reveal are also deeply hurtful and they make it clear that much of what has passed for intimacy in the glow of the candles was actually a sham. At this moment it also becomes clear that this isn't going to be a story in which the protagonists will live happily ever after in marital bliss. And yet, I believe that it is at this moment that real hope for an end to their exile finally appears. For now Shoba and Shukumar sit down and do what they have avoided and needed to do for so long. They weep together.

I struggled with whether to use this story because it raises more questions than it answers. Will Shoba and Shukumar end up together or apart? If they end up apart, where is God in that? Is it possible that brutal honesty, which may be hurtful, can actually be an expression of the kingdom coming near? I could go on.

But I like the story because it reminds us that life in the kingdom Jesus proclaimed isn't only about warm feelings or happy endings. It reminds us that coming home from exile can take many forms and that as our faith deepens we find God in the complexities of life as well as it's moments of bliss. It reminds us that this kingdom which Jesus proclaims challenges us to move beyond our comfort level. For at those moments when this kingdom that has come near actually touches us, if we're paying attention we'll see its vision of a world where justice and peace are supreme values, where the strong are in solidarity with the weak and the sick are cared for and healed. And if we follow, we'll discover - I pray that we will discover - with those first disciples who followed Jesus and with the multi-foibled Paul, we'll discover the meaning of that poignant hymn we sang at the beginning of the liturgy this morning: "The peace of God it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod, yet let us pray for but one thing, the marvelous peace of God."
Amen.

¹ From Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary by Marcus J. Borg. Reprinted in The Bible Workbench by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

² Borg

³ Borg