One of the first words out of the mouth of Jesus is, Repent; According to Mt. 3:2, It is THE FIRST word that John the Baptist uttered. Your hear this word repeatedly during the season of Lent But “Repent” is likely the most misunderstood word in the Bible today.
Many people think it means “feeling sorry for sins” or“turning from sin.” That is not the biblical definition of repentance.
To understand its real meaning, we have to look up meaning of the Greek word which is the original language of the bible. In the New Testament the Greek word that we translate as “repent” is a compound word: Meta-noeo.
“Meta” means change “noeo” means thinking. Noeo is derived from “nous” which means mind. So, metanoeo means to “change your mind.” or “change your thinking” Change your mind in such a way that you will change your behavior.
Repentance as traditionally understood, which is, “feeling sorry for your sins or bad behavior” does not really change anything. Take for example, the case of domestic violence. A husband beats up his wife and the next day he will feel so bad about it, apologies and bring her flowers. Two weeks later, he will beat her again and then go thru the same pattern. In domestic violence it is called the cycle of abuse. Unless he goes into therapy and finds out the root cause of why he is doing what he is doing, by engaging his mind, he will never stop the behavior.
This is true of repentance in religion too. People commit sins; they feel sorry; they ask forgiveness; and they go and sin again. During my 13 years as a priest, I have heard thousands of confessions. Ninety nine percent of confessions are the same list of sins by the same people, almost repeated in the same order, month after month, year after year. Nothing really changes in their lives.
That is why today, I like to explain the biblical meaning of Repentance: as “change your mind”. Jesus said: “Repent and believe in the good news.” There is no mention of sin there. What he is saying is, change your mind about what you have been thinking so far about life, and start believing in the good news about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is not a far away place, as you may have thought before, but it is right here, in the midst of you. The values of the Kingdom are very different from the values of the world. To know that, You have to change your mind about a lot of things.
So, Repentance is the act of changing your thinking or having a different mind than the one you are having now. Changing your mind can change your outlook and caning your outlook can change your life. Let me give you an example.
I have a patient on my hospice team who is 75 years old. He was a successful businessman who worked so hard to make money so that he could have a great retirement. He even worked on Xmas eve. His daughter told me that when she was young, she had to wait for daddy to come home in the early hours of Xmas day to open presents. Now this man has cancer and is on hospice care.
His wife is very sad and upset. This is her thinking: “He worked so hard all his life; now we have enough savings; this is the time to travel and enjoy life; but look what happened; it is not fair; why is God punishing me like this?” She is angry, anxious and depressed.
The daughter, on the other hand, thinks differently: She said: “I feel sad that my parents cannot enjoy their retirement together; but I am not angry with God; we should not postpone life today, to enjoy it later; The later might never come; each day has to be lived to its fullest.” The daughter is much more at peace. She has a positive outlook on the situation based on her spiritual thinking.
Two different ways of thinking about the same reality. If the wife could change her mind about the situation, she could experience some peace. That is what repentance really means. Change your mind so that you can change your life. Apostle Paul says in Romans: Do no conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind”(12;2)
Don't be afraid to use your mind in spiritual life; Faith is important; but we are supposed to have a faith that seeks understanding. Unfortunately, for many people, mind or the brain is the least used organ in their body. When it comes to spiritual life, many people refuse to engage the mind. They don't think about what they believe or why they believe what they believe; they just believe either because it is the tradition or they are told by preachers what to believe.
An open mind is capable of deep reflection and it has the capacity to engage in new and creative ways of thinking and understanding. Let me tell you a story.
A man who was on a scavenger hunt knocks at the door of Mr. Smith at midnight. The man says to Mr. smith: “I am on a scavenger hunt; I need a piece of wood 3 feet by 7 feet and I will pay you $10000 for it.” Mr. Smith thinks for a moment: “It is midnight; Home Depot and Lowes are closed. There is no wood in the garage” He tells the man: “I am sorry, I can't help you there is no wood in the house.”
The man leaves and Mr. Smith goes back to bed; but he can't sleep. He had all kinds of thoughts going thru his mind; “If only I had bought some wood during my last trip to the HD, I would have been rich by $10000 now.” He thought about all the things he could have done with that money; his fantasy went on and on and he began to fall asleep. Suddenly, Mr. Smith jumped out of his bed...and said to himself, the door... the door... He had half a dozen doors in his house, all of them made of wood, 3 by 7. He could have removed a door and given to the man!
What happened here is, that in Mr. Smith's mind, when he heard the word “wood,” he could only think of wood on the shelves of HD or Lowes. His mind did not have the capacity to expand and include the fact that the door is in fact, wood. He had put door only in the category of door.
We do this all the time in our spiritual life and that is why our faith gets stunted, our spirituality becomes choreographed to fit the confines of the church, our experience of God is limited to the reading of one holy book and our encounter with Jesus is often within the four walls of the church. As a result, we rarely feel the joy and freedom of the children of God. Spirituality becomes a boring and monotonous enterprise. The season of Lent comes and goes, but nothing really changes. It doesn't have to be that way.
Let me tell you the story of a lady I met the other day. She is 60 year old widow; she attends daily mass and receives communion. She never dated for years, until she met this nice guy and they fell in love and he wanted to marry her. But there was a problem. He is a divorcee. The Catholic church does not approve of divorce and if you marry a divorcee, you cannot receive communion.
So she was in a dilemma. She could not imagine not being able to receive communion for the rest of her life; but she also wanted to marry this man. So she went to see her parish priest. Unfortunately, the priest was so legalistic and could not think outside the rules of church. He told her that if she married this man, she should not receive communion. She was devastated.
So this nice lady, wanted a second opinion. She approached a priest who was a friend. And that priest told her: “I can't marry you in the church, but get married elsewhere and let me see what I can do?” So, she found a protestant minister, who blessed her marriage in the club house of her condo.
The next day, the couple came to the church, the priest took them inside gave them a blessing and gave her permission to receive communion. But told her, “Don't tell anyone that I did this for you”
The woman was very confused. She told me that every time she approached the communion table, she was afraid and uncomfortable, worrying and wondering if Jesus would approve of her and come into her heart.
What is going on here? The first priest, in his mind, could not reconcile the reality of divorce and communion at the same time; The second priest did so, but was not comfortable about it; They were thinking in either or categories. They could not think of both. Their minds were mired in the teachings of the church rather than the teachings of Jesus, which can be contradictory at times.
Let us see what would Jesus do in such a situation? Lets check the gospels: In Mk: 10: 11, Jesus clearly says that divorce is bad;
“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her” and according to the Bible, adultery is a sin that deserves to be punished by stoning to death. . Based on that passage, the priest concluded that this woman has sinned and she cannot receive communion.
Now read the story of the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4. What is Jesus doing there?Against the consternation of his disciples and the utter surprise of the woman herself, Jesus enters into a dialogue with her. A man talking with a woman in public is bad enough; But here is a Jew talking to a gentile, which is scandalous. And she is a divorcee too, which makes it beyond the pale of a holy man. She is not just divorced once, but five times, and the man she is now living with is not even her husband.
So, Jesus who teaches against divorce can at the same time, enters into a dialogue with a woman who is divorced five times; Jesus could do this because he had a mind that was open to the mercies of God; the mysteries of our existence, and the possibility of change; This is the Jesus I want to get know; this is the Jesus I want to follow; this is the Jesus I want to worship, a Jesus who can entertain the opposites in life, a Jesus who can deal with contradictions in life, a Jesus with a wide open maind that can accommodate the complex realities of complicated lives.
Let me add a word about the lady in the story. Why would she even go the priest to get permission to receive Jesus? This is because, in her thinking, the priest “controls” whom Jesus go to. How absurd is that? If she were to “change her thinking” and believe that the Jesus who came to seek not the just but the sinners would have come to her heart, she could have received communion.
William James, the most famous American spiritual writer of the century said this: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can change his life simply by changing the attitude of his mind”
I just finished reading the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson. It is a huge book with nearly 700 pages. Steve Jobs was a genius often compared to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. He had a phrase he always used when talking to his employees at Apple: “Think different.” (Grammatically it should be think differently, because it is an adverb). But Jobs wanted it to be “Think Different.” to be “different” I guess.
Instead of thinking of the cell phone as a devise just to make calls (that is the traditional thinking about the phone) he wanted to think different. As a result he made the phone into a devise to listen to music, take pictures, browse the internet, send and receive emails, play games, cook your dinner, mow your lawn and more, ( I just made up the last two)..the I phone..Steve Jobs used his mind to think different and brought into this world some very exciting products to change our lives in the ways we connect, communicate and interact.
Our excitement and innovation does not have to be confined to the material realm. Our spiritual life can be exciting too, if we are willing to repent; if we are willing to think different about our pre-conceived ideas about God, and Jesus and the Bible and life itself.
Very often, our minds are narrow, judgmental, opinionated, suspicious, revengeful, stubborn, small and even closed. As a result, we feel like victims, we see world as a hostile place, and experience life as a struggle. It doesn't have to be that way. Change your thinking and change your life; In Gospel terms, Repent; As Apostle Paul would say, put on the Mind of Xt and be transformed!
(Sermon delivered by Dr. Paul Veliyathil, Royal Palm Christian Church, Coral Springs, FL 33071, on March 25, 2012)
