Imagine we are in a classroom, but it’s no ordinary classroom. It is the complete idiots guide to repentance, and Jesus is the supply teacher, and as he enters the class, he says nothing.
He just writes the word REPENTANCE in capital letters on the board, followed by the phrase: “WHAT is it?”
He turns and looks at us.
Silence.
Hands go up around us to offer suggestions.
“Perhaps repentance is guilt”, someone says sheepishly.
“Perhaps repentance is a ritual act, looking somber and saying sorry but not actually ever living a different life.” adds another.
“Repentance is remorse and regret,” says a third pupil, while he is wondering if anyone ever feels it.
Just then Jesus the teacher writes something else.
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” it reads.
Jesus looks around the classroom and raises his eyebrows, forcing us all to ponder like a big focus group. So we put our heads together.
‘Where our treasure is’, we figure, is another way of saying ‘what we most value’.
And ‘where our heart is’ is a way of describing where our essential being is – ie. who we really are.
So we confidently elect a spokesperson.
“What we most value,” says our spokesperson, “is inevitably who we will become.”
“If we dwell on guilt, we remain guilty.
“If we value rituals, we become ritualistic, and if we value money most, we become avaricious.
But Jesus interrupts our spokesperson and suddenly writes a third message on the board.
“Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”
He noiselessly opens the floor to our responses again. More hands go up.
“Perhaps,” says someone from the back, “if we value the impermanent and changeable, a turbulent natural world or an unstable financial market - that is what we ourselves can become, turbulent and unstable.”
Jesus goes back to the word Repentance on the board, underlines it twice, and adds a big question mark.
I can’t stand it any longer, so I have a go myself.
“In God we live and move and have our being Jesus, as it says in Acts, which I know wasn’t actually written in your time, but all the same, it is in repentance that we re-consider who we actually are, and in whom we do have our being.
“And is there any evidence for this?” says Jesus.
I consider pointing straight back to him, isn’t it that obvious? But apparently not to him, so instead I hold up the gospel.
“The Greek word translated into repentance in the English language is meta-noia, Jesus. Meta, meaning after or beyond or above, noia, meaning perceiving or thinking, noia coming from nous, nous meaning the mind. “Use your nouse!”, as the saying goes.
Jesus doesn’t move a fraction of a muscle. I waver but go on.
“So if repentance or meta noia means beyond the mind, then mentally knowing all about God is by no means the same as actually knowing God.”
Jesus looks interested and invites me to go on.
“Repentance must take us beyond mental feelings.
On a roll, I look at the saviour.
“So actually” I say to Jesus, “true repentance is being beyond what the heart and mind can picture and measure in this world, being where no moth can eat, no chemical reaction can rust, and no thief can steal. You said as much yourself Jesus, well, according to whoever wrote Matthew you did anyway.
“Providing we are able to let limiting patterns go, we see who we really are - turned away from temporary estrangements with our neighbours towards a superior state of being: God.
“Repentance is not identifying with decaying nature and thief prone material but with divine reality, in whom everything sits. Letting go of what we are not, and becoming who we are.”
Christ breaks his silence. “And is there any evidence of this from Church tradition?” he says enigmatically. But I’m not entirely sure if he is being serious, the Kingdom must be more important to him than Church tradition. So I think of pointing to him again, but as I sense the end of the lesson, I offer Church history, just to oblige.
"Repentance is salvation, but a lack of understanding is the death of [this] repentance.” - Bishop Basil the Great, 4th century.
Sure enough the bell rings for the end of the lesson. Jesus picks up a complete idiot’s guide book and reads:
“God holds each person by a string. When you sin, you cut it and seem to drop away from God, but God simultaneously ties it up in a knot – thereby bringing you closer. Again your sense of separation cuts the string – but with each new knot you are drawn closer still, and understand this,” Jesus says, putting the book down and looking at us: “In repentance, there is no dualistic feeling towards a Father who is separate from us. God is one, God both transcends this world and is the depth within it. Your Father is unseen; he sees what is in secret, and God will be your only reward.”
Jesus dismisses the class, in the name of Father Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen
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