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Repentance
Repentance Entries from July 1, 2019 - July 31, 2019
Do The Teshuva!
Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 03:52PM 
From the Charleston to the Mashed Potato to Flossing, every dance move needs a name; but if you want to do the Teshuva, you’ll need a Rabbi to show you how. Teshuva is the Hebrew word for repent, or return. In it’s various forms the root of teshuva is used nearly a thousand times in the Old Testament. When Adam is fated to return to the ground (Genesis 3:13) at the end of his days, the root word is introduced for the first time. Throughout the Old Testament the connections between “return” and “repent” run deep and strong. When Jesus told the parable of the Prodigal Son, every Jewish listener understood the depth and significance of the words, “I will arise and return to my father.” (Of course, the Lord’s story ends in a surprising and unexpected celebration of the return!)
Rabbi Maimonides was a 12th-century teacher and Torah scholar who quite literally wrote the book on teshuva, The Laws of Repentance. Christians and Jews alike have leaned on Maimonides’s work for centuries, discovering the elements of regret, confession, penance, and even restitution that comprise the ingredients of repentance. Indeed, if Teshuvah were a dance, Rabbi Maimonides has laid out the steps.
The famous teacher located repentance in the act of confession, because no one will confess unless they first regret their actions and want to take concrete steps to return to the kind of life they had before sin worked its destruction in their hearts, their, minds, their families, and their communities. Both as individuals and as a community, the people of Israel understood the importance of taking action—an action of confession.
In a ceremony known as Yom Kippur, the nation-wide day of repentance, the high-priest over the entire community of Israel would confess the sins of the nation. Their regrets brought them together; their confession brought their sins to light. Regret is the first step in the great dance of repentance; confession is the second step. Regret motivates the return; confession completes the return. And I a a community context, this repentance was done together, acknowledging the sins of the community.
The Old Testament teshuvah dance also contained an individual element: when I have sinned I need not wait until the national day of mourning and confession—I could bring a sacrifice to the priest, and confess my individual sin. There first two steps of the dance are here again: regret brings me to the priest; confession begins the cleansing. But here, in the individual repentance of my personal sin, there was one more step in the dance: restitution—a return of what was stolen or damaged as a result of my actions. Moses, the Lawgiver of Israel, laid out these steps for the people of Israel:
“When a man or woman commits any of the sins of mankind, acting unfaithfully against the Lord, and that person is guilty then he shall confess his sins which he has committed, and he shall make restitution in full for his wrong and add to it one-fifth of it, and give it to him whom he has wronged.”
(Numbers 5:6-7)
The individual teshuvah dance is three steps: return to the priest, confess my sin, and make the damaged person whole.
Regret. Confession. Restitution. These are no longer in vogue, even among the religiously minded. And to be sure, this is the Old Testament picture of repentance, the three-step teshuvah. In God’s great economy, this picture of repentance is transformed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Still, “Rabbi Jesus,” a thousand years before Rabbi Maimonides, was making all things new—including repentance.
In Jesus’s ministry, how important is the call to repent? It’s the very first word of the good news. Jesus calls us to repent no less than our brothers and sisters the Old Testament age. And yet, the Lord carefully preserves these three steps and invites us into a dance grander and greater still.
The Day the Cows Repented
Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 10:12AM 
No details. Just an eight-word prophecy of destruction, delivered by a strange-looking foreigner. A man with ragged clothes and ugly skin walked through the heart of a great city and repeated himself over and over: “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
This is the story of a God named Yahweh, a man named Jonah, and a city called Nineveh: a city 600 miles away from Jerusalem, a city known for its wealth, its size—and its barbarity. God sent a nobody (a Jewish prophet) to warn the Assyrian city of Nineveh that destruction was coming. Without advertising in advance, without setting up a diplomatic meeting between representatives of two countries, God’s message was plain and direct: in forty days your capital city is doomed.
And then something remarkable happened. The people of the city listened to the message. Really listened. From the city streets and among the storefront shops a grassroots response grew. People believed the message and took action: they repented. In the ancient world there were protocols for repentance, outward actions that signaled you were turning around. The people of Nineveh quit eating. They took off their work clothes or party clothes and dressed in burlap sacks, rich and poor alike agreed on these signs as a response, “We hear you, God of Israel, and we will change.” Even the king of Nineveh, isolated in his royal palace, became one with his people, fasting and shedding the royal silks. He took the cold ashes from the fireplace and poured them on his head.
Just in case there was someone who had not yet gotten with the program the king sent out a formal notice: “Everybody: repent.” And the king meant everybody: his decree went a step further and demanded that the livestock of the city should join in these acts of repentance. “Stop feeding your animals,” he said, “Let them repent with us.” Can you imagine the noise rising up from the city as from every stall, every pen, and every chicken coup the animals began to complain? Even the lowing of the cattle rose up as a prayer of repentance. It was the day the cows repented. And Yahweh heard. He saw that from great to small, from human to bovine, this group of people was willing to change their ways.
Here’s the thing about God: his pronouncements of judgment are not final; they are invitations to repent. The message delivered by the prophet had started a countdown to destruction, but God could stop the clock—and he did so when he saw the response rise up from the streets and reach the highest levels of government. These people took judgment seriously, and God took them seriously. Crisis, averted; peace, restored; mercy, bestowed.
Here’s the thing about repentance: anyone can do it, apparently even your livestock. You don’t have to be a religious person. You don’t have to be a citizen of a select nation. To anyone willing to change God gives the grace for change. Repentance is the outward sign of an inner willingness.
And here’s another thing about repentance: it’s not about the messenger. One of the most surprising aspects about the Old Testament book of Jonah is that Jonah, the prophet, is the “bad guy” in this story. Even though he hears a message directly from God, he has no intention of delivering it because he thinks the people receiving the message do not deserve God’s mercy (check out Jonah 4:2 for the interpretive key to the entire book). Jonah tries to get as far away from Nineveh as he can—but he’s overruled by God (and an enormous fish). Jonah finally delivers the message. You can imagine the begrudging, snarling tone of voice as Jonah walks through the massive city for three days. The people respond, but he’s livid when the people of Nineveh repent. He cares more about having a shady hillside perch so he can watch the fire and brimstone fall. Even though the messenger is filled with hatred for these people, they receive the message. Even though the messenger delivers the message in the most perfunctory way, they receive the message. Even though the messenger is rooting for their own destruction, they receive the message. Wouldn’t it be a tragedy for you or me if we let someone else get in the way of our repentance?
But that would never happen in our day. It would never happen to you or me. It only happens in old Bible stories, right? Right?
