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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, looking at the gospel reading today for the text of the sermon, please be seated. A church custodian was painting the pastor’s office, and to avoid opening an additional gallon of paint, he mixed a gallon of paint with some thinner and was able to cover the entire office with it. But it didn’t look very good, and the pastor wasn’t too happy with it. The next day when the custodian came into work, he found a note from the pastor that said, “‘Repaint, repaint, and thin no more.'”
Repent. It’s one of those churchy words that people don’t like to hear. It’s a very law-sounding word, a confrontational word. It’s convicting and usually heard in a negative connotation. Maybe it brings to mind a guy on a sidewalk with a sign that says, “Repent, the end is near,” or someone confronts you saying, “Repent, you sinner,” or “turn or burn,” maybe you’ve heard that one.
And that idea of turning, that idea of turning, is a good one in repentance because the Greek word translated repent in the New Testament is “metanoia,” which basically means change. Repent means change, but it’s more than that. Metanoia means changing direction. It means turning, and not just turning from something, not just turning away from something, but turning towards something else. Not just turning for the sake of turning, but you’re actually going somewhere else, particularly somewhere else better.
And that’s what Jesus is getting at in this Gospel reading today when he says in it, twice actually, “repent.” The Roman governor Pilate, yeah, that same one, Pilate, Pontius Pilate, apparently he had killed some Jews while they were doing sacrifices. And there was this tower in the city of Siloam that fell and killed 18 people.
In it, Jesus says, “Repent, turn, or this will happen to you.” Okay, more on that in a minute; put a pause on that and we’ll come back to that. But in this reading and in all of his teachings, actually, Jesus calls people to repent. He calls us to repent, to turn from sin, and that’s another interesting word, sin. It’s also a churchy kind of negative word that people don’t like to hear.
The New Testament word for sin is really interesting in that it’s not just doing bad things or doing something wrong or breaking rules or God’s commands and all that. It is those things, but it’s more. Sin is a word often used in biblical times for marksmanship, about missing the mark. Sin in New Testament times meant you were missing the mark, missing the target, missing the target of God’s commands and His standards for our living.
And the word for sin is missing the target so bad, it’s like you’re shooting in the complete opposite direction. Now, you’re that bad of a shot. You’re not even pointing in the right direction. The military calls this friendly fire, that you’re shooting at your own people. That doesn’t sound very friendly to me, if you ask me. It’s bad because it damages your friends and it damages yourself.
And that’s how sin is with us today. When we sin, we damage others, we damage ourselves, and we all can do those things. We all can do things that turn us away from God and how He wants us to be. We may fail to worship on a regular basis. We may neglect prayer and reading of God’s Word, and we may get into activities, on purpose or not, that aren’t what followers of Jesus should be doing—things that miss God’s target of our behavior in life. In fact, they even put us in the opposite direction, taking us away from God.
And Jesus confronts us to repent, repent from our sins because we’re all guilty of sins. We all do things that can damage others, not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally by gossiping, lying, deceiving, cheating, and just general overall selfishness that we all have.
Does that make you a worse sinner than any of the other people mentioned in the Gospel reading? No, it doesn’t make you any better either. You’re a sinner, and Jesus confronts you to repent, to turn. Turn from the sins that cause damage to your relationship with God and are damaging others too. And again, repent doesn’t mean just stop it, stop doing wrong, stop sinning. It’s turning you from them to something better. It’s turning you to Jesus, turning you to His forgiveness of your sins, which is just the opposite of what your sins are doing—doing damage.
Turning the other way to being forgiven—repenting doesn’t just mean stop doing something but turn to God. Repentance is turning you to the forgiveness that God offers from that other direction. Jesus doesn’t confront you to repent, to convict you, to make you look or feel bad or even condemn you. Jesus wants you to turn to Him to be forgiven. As it said in the Old Testament reading from Ezekiel, God does not desire that people be destroyed by death.
Turning to Jesus, He’s the target we need to be aiming at. John 3:17 says, “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.” And this saving, this forgiveness of Jesus, came at a price. It cost Him His life. Jesus came into our world as a human to live with us, suffer like us, and then to die for us. His death pays the penalty, the price, the punishment of our sin, and if you will, turns the tide of punishment of our sin into forgiveness instead.
That’s what Jesus does with His death. He pays for all of that. He turns us from our sin and turns us to forgiveness. And then in His resurrection, in rising from the dead, Jesus, He lives again and gives that life to us—eternal life, life beyond our earthly death. In resurrection, Jesus turns death into life for us. When we repent, when we repent, that’s what we turn to—the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life.
Again, God’s desire in confronting you to repent is to forgive you and give you life. And we go back to that gospel reading now; we push the play button there again. I promise we go back to that gospel reading. It’s that when Jesus says repent, He says it’s because unless you do, His words, you will all die. Likewise, you’ll die like those Galileans or those Siloam crushes.
But no, we don’t have to worry about a Roman governor trying to kill us or a tower falling on us. Probably just stay off campus; the UT tower won’t fall on you, right? No, no, what Jesus is saying is if you don’t repent, if you don’t turn, you’re going to die. Now, that’s kind of a duh, but what He means is you will also die because no one is exempt in this life because of sin. There is no place or situation in life that is safe from death, and Jesus wants you to be turned from that—turned from death to life.
Romans chapter 8 says, “Through Christ we are set free from sin and death.” That’s really the basic simplicity of Christianity, that because of Jesus’s work on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, He’s turned us from sin and death and turned us toward life. In repenting, we’re turned from sin and death, and we’re turned to forgiveness and life. That’s the better that Jesus is turning us from in repentance—that’s the better of repentance—that the better our life without Jesus just ends up in the grave, and Jesus turns us to a life—eternal life in heaven. That’s the better that we turn to because we need that.
Repenting is for our benefit. See, repenting is making a turn for your good. It’s a 180 for your benefit. And I look at it this way: repenting is a U-turn for you—for your benefit. And I turn it this way, it’s a Y-O-U turn. Repenting is a turn for you, for your benefit, because God has so much to give you in repentance. Not just putting it on you, “Hey, stop doing what you’re doing,” “Hey, be a good girl or good boy,” “You know, you don’t do that sin,” but more so say, “Come here! I have forgiveness for you. I have eternal life for you.”
A Y-O-U turn in repentance. I mean, maybe right now in your life, maybe let’s look at it this way: maybe you’re driving through life right now with a trunk full of sin baggage, and you don’t like it. You know it’s wrong, you know it’s bad, you know it’s harmful, and you want to do something about it. And what do you do? Repent. Turn. Make that Y-O-U turn to Jesus, where there’s forgiveness and eternal life. You don’t have to drive around with this in your trunk all of your life. It’s not what God wants for you.
Or maybe you’re aiming at the wrong target. You’re aiming at the wrong target in dealing with your sin. Turn around; turn to Jesus. So how do you do this? How do you repent? Maybe you’re asking, maybe you’re thinking, “How do I turn, Pastor?” Well, each Sunday is a great time for that. We’re together; we turn to Jesus in confessing our sins and receiving the words of absolution and forgiveness like we did earlier.
In Holy Communion, the target of God’s love for us, the body and blood of Christ, is put into our hands and into our mouth. And there’s daily chances, too. You can turn to God each day in personal confession, in prayer, in reading His Word, and also in recalling your baptism. I mean, it’s great; we got to see it today for Carter. And for you, recall what happened in your baptism that each time you do, you’re turning back to Jesus and what He did for you here in baptism, what He did for Carter here, and for all of us.
Recall the grace that came into your life in Jesus— in your baptism. And even just looking at the word “repent” can help you to repent, okay? You look at the word “repent,” and it works out in English. Look at the word “repent.” Again, repentance takes us somewhere. It takes us from sin and takes us to forgiveness. And we look at the word “repent,” and it takes us somewhere. The word—how does it end?
How does the word “repent” end? With a T— with a cross. Even the word “repent” reminds us that at the end of repentance is the cross, is the death and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. “Repaint, repaint, and thin no more.” That was a joke, right? Okay, but it’s no joke of God calling you to repent and sin no more. He wants you to turn away from the danger of sin, from death, and to turn to forgiveness in life in Jesus.
May we all make that turn and receive that grace of Christ. Amen.
Now may the grace of God, which goes beyond all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
