17

If ‘Stop It’ Worked, Jesus Coulda Stayed Home

Christ sounds like he’s got a megaphone to his lips outside a concert in the opener to Mark’s gospel. He was talking repentance, that thing where people change and where maybe what I said in the last chapter is wrong. You can almost feel him glaring at the guy with a nose ring.

“The time is complete, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news.”

The word “repent” has come to look best in picket sign scrawl. Few words have as much baggage. Typically it’s being shouted by one sinner at another, because the worst sins are always other people’s.

But Jesus must be proclaiming repentance for reasons not rooted in all this.

The word, at least originally, has more to it than behavior modification. It literally means in the Greek it’s translated from, Change your Thinking, or as we might say today, Wake Up. It’s not a demand that others stop doing something. It’s an alarm clock.

There is, according to Christ, a Kingdom in our midst that’s over and under and permeating whatever temporal Empire or Nation or Kingdom were standing in. Right here, at hand. It’s not confined to geography or a yet-to-be-experienced afterlife. It’s the state of things being as they are supposed to be. Now. This domain, by Christ’s account, is immediately available. Right there in a cubical, in a ditch where your car’s radiator steams, in the penthouse pool cabana and at the dinner table of our enemies.

Boundless Love.

Infinite resource.

Like treasure buried right in our yard. Thinking differently is the shovel that unearths it. Being good boys and girls may or may not ever find it. In this awakened thinking we will come to believe some things, to disbelieve some things, to adopt some things and to let loads and loads of crap go.

An invitation to come awake is very different than a behavioral ultimatum. The difference between the nun with a ruler and the Christ handing me coffee at my bedside, asking if I’m ready, after all these years, to get out of my bed and live. When we realize demands aren’t held over us, then we have a better chance of resisting the urge to hold it over others. It turns out repenting is the lifelong process of learning to see. The gift of sight by a Father who doesn’t slap hands but illuminates sleepy eyes. We’re standing in it. It’s at hand. Anywhere, anytime. Repent and see you’re waist deep in it. “The Kingdom of God isn’t something you go see,” Jesus once said. “Nor will anyone say, ‘It’s here!’ or ‘It’s there!’ Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)

We spend too much of our lives believing our timid minds. And we use those same timid minds to attempt “repenting” into something that God – whose really been reengineered into a higher-level Santa if we list out the traits- will observe favorably. Our faith is the concerted effort to get him to remove us from the naughty list. This is the cheapest, most played religion. Repent of this repentance. Santa’s for kids.

A god protesting us through angry sign holders in reaction to our sin isn’t worth much more than our avoidance. But a God calling us to wake up so we don’t get things twisted up in the first place; that’s a God who wants to set us up for a win. A God that isn’t trying to control our behaviors, but one teaching us control of our own minds. To be humans.

“History has revealed too many people who have tried to be spiritual before they have learned how to be human! It is a major problem. Maybe this is why Jesus came to model humanity for us—much more than divinity. . . Get the ordinary human thing down, and you will have all the spirituality that you can handle.”

I shut my car off in the driveway, and I pause before getting out to go into the house. Why?

Because first I must repent. I must check and perhaps change my thinking. The Kingdom is at hand. Will I see it, or go in believing my unsophisticated, unadjusted selfishness?

I’m heading into a meeting. First, I should go repent in the restroom. There, in a stall designed to shield others’ eyes as I dispose of that which has no value to me, I ask myself if I’m feeling gypped by anyone or anything, and therefore generally owed?

In a few moments I am going to ask my children to explain why, other than the fact that they are children, they haven’t done what they’ve been told to do. I must repent first: Have unmet expectations, condescension, humiliation happened to me today, motivating me to demand the members of my household give me what I’ve been robbed of throughout the day?

I’m having a conversation and I feel the urge to start talking. Perhaps the urge to begin out-storytelling. I repent. Can’t I just listen to others’ good or terrible day and leave myself out of it unless invited?

Before I go into school, or work, or into a conversation or before I think about commenting online, I must remember to repent. This way I don’t unthinkingly believe people must approve of me for me to have value. That people must want sex with me for me to have a sense of worth. That my witty criticisms of government, an opposing team, the board of directors or the manufacturers of a product, will somehow translate into my being seen as intelligent, boosting my social rank. I must repent my mind over and over or I’ll default to a kingdom of Me. The Kingdom whose economy is compassion and not morality, is right there, roaring like a spring under my feet. I just have to remember the importance of dowsing for it. I am gifted the control of my mind, if only I’ll care enough to remember I have it. Good God in heaven this is all so much more than a religion that declares “stop it.” If anything, it’s about finally beginning. Sanely. Lovingly.

The Kingdom is at hand. Let’s get started.