Repentance, from Word to Flesh - Matthew 21:23-32

Since the death of Wendell Berry, a few weeks back, I’ve had a number of friends reach out to offer their condolences. They know how much this writer and farmer from Kentucky has formed my understanding of the world and influenced so many of my decisions from where I live to what I buy. At Berry’s death, I certainly felt the grief of loss, the closure of a life, but more than that I felt a gratitude made complete. Berry’s good work had come to its end, and he left behind both the wisdom of his words and the example of his life.

My favorite outreach at Berry’s death came from a reader who asked me simply what I had most learned from Wendell Berry. Of course, a full answer would take more than a book, but I gave a few succinct paragraphs in response. As I read our Gospel for this Sunday, however, I realized that I could summarize what Berry taught me in one word: repentance.

The repentance Berry taught was certainly not the altar call variety, the sinner’s prayer from the front of the church. It was much more biblical than that. What reading Berry called me toward was much closer to the full meaning of repentance in scripture. There the word metanoia means literally a change of mind. I like how the Common English Bible renders it. There metanoia is translated “change your heart and life.” Such a repentance is found not so much in words, but in flesh—it is reflected in our actions in the day to day details of our lives. In such a repentance, we have to give up on mere talk. As Berry wrote, “it is time for incarnation.”

This movement from word to flesh is at the center of our gospel. Jesus is the word made flesh, God’s law and love embodied in the life of a person. Jesus’s authority comes not from the rabbis that he studied with, or the religious camp with which he was aligned. It comes from the actions of a life with God; one bent in every moment toward the love of those near to hand. Such a life is what Jesus called his students to follow, but to do so, they have to change their lives.

Not everyone is ready for such change. Many want to hold onto the safety of the status quo. The chief priests and elders were in this camp. Sure, they talked of justice, they read Micah and called for it to roll down like water, but now Jesus was in the temple turning over the tables of the money changers. Justice was now moving from the pulpit to their endowments! So it was that they tried to draw Jesus back to the world of words. They demanded that Jesus show them his degrees and ordination certificate. But Jesus knows that God is one who lives in burning bushes and wilderness mountains, God desires mercy, not empty sacrifice. So Jesus responds. Let’s not look at pieces of paper and words, he says in effect. Let’s look at hearts and lives.

Hearts reoriented and lives changed had been the concern of John the Baptist. He had come to offer a baptism of repentance. But like the work of Wendell Berry after him, the change he was calling for wasn’t about concepts or mere ideas. John the Baptist didn’t care if you said some magic words and claimed to be a part of God’s covenant people. His call for repentance was both radical and practical. We find the best picture of this in Luke’s Gospel, where John the Baptist, after preaching his fiery sermon, engaged the crowd in a QA. What are we supposed to do? they ask. “If you have two coats, give away the extra one,” John replies. “If you have more than enough food, you should share with those who don’t have enough.” This sounds easy on the surface, but go to your closet and start handing out your wardrobe, or invite a few hungry people to your table for a meal, and you will find that the practice of this repentance is far easier said than done.

And yet, doing is the essential part. So it is that Jesus tells his parable, a lesson on word and flesh for the temple leaders who rejected John’s call for a change of life. There are two brothers, both are asked to work in the vineyard. The one says no, but then repents. The other says yes, but doesn’t do what he says. Here Jesus presents, in simple form, the temple authorities in contrast with those who were baptized by John, people who included those most reprehensible in their society—the tax collectors and prostitutes.

But what does all of this mean for us? What is Jesus calling us toward in 21st century Arkansas? Again, I think we can get some help from Wendell Berry, for as I said, he taught me how to repent. Wendell Berry was once asked to give a commencement speech. I don’t know what the college leaders were thinking, because to my mind, it was kind of like asking Isaiah to come to Harvard. Berry was a prophet, if nothing else, and his speech certainly fit the bill. In it he said “The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict’s excuse, and we know that it will not do.”

We probably all know something of the addict’s excuse. I know that I have been a master at rationalizing the wrongs in my own life, especially those that have been self-destructive. But I know too that change is possible. Many here have had deep dependencies on what was wrong for their lives and wholeness. And yet, many here have found freedom, not through saying they would, but by doing it. The day after day decision not to drink, or do drugs, or whatever it was that has bound them to a harmful status quo.

This is the choice we are called to make by Jesus. It is a call to join in the work of God, to go to the vineyard, so that one day we can enjoy the gift of the harvest. Maybe we say no at first, but the important thing comes when we change our mind, when we repent and get to work.

If you are looking for a program of repentance, whether you have substance issues or not, I recommend studying the 12 steps. It is a realistic, Gospel based approach to the work of changing our hearts and lives. Working the program, as they say, moves from surrendering to a higher power to making a fierce moral inventory of our lives to making amends—all critical acts in the work of real repentance.

In the end, our repentance isn’t to stop a wrong, but to live into a freedom and goodness. It is to enjoy the feast that is at the end of our work in the vineyard. Just as an alcoholic must get free of alcohol so that they can enjoy the goodness of a relationship. So we are called to a whole life of repentance, so that we can join in the gifts and freedoms that God is pouring out on us. It would be a shame if we were too stuck holding onto our power, our status, our control, our determinations of who is in and who is out, to enjoy the banquet when it comes, whoever else is at the table. Amen.