Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Luke 3:21-22

Sin and repentance: words that don’t normally cause our hearts to leap with joy.

Telling you that I am going to preach a sermon about sin and repentance today probably doesn’t make you think, “Yippee this is going to be a good one.”

But I hope by the end of my sermon I have changed your mind. I hope by the end of my sermon you will think of sin and repentance just a little bit differently.

For I believe that it matters a great deal how we understand these concepts, and that the understandings of these words that most of us hold and that most of us have lived with our whole lives, have actually hurt our relationship with God, rather than helped it.

Until my late 20’s, I held a pretty traditional view of sin and repentance and of God.

My understanding of God, my relationship with God and the purpose of following Christ were pretty much the same as the views I was taught or absorbed from those around me when I was young.

God was the great and omnipotent being who sat on a throne in heaven.

It was my job to please this God who was judge of all so that I could ensure my place in heaven after I died.

The purpose of religion was to teach me the rules I needed to follow in order to please this God so that I would end up in heaven.

I suspect that this view of God and religion is not unfamiliar to you.

So, being the good and rule-following girl and young person that I was, I tried to figure out the rules and to follow them.

My prayer life involved a lot of apologizing to God for the times I had broken the rules and asking God to tell me what to do when the way forward was not clear to me.

I worried a lot about picking a career that would please God.

I worried about whether or not each decision I made was following the will of God.

I agonized over these decisions, because it was often very unclear to me what God’s will was.

I would become frustrated and beg God to please just tell me what to do.

After all, the stakes were high, because I believed that God the judge would be angry with me if I made the wrong decision.

And I believed that God’s love had to be earned—I had to do and believe the right things.

Now I understood and could spout the doctrine of salvation through grace alone, but the reality was that I didn’t really believe this.

The reality was that I really believed that I had to earn God’s love, and most of the time I wasn’t really convinced that I had done so.

Most of the time I lived in a space of uncertainty where I questioned whether or not God really loved me.

Perhaps you can identify a little bit with this struggle.

And then one day, when I was struggling with a particularly difficult life decision, I found myself feeling overwhelmingly angry with God.

This was a difficult experience for me, as I had been taught by the nuns in the Catholic school I attended as a child that anger, and particularly anger with God, is a very bad sin.

But nevertheless, even though I tried to stop feeling angry, the anger just would not go away.

I was angry because I believed that if I didn’t make the decision that God wanted me to make that God would be angry with me.

And yet I didn’t have enough information to know which decision to make.

I had prayed and prayed and meditated and meditated, and God had not answered me. How could God be angry with me when God was giving me no direction?

I had consulted with wise and spiritual people, and I still had no clue.

Suddenly the God I had been taught to believe in seemed petty and unjust to me. Suddenly God seemed more like an abusive parent than a loving God.

And I was angry.

So, I went to my spiritual director, and I shared with him my troubles.

He listened, nodded and said, “You know Suzannah, your problem isn’t God it is your understanding of God.

Perhaps God isn’t the great judge in heaven who is keeping track of whether or not you are doing right or wrong.

Perhaps God is your companion who is with you right here and right now no matter what you do or what decision you make.”

He then suggested that I meditate on the last verse from our Gospel reading for today and imagine that God was saying these words to me and not to Jesus:

“You are my daughter, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

He also suggested that I begin reading some books written by Marcus Borg.

And as I did both of these things, my ideas about sin and repentance, and my ideas about God began to change.

And as my ideas began to change, my relationship with God began to change as well, and in turn I began to change.

In his book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, Borg redefined repentance for me.

According to Borg, the word that we define as being sorry, remorseful or penitent had additional meanings in Jesus’ day.

To Jesus and his contemporaries, it meant return from exile and to follow the way of God into the promised land.

It was less about the avoidance of punishment and more about the community following God to the way of freedom and peace.

This certainly fits with what we see John the Baptist doing in the wilderness and explains why he and then Jesus after him were such a threat to the religious and political authorities and the established order.

Political authorities are notorious for using the idea of a judging and vindictive God to establish social control.

“God made us the rulers”, these powerful authorities say.

Follow our rules or suffer in this life and the life to come.

Herod the Great and his son after him had concentrated religious power in the Temple to benefit himself and his rule, not to further people’s relationship with God and to bring them freedom and peace.

First John the Baptist, and then Jesus had an entirely different message.

Suddenly there was this man standing in the wilderness who claimed that baptism and repentance could be achieved outside of the Temple walls.

And today, we see Jesus himself being baptized by God.

God is present in creation outside of established religion.

And when the heavens are torn open and God speaks to Jesus, we see that God is present in the world right here and right now.

God is not a distant being found only in heaven.

God is not primarily a lawgiver and a judge.

God is with us and in us right here and right now.

This is why God sends us Jesus.

In Jesus we have the primary revelation of God.

Jesus who walked on this earth was human, so we cannot see everything there is to know about God in him, but we can see aspects of God revealed in him.

And what we see in Jesus is that God is compassionate, God is with us, God loves us, God wants to be in relationship with us, and God has a dream for us that is different from the dreams held by those in power.

And this is what religion is meant to be about.

True religion, true spirituality at its best is not about rules.

True religion is not about earning our place in heaven.

True religion is not about appeasing an angry God.

True religion is about helping us to soften our hearts that our hearts might be open to the reality of God all around us.

True religion, real spirituality is about helping us to see that God loves us, God is seeking a relationship with us, and God is with us each step of the way.

True religion helps us to repent, or to reorient ourselves toward God that we might leave our exile from God behind us and join with God in the promised land right here and right now.

Certainly, the idea of sin still exists, but it is less about tallying up more rights than wrongs so we can get into heaven and more about learning to see the world with new eyes and letting go of those things that get in the way of our relationship with God.

God loves us and cares for us, even when we let things get between us and God, and simply desires that we turn back to God, not for God’s sake, but for ours.

We practice prayer, read Scripture, come together to worship, do ministry together within and outside of these walls, not to get to heaven, but to help to open our hearts to the reality of God’s presence within and all around us.

The fruits of the softening of our hearts, the fruits of our relationship with God are compassion, love and the peace of God which passes all understanding.

When we begin to really open ourselves up to the idea that God loves us no matter what, that we are God’s beloved with whom God is well-pleased, we find that there is not as much space in us for anxiety, judgment, self-righteousness, selfishness, and despair, because we are being filled instead with compassion and love.

So, repent and return to the Lord, not because God is angry with you, but because God loves you and wants to be in relationship with you.

Nothing can separate you or me from the love of God.

We, each and every one of us are God’s daughters and sons.

We are God’s beloved with whom God is well pleased. Amen.