renewal through True, Not toxic, Repentance

This is the second sermon in our series “Anabaptism at 500: Looking Back While Living Wholeheartedly into the Future.” It is based on Mark 1:1-4, 14-15 and Psalm 51.

When Pat introduced this series at retreat, she said it would explore both individual and communal renewal—and then mentioned I would be preaching this Sunday about renewal through repentance. She laughed, “Sheri likes to take on the hard subjects.” And she’s right — I do!

But it also makes me sad that repentance is a hard subject for so many of us. Because there is nothing more life-giving than true repentance. True repentance is a deep, heartfelt turning—turning away from attitudes and behaviors that harm us, others, or creation, and turning toward what brings abundant life.  In Hebrew, the main word for repentance is teshuvah, which means “return”—a full return to God in our entire being.

What could be more life-giving — more necessary — than this constant turning to God, this steady reorienting toward fullness of Life? I think of heliotropism: the way a sunflower continually turns its face to the sun. Repentance is a kind of spiritual heliotropism, a constant turning toward the Source of Light and Life. Both John the Baptist and Jesus made it clear that this turning was at the core of their message. John is baptizing people who wish to repent in the wilderness. The first words out of Jesus’ mouth in Mark are that the kindom of God has come near — repent and believe this Good News. 

And yet, for many of us, repentance has been made toxic. Why? Because we’ve been taught—explicitly or subtly—that who we are at our core is bad, wrong, unworthy, not enough. Sinful. That we are flawed at the root, that our desires can’t be trusted and will lead us astray. 

You don’t even have to be raised religious to feel this. Secular society whispers the same message: Your worth is not given but earned, through productivity, wealth, status. You have to work hard and succeed to be considered one of the elect.  Those who are different from dominant culture norms — who are not white, middle-class, straight, cisgender, etc. — get an extra dose of “unworthiness.”  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said: “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”Yet how often have we been taught the opposite?

When we believe we are intrinsically bad, the call to repent can feel like insult added to injury. It reinforces toxic shame and self-doubt.

This distortion of repentance comes largely from the doctrine of original sin, which is the claim that humans are corrupt from birth, tainted by Adam’s fall.  While you may not have been explicitly taught this, again I think we get this message in both religious and secular ways. There’s no question that we humans can “miss the mark” and stray from what is life-giving. Evidence abounds. But that’s different from the belief that we were born sinful.

That idea has little biblical basis; Jews of Jesus’ day certainly didn’t believe it (and they still don’t believe in original sin). But in the 4th century, church fathers codified it, and then the Reformers of the 16th century amplified it. John Calvin said humans are “born vicious.” Martin Luther said we are “full of evil desire from the womb.” I was watching a video of little Elara, sucking on a pacifier. Tell me that child is “vicious.” It’s absurd. 

As the writer John Philip Newell observes, this doctrine teaches that our deepest self is opposed to God, rather than of God.  Individually, it breeds toxic shame and self-loathing. Collectively, it serves empires, keeping people powerless, obedient and afraid. How interesting that doctrine of original sin came to prominence at the same time Christianity because the official state religion of the Roman empire. Teaching people to distrust themselves and their desires, teaching them that they worthless sinners who must obey or face eternal torment — what a great way to control people.

Any repentance built on the lie of original sin is bound to be toxic.

True repentance is rooted not in original sin, but in original blessing. True repentance is grounded in the truth of who we are. (A shout out to Matthew Fox, founder of the Creation Spirituality school of thought, who was the main theologian to popularize this concept in our era.) 

Remember: In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, God pronounced the creation good six times. The Light was good, the division into earth and sky was good, the green growing things — good! night and day — good! — the birds and the sea creatures — good! — all the animals on the land — good! Then the Creator decides to create a human in Their image, according to Their likeness. And what does the Creator call this human? “Very good.”

That is our beginning. That is our truth. As Newell puts it: “Instead of defining ourselves in terms of blight, sin, or failure, we define ourselves by the beauty at the core of our being.” Psalm 139 echoes this: “I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

From this foundation of blessing and grace, true repentance can flow. The Psalmist begins with grace: with God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy. This was the belief of none other than Menno Simons. Knowing I was going to be doing this sermon on renewal through repentance, I attended a seminar at the Mennonite convention by Gerald Mast on Menno Simons’ penitential piety, which was key to Anabaptist spirituality.  Mast emphasized that Menno’s repentance is grounded in grace— in the steadfast love and abundant mercy of God revealed in Jesus Christ.  Once we experience this grace, we can then experience true penitence or repentance.

That grace allows us to see clearly where we are causing harm, and to feel genuine remorse, without collapsing into toxic shame. We can be what we are: beautiful yet broken humans who sometimes miss the mark, but who are not defined by our failings. We can be beautiful yet broken humans born into broken systems like white supremacy or mysogyny or (fill in the blank) and in need of need of awakening to the harm in which we participate—but not condemnation.

Ironically, when shame rules, repentance becomes shallow—habitual apologies, constant self-condemnation—but there often isn’t any wholehearted returning toward the Light. 

I experienced this kind of grace-repentance in a dramatic way, driving through the Nevada desert back in 2000. I was  following Jerome in a rental truck as we moved to the Bay Area from Montana. It was evening, and the sky was this amazing color – a radiant peachy gold. And it wasn’t just one part of the sky that was this peachy gold color, while the rest was gray-blue; the entire sky was that color. It was stunning. 

I looked at the sky, and then I saw a man driving toward me in a pickup truck. And, it’s hard to explain, I suddenly felt as though I was seeing with the eyes of God. I saw how this radiance that was so apparent outside in the evening sky was also inside this man. This man was filled with Divine Light. In fact, I felt his radiance pass through me as his truck went past by car. 

And as I realized this, I also realized that he didn’t know he was full of this radiant Light.  I started to weep, there in my Geo Metro, trying to drive. I wept because this man was so beautiful, so full of Divine Glory, and he didn’t know it. And I wept, because I often fail to see this same radiance in myself and in others. I realized how often I miss the mark. In that experience of utter grace and blessing, there also coexisted — almost simultaneously — a sense of remorse and contrition for how I don’t believe or behave from that grace or blessing. That’s the movement, I believe, that Menno Simons is talking about: grace – repentance – grace – repentance.

Most of my moments of repentance are smaller. Often, during my morning time when I’m praying or doing lectio or journaling, I notice where I’ve turned away from the Light and am invited to return. Like: I notice that I’m falling into the habit of getting onto a screen when I’m needing a break from work instead of something that I know will be more life-giving — like going for a short walk with the dog or going out into my garden. Small, but real.  This ongoing turning was at the heart of Menno  Simons’ penitential spirituality. Like sunflowers, we are to constantly be turning to God’s Light and Life.

As a gift to help us reclaim repentance as renewal, I’ve brought five copies of John Philip Newell’s Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer. This book has grounded me for decades in original blessing and grace. If one calls to you, please take it. Use it, and when you’re ready, bring it back to the church office, or pass it along—or keep it if you need it. It’s a gift of grace. 

I really believe these prayers — or prayers like them — can help us re-root in blessing, and call us again and again to turn toward Life. I’m going to end this sermon with one of my favorite prayers that captures this movement of blessing-repentance:

For the first showings of the morning light

and the emerging outline of the day,

thanks be to you, O God. 

For earth’s colors drawn forth by the sun, 

its brilliance piercing clouds of darkness 

and shimmering through leaves and flowing waters, thanks be to you.

Show to me this day

amidst life’s dark streaks of wrong and suffering

the light that endures in every person.

Dispel the confusions that cling close to my soul

that I may see with eyes washed by your grace

that I may see myself and all people

with eyes cleansed by the freshness of the new day’s light.