Turn
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Zaccheus the Tax-Collector)
Repent. This term is thrown out a lot within certain Christian circles. The meaning of this word was clouded early in church history when Christianity was co-opted by the Roman empire. The east half of the empire was permitted to remain using Greek as their biblical and liturgical language, but the west was forced to use Latin. As the Greek word for repent was translated into Latin, it began being known as “doing penance” which has a different meaning, a meaning of a period of self-disapproval and remorse.
So, what does repent mean? It simply means to turn. Turn away from “sin”, from behavior that in someway hurts us and/or others, and turn toward a new way. Turn toward Christ, toward God. To go into this, I’m going to look at 2 characters: Deitrich Bonhoeffer and Zaccheus the Tax-Collector.
I have seen too often in the church, specifically in certain traditions, this idea of an altar call, where you “repent of your sin” and then “give your life to Christ.” Now you have fire insurance and you go to heaven when you die. The problem with this is it is vague. There may not be any real repentance. Not any real turning. It’s an idea, and without any practice, that is all it is. It is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace:
Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
I’ll go more into who he is in a moment. In the Gospel of Luke, Zaccheus was a tax collector. As I mentioned in a previous post, tax collectors are not the equivalent of IRS agents, but they were extortionists that abused their position. Zaccheus repented. Zaccheus chose to right his wrongs: Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.”
Luke here shows what repentance looks like. It’s not just a vague belief, a magic prayer. It actually requires something. Something real. Something tangible. The prophet Isaiah shows what repentance looks like: God, through this prophet, has said I have had enough of your religious shows and your sacrifices. The text reads:
When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
God here shows that God honors repentance, true repentance, and what that looks like. It looks like turning away from injustice, turning away from oppression, turning away from complicity, and being on the right side of things. Turn away from the one thing, to the other.
Conservative traditions too often focus on repentance as turning away from drinking, smoking, looking at bad websites, going to parties, and instead, living a “holy” life. Jesus, though, shows a great deal of concern about how we treat others and healing that which is broken, not just bandaging situations. More progressive traditions do forget the personal holiness side of things as Jesus does care how we treat and care for ourselves too. Not everything we do is good for us. Maybe drinking too much is a problem. Maybe many, continual sexual partners is actually problematic. Repentance is turning away from that which hurts us, hurts others, and hurts creation, and turning toward God, toward reconciliation, toward justice, toward health, toward life.
Bonhoeffer said: “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself. . . Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him. . .We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
So who was Bonhoeffer? (The following are direct quotes from a biography of his)
Two days after Hitler’s election as Chancellor in Jan 1933, Bonhoeffer made a radio broadcast criticising Hitler, and in particular the danger of an idolatrous cult of the Fuhrer. His radio broadcast was cut off mid-air. Bonhoeffer sought to organise the Protestant Church to reject Nazi ideology from infiltrating the church. This led to a breakaway church — The Confessing Church
Nazi’s revoked his teaching license and shut down the seminary. He was discredited as a pacifist. He left for the US in 1939.
After less than two years, he returned to Germany because he felt guilty for seeking sanctuary and not having the courage to practice what he preached.
I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. … Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security.
He joined the Abwehr, a military intelligence agency
Within the cover of the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer, served as a messenger for the small German resistance movement. Within the Abwehr, efforts were made to help some German Jews escape to neutral Switzerland. Because of this, he was arrested.
The camp doctor who witnessed the execution of Bonhoeffer later wrote:
I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer … kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.
He was in prison for 2 years but died 2 weeks before the US liberated the camp. He lived out repentance. His life shows what it looks like to turn.
It costs to turn. It is not cheap, it is not free. Grace is free, but how we respond to that grace is challenging. Grace is there for when we screw up trying, but I don’t know if grace is there for complicity. For not wanting to be bothered. I don’t know that grace is there for people that prop up their own religious deeds and works to be noticed. Isaiah seems to say otherwise. So do the gospel of Matthew and the epistle of James.
Today is an invitation to turn. To turn away from our own personal indulgences that may not be healthy. To turn away from complicity in injustice. To turn away from defending the indefensible. To turn away from economic practices that oppress others and views people and creation as commodities for consumption and accumulation. To turn away from greed, lust, and gluttony.
Turning is hard. It might mean turning away from a toxic relationship. From a job. From a political movement we’ve fought hard for over the years. From things that simply make us comfortable. From a point of view. Here’s the big one in our culture, turning away from pride. Admitting we may have been wrong. Turning requires real humility. Or to simplify it, what are ways you can be a better neighbor, a healthier person, and a good citizen of the world? Turn toward that. Turn toward life.
