This year for lent I am using a sermon series on repentance. This series uses many of the texts from the traditional Easter Vigil service. The Easter Vigil texts are selections of stories from the Old Testament where God saves (or acts for the benefit of Man). The stories used in this series are: Creation, the Flood, Abraham and Issac, the Repentance of Nineveh, the Fiery Furnace, and the Crossing of the Red Sea. Each week we will look at repentance through the lens of one of these stories.
Repentance starts with being honest before God and ourselves about who we are. When it comes to sin, everyone has a natural impulse to hide, but repentance means finding the courage to be honest. It also means having faith in the promise of forgiveness. But being honest about faith means recognizing that faith is contested on many sides not only by society, but by our own experiences, and sometimes even by the actions of God himself. Ultimately, repentance means becoming more human, not less. Because our thoughts, desires, and actions are so linked with sin, it is easy to view repentance as fighting against our humanity as if holiness meant trying to stifle as many of our natural human impulses as possible. But honest repentance recognizes that sin is the thing that stifles our humanity, while repentance results in our natural impulses functioning more as God designed them. God designed us to rely on Him. Honest repentance means doing precisely that.
Pastor Mehl