Spring Clean
Preacher: Professor Glen Pettigrove, Chair of Moral Philosophy, University of Glasgow
Readings: Acts 2: 14a, 36-41 and Isaiah 57: 14-21
Think back to an occasion when you were wrong. Really wrong.
One of the professors in the back has this look on his face that says, ‘This exercise doesn’t apply to me. There aren’t any occasions where I’ve been wrong.’ We’ll get back to him in a minute. For now I’ll just point out that that’s not what the reviewers of his last book said.
How about the rest of you? Do you have an example in mind? How did you feel?
You might be thinking this is one of those lame teacher questions, the kind no one wants to answer because the answer is so obvious. It feels bad, stupid, awful, embarrassing. But as Kathryn Schulz points out in her engaging book, On Being Wrong, that is not what being wrong feels like. That is what it feels like when we learn we were wrong. And in the process of learning that we were wrong, we cease to be wrong (at least with respect to that belief or behaviour). Being wrong, by contrast, feels quite different. It feels exactly like being right.[1] So the way the professor in the back is feeling … that’s the way it feels to be wrong.
What do we do if we recognise we were wrong about something big? Acts 2 and Isaiah 57 are like an emergency manual outlining what to do when you realise that bump you just skied over wasn’t a mogul, it was the edge of a cliff.
- Repent
- When we think of repentance, we think first of an emotional condition. And we can find something similar in Acts 2.
- Peter’s listeners are ‘Cut to the heart’ (Acts 2:37).
- But if that were all that repentance involved, Peter’s response to their emotionally laden query, ‘What shall we do?’ would be puzzling. Because they are already manifesting that condition. Were the emotional condition all that repenting involved, then Peter’s response should not have been, ‘Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.’ Rather, it should have been, ‘You’ve already repented. So the next step is to be baptized ….’
- What else does repenting involve? Isaiah 57, which Peter’s response appears to echo, offers a clue. There, those whom God dwells with are described as being humble and contrite (Isaiah 57:15). Contrition involves remorsefully admitting your mistakes both to yourself and to others. (Admitting is more central to the English term ‘contrition’ than it is to the Hebrew word it is translating, דכא, which focuses more on being crushed than on how that person relates to others. But if one is crushed, there is no hiding it from self or other. So the admission or acknowledgment seems to follow from the condition.)
- But this doesn’t make any more sense of Peter’s response, since his interlocutors are already acknowledging they were in error.
- Repenting involves turning around (the meaning of ‘metanoia’). One makes a fundamental change to one’s direction of travel.
- Reversing course may not be easy. It often requires clearing obstacles from our path (Isaiah 57’s image of spring cleaning) and perhaps even major roadworks to make the path one we can travel.
- Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ
- Peter doesn’t just say, ‘Repent for the forgiveness of sins.’ He says, ‘Repent and be baptized … for the forgiveness of sins.’ What does baptism add?
- The answer is NOT water made magical by special words being spoken over it.
- To be baptized in the name of Jesus is to join the community of Jesus followers. What Peter commends is not that try and go it alone. Nor is it that we hide ourselves away from others until such time as we are deserving of their company. We’re better together, even when – perhaps especially when – we’re broken. Peter, like Jesus, calls his listeners to be in community. That call does not just extend to the good guys. It also goes out to the bad guys who want to become good guys.
- Peter doesn’t just say, ‘Repent for the forgiveness of sins.’ He says, ‘Repent and be baptized … for the forgiveness of sins.’ What does baptism add?
- When we think of repentance, we think first of an emotional condition. And we can find something similar in Acts 2.
What may we hope?
- Forgiveness
- That’s how Peter puts it in his sermon. Our sins are let go and will no longer be held against us. Isaiah offers a more complete picture.
- Reconciliation
- The aim of forgiveness in scripture is reconciliation. It is not just that my wrong is no longer held against me. It is also that my relationship with the other can be restored. We can be in community with one another.
- With whom am I reconciled?
- With God – God dwells with the humble and contrite (Isaiah 57:15).
- With human victims? In the case Peter has in mind, namely, the crucifixion of Jesus, reconciliation with the human victim is also part of what his listeners may look forward to. (The human victim in this case is also God. So reconciliation with God entails reconciliation with the human victim.) For the rest of us, reconciliation with our human victims is not guaranteed. We can’t always fix what we’ve broken. We can – and should – try. But sometimes that’s all we can do.
Sometimes Acts 2 is also read as a manual for forgiving. That is, it is taken to be telling us when we should forgive: ‘We should forgive when the wrongdoer repents … and not a minute sooner!’ But that would be to get our manuals confused.
- There is plenty of encouragement to forgive repentant wrongdoers. (See, for example, the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18.)
- But forgiveness in the NT is not limited to those who have already reformed. The most memorable examples are Jesus on the cross (Luke 23:34) and Stephen while being stoned (Acts 7:60): ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’
- One might try and read this as, ‘God, forgive them because I sure as hell can’t.’ But that’s not in keeping with the way either character is portrayed. And even that could display a forgiving spirit.
- When we are being wronged, most of us are like James and John, inclined to ask God to send fire from heaven to consume the one wronging us (Luke 9:54). Or perhaps we are like Isaiah in the chapter before the one from which we read this morning, calling the animals of the forest to devour the wicked. When we are the victim, we are not naturally inclined even to ask God to forgive the wrongdoer (let alone to forgive them ourselves).
- One might try and read this as an example of excusing (a la Wolterstorff). But not every excuse exculpates.
- One might try and read this as, ‘God, forgive them because I sure as hell can’t.’ But that’s not in keeping with the way either character is portrayed. And even that could display a forgiving spirit.
- Peter is not telling his listener to forgive if and only if the wrongdoer has repented for the simple reason that he is not addressing the question, ‘When we should forgive?’ Rather, he is addressing the question, ‘What should his listeners do, having realised they’ve gone wrong?’ And, perhaps by extension, he can be taken to be answering the question of what we should do when we realise we’ve gone wrong.
Most of Peter’s Pentecost sermon is devoted to convincing his listeners that they were wrong. In that regard, it’s not unlike the feedback I tend to give my students on their essays. ‘You got this wrong and that wrong. This sentence is a mess. That paragraph needs to be restructured.’ So his listeners might, understandably, have thought it was a bit of a downer. And it was. But Luke’s retelling of the day’s events is not. Luke tale is one of hope.
The take-away message is not, ‘You got it wrong. Give up.’ It is, ‘You got it wrong, but you don’t have to stay wrong. And God’s love is not limited to those who only ever get it right. So pick yourself up. Turn yourself around. Join a support group (a.k.a., the community of faith). And don’t be afraid to ask for help.’
Let us, then, go forth in hope. Better days lie ahead. In the words of the apostle Paul, ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit’ (Rom 15:13).
Amen