Romero and repentance

Lent is always a time of repentance and a time of ‘bringing to mind’ – trying to re-member those parts of our lives that are most in need of God’s bountiful forgiveness. Lent is sometimes seen as a bit of a downer, an opportunity to bask in moroseness and general brow beating. Yet I’m not convinced that that is really at the heart of this season. In fact, even when Jesus spent his time in the desert being tempted, as we heard about a few weeks ago, this was a period of growing in faith, a period of growth in self-understanding, that follows that great statement from heaven – ‘this is my son, in whom I am well pleased’.

That said, we need to take this intentional growth very seriously indeed.  Our readings today are, if you like, a manual to a good and holy Lent – full of caution yet also full of redemption. God Himself was tempted, and yet didn’t yield – but we know from our own experience that we are not there yet. All of us here have probably done something we regret even in the past week – however small it might seem, we risk marring God’s creation by rejecting goodness in every small act where we forget to be kind, or forget the effect we might be having on others. Whilst acts of murderous barbarity, like that seen in New Zealand last weekend, and routinely seen around the world, are exemplars of the evil that still persists in the world, we mustn’t forget that each of us has our own part to play, not only in not doing evil, but also in actively doing good. Giving something up for Lent often seems to miss the point – a kind word to a stranger, a visit to a lonely elderly person or time given to building a better society are surely more pleasing to God than six weeks without Stella Artois.

In our Epistle today St Paul reminds us that not only was Christ there as the fount of spiritual drink that fed the Israelites, but that the constant and seemingly impossible-to-eradicate human propensity to both sin, and to imagine it doesn’t matter, was there right from the start – indeed, during the very Exodus that prefigured the resurrection and in which God was saving His people. To put it another way, even whilst God Himself is leading His people out of human slavery, they retained their slavish obedience to sin. Even though the Exodus people had a rock who was Christ, they were still struck down – still desiring evil things, grumbling and looking to their own strength for salvation.

Jesus is saying the same thing when he asks ‘do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?’. It’s a natural human reaction to point out the greater sin of others before looking into our own hearts, or to wallow in what we see as ‘just punishment’ for others, when we ourselves are far from blameless. Thinking back to the attacks in New Zealand, commentators have been shouting condemnation of the killer, yet how many have taken a moment to think where the role of our own public discourse might be in the marginalization and hateful attitudes towards the ‘other’. Muslims, in this country and throughout the Western world, have routinely been painted as some kind of intrinsic threat to our way of life and our civilization – yet our press and our politicians don’t seem to see the log in their own eye. Words don’t, of course, inevitably lead to murder – but when a group is demonized again and again, those who spout hatred are not blameless.

And again, Jesus is clear – ‘if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did’. These are strong words, and perhaps difficult ones for us to hear. It feels like one of the sentences of Jesus that is too hard to bear – that doesn’t chime well with His words about His burden being light and his yoke easy. We run the risk of falling into a kind of helplessness – a feeling that we can never achieve what we need to, and therefore never live the life that wouldn’t inevitably lead to destruction and despair. We are all sinners, and none of us could possibly live up to this kind of exacting standard. St Paul has told us that those in the Exodus were destroyed as a warning to us – and what a warning. Like St Augustine, we run the very real risk of despairing in our inability to be anything like what we should be. In the words of the general confession of Cramner, ‘The remembrance of our sins is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.’

These, then, are two of the biggest temptations that we might face during a period of reflection and self-denial – that of self-justification and that of despair. The two, of course, aren’t that different – in fact, they are both sides of the same coin. Because, ultimately, they both come down to us – as though we are the architects of our own future, of our own happiness or our own growth. We are either innocent because we can prove ourselves better than others, or we are guilty because we can’t live up to some exacting standards. It’s all about us – it’s all about me. I can’t do it, or I have done it. No space for God, only space for us.

And we might be tempted to dwell in that space were we to have finished the Gospel reading halfway through. Yet here is Jesus reminding us what repentance really means.  After his stern warnings, he drops into teaching mode and talks of the useless fig tree, which despite three years of waiting has still not produced any fruit. The owner has had enough of it, yet the gardener urges him to give it just one more chance. The gardener, who has gently tended this tree and who has faith in it, still has hope; he continues to love it and cares for it, and saves it from destruction. This gardener, of course, is Jesus – the one who continues to intercede for us before the throne of grace, and who, despite our manifold failings, saves us through grace alone. All we must do is turn back to him – repent – and he will give us this grace.

Thirty-nine years ago today, St Oscar Romero was saying the Mass at an oncology hospital when he was shot dead, in cold blood, for standing up for the poor and vulnerable in El Salvador. Just last year, Oscar Romero was recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church. His journey to sainthood has been far from easy, but his message has stood the test of time. To Romero, as to so many others who have swum in the stream of liberation theology, repentance entails not only personal action, but corporate – a recognition that the real world of God matters. Repentance is no longer a pious but ultimately self-centred activity – instead, repentance is a turning to, a surrender to and assent to the work of God in the world and its societies. God is once again put first, a God who liberates the poor and the meek, who lifts up the humble, who acts in history and who brings down the mighty and the oppressor. Repentance means that it’s not longer an option to walk by whilst the poor are maltreated, whilst the oppressed are hated. Repentance means standing up for those vilified by the press and persecuted by unjust regimes – it means placing yourself in God’s hands and repenting corporately for the sins of society. No longer can we look at others and feel glad that we aren’t as bad as them – for our inaction allows the oppressive structures of society to continue. Repentance leads to practical action – and this is no rejection of salvation by grace alone, but its natural development. If we truly put ourselves in God’s hands, we cannot help but be driven by grace to set the captives free.

Romero himself preached on the readings we heard today in 1980, just a few weeks before his martyrdom. He spoke in front of a congregation that included the families of those murdered by the regime, and in fact in front of the bodies of several of the murdered. Romero puts it clearly – God ‘raises up the justice of God and the forgiveness of women and men’. For him, this is no abstract idea – this is reality. ‘Today we need active women and men who do not accept situations as they are but analyse these situations internally and profoundly’ he says. Romero’s theology of repentance is not chocolate box or twee – it is raw, raw like the emotions of the mothers whose sons lie dead before him. This is the God who has ‘witenessed the affliction of my people in Egypt, and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know what they are suffering’.  Yet Romero’s answer is not revenge but repentance – it is the transformation of grief into a tool of righteousness. From the most evil acts, love and beauty and spring forth.

For this is what our God is like – a God of omnipotence and glory, but also a God of vulnerability and beauty – a terrible beauty that strikes us at the heart and demands our full attention. Moses meets the reality of this God– the God who demands he removes the sandals from his feet, who declares ‘I am who am’. In Romero’s words, ‘we are dealing with a being, an active, dynamic being and not a being that simply exists...He is saying I am a dynamic being. I am One who ought to be discovered in the dynamics of history. I am present in all the interventions of power in the world. I am the power of the stars and the seas. I am the one who brings things into existence’. Repentance is real – it is felt and it moves mountains. This is the repentance we are called to during Lent – a repentance seen most fully when we gave on Jesus, the man most fully alive, who, as Pope Benedict so beautifully states, is the living embodiment and fulfillment of the law of God.

So this Lent, let us not fall hostage to either self-satisfaction or despair. As the psalmist knows, the Lord is kind and merciful. Despite Romero’s brutal death at the hands of the powers of this world, his story and his theology live on to inspire and empower Christians to live out the Magnificat today. Living in the grace of Christ, we must truly repent, and thus grow closer to the God who created the world, and who loves each of us with an unquenchable love that we can barely comprehend. As Romero says: ‘to repent means that one clings to Jesus and seeks union with the Father’. ‘We journey together with this rock who is Christ’. May it be so this Lent, and may we pray for each other and ask the prayers of Our Lady and all the saints so that our repentance might be holy and acceptable before our God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. ‘Those who journey with Christ will find the true God and true salvation’. So be it.