Rethinking penance

A couple of weeks ago when Peter and I went over to Laguna Beach to visit Baby Zoe at the hospital we were not merely welcoming the newest member of Red Sox nation. We were face to sweet little face with one of the most potent human experiences – the newness of birth. As I looked at her, all snuggy in her tightly wrapped blanket I wondered what it was like for her. Talk about a disorienting change. She went from warm comfortable dark to cold rude light. The tightly wrapped blanket was an intentional recreation of the familiar cramped quarters from which she had just emerged. The sudden freedom would have been overwhelming. Everything had changed for little Zoe. Her senses were being assailed by bright, loud, freedom, air in and out of her lungs, all sorts of new and possibly scary things. She has suddenly found herself in a world that had changed and she will now have to change because of it. Is it any wonder that birth is such a powerful metaphor in our faith?

Jesus was offering people a world that was also radically changed, if they would only choose it. It was a world in which the old ways of doing things were suddenly unimportant. Jesus said that one did not need to take part in the Temple sacrifices in order to be right with God. No amount of ritual slaughter would bring anyone closer to God. The world to which Jesus invited people did not depend on whether one could afford the Temple prices or whether one was clean by someone else’s standards. Jesus offers the kind of freedom that is so disorienting to a newborn. The walls that have previously confined you, that defined your world, are gone. Jesus introduces a world in which the breath of the Spirit whispers “you are God’s beloved.”

Now here’s the rub. When you get that Spirit – that inspiration from above that pushes you out of the womb of your old way of being, it is not enough to say “Thank you!” although that’s an important first response. The expectation is that you will begin to rearrange your life in response to the new world in which you find yourself. Imagine if a baby refused to learn to stretch its arms and legs and instead resolutely curled up in a ball because that’s what she was used to before being born. That would be strange. So would it be for any one who claims to be reborn by the inspiration of God’s whispering Spirit and yet continues to reject their own lovability or that of anyone else.

Spiritual rebirth does not make you instantly perfect. It merely gives you a new world in which to live. It’s a world in which you might long for the old comfortable restrictions and assumptions but with a little practice you can begin to stretch your arms and legs and discover wonder and blessing all around you.

What does life after spiritual rebirth look like – while it must be different for everyone, I’d like to think that there are some basic features. First your awareness will have been expanded. And then, like any newborn, there must be some kind of discernment – trying to figure out who you have suddenly become. The deeper awareness of God’s love gives way to a new awareness of yourself. “Who was I and who am I now?” “Who are all of those other people?” “How did I live with them before and how do I want live with them now?” I’d like to think that after such an experience there’s a lot more love in every direction. Love for God, love for yourself and greater love for others. Love for others will expose the sins of your past. When John Newton had his born from above moment he realized that his being a slave trader was not what God wanted. The world became new to him, the people he had previously considered a commodity suddenly became real. He didn’t just write the hymn Amazing Grace, it is the story of his acceptance, confession, absolution and most publicly – his work to end the slave trade in England.

My Lenten conversation partner, Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book Speaking of Sin about penance, something we don’t think about much any more. And it’s not just instructions from a priest to say ten Hail Marys and five Our Fathers. Penance is not punishment for what we have done or the way we used to live but penance should be thought of as repair. It is the active work of putting things right. John Newton understood the concept of penance. If children vandalize someone’s garden, the appropriate penance would be to help replant and then weed the garden for a period of time. The garden and hopefully much more would be repaired. As responsible adults, that’s generally not the kind of sin that we have to address. Ours are more subtle and take a lot of work to repair. Barbara Taylor wrote about one of the people who took part in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa. The confession and forgiveness happened but the victim of racial violence and economic apartheid still lives in poverty and despair as do all of his neighbors. The work of the commission to repair what was wrong in South Africa is obviously not done. It’s not enough for the country to say I’m sorry and accept forgiveness. The next step must happen and it will take a long time.

This week a disturbing story of a mass of mostly plastic trash that was found floating in the Pacific. It is the size of Texas. It represents environmental sin on a large scale that in some way we have all contributed to it. I have no idea how this can be fixed but after reading it I realized that I cannot in good conscience continue to say “sure!” when the kid who bags my groceries asks me if plastic is OK. That was my awareness moment. As I prayed about this, there is no other way to say “I’m sorry” to Mother Nature, I know that God accepts my contrition and has not ceased loving me. But it can’t stop there. There is still penance to do. The first step is to figure out how to say no to plastic bags. So Peter and I went through the closets and got out all of our canvas tote bags and put them in the cars so we will have them for our shopping. We need to get some more and it will be inconvenient. Alone, I will not solve the problem but at least I will not be adding to it. That is one step to repairing my relationship with the planet. That whole relationship requires penitential living – taking shorter showers, changing our landscaping to use less water, finding ways to drive less and make sure that the next car we buy is at least another hybrid.

In every one of the big sins, there are forms of personal penance and the need for communal penance – that’s the really hard stuff because not everyone agrees on what that might look like or if it’s even necessary. But we have to start somewhere. Next month the Habitat for Humanity Board of Directors will gather for their board retreat and I’ve been asked to create some sort of presentation on advocacy. What I plan to do is to give each of the board members, most of whom are very well off, the assignment to create a budget using the income of the people that qualify for the houses that we build. We’ll have some way to hit them with unexpected expenses so they have to make the kind of choices that are commonplace to a whole lot of people, prescriptions or groceries? I know that it will open their eyes. They will spend a few minutes as newborns in a tough world. I don’t know how it will change them, they are already generous people. What I hope is that they will become a bit more passionate about sharing the experience with other who can change things in a bigger way.

Being a newborn is to have unlimited possibilities but it’s a lot of work. In the Book of Revelation God says, “See I am making all things new.” That’s us, all the time we’re being born from above and finding new ways to stretch our arms and legs and learning how to live in the new world.