05/18/2025 ~ Fifth Sunday of Easter ~ * Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35 ~ YOUTUBE VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlFpJ5P-_CE
VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7960701/video/1085831876

Repentance Means Change

Peter said, “…who am I to stand in the way of God?” — Acts 11:17-18.

Question: Has technology has changed how church works. Well, can you say YOUTUBE, email, electronic record keeping? The list goes on and on.

Here’s another change: I am now in easy contact with a broad range of pastors. I exchange ideas with colleagues across the nation, from here in Maine to California. How? Email, Facebook— the list goes on and on.

Perhaps, what technology has really changed is not just church but everything. We now do things faster and with more connectedness. I know that you know this. Cell phones have changed the world. And before that it was computers.

An example: when I did my Master’s Thesis thirty plus years ago, my advisor, trying to helpful, described how she compiled data as she worked on her Doctoral Dissertation in the 1970s. As she found things which might be useful, she took notes on 3×5 cards, making sure all the reference information for footnotes was there.

She then filed these 3×5 cards in shoe boxes, topic by topic. As she wrote her Dissertation, when needed, she went to the shoe box, searched for a topic, found a pertinent piece of information and recopied that information all over again.

Some twenty years later when I wrote my Master’s thesis I had a laptop computer. As I found useful information from some authority I put it in a word processing file with the necessary reference information in an footnote.

I had no need to arrange by topic. I just used the usual find function in a word processing program to search for a word. As I wrote my thesis, I looked for a specific word, found a relevant reverence, then copied and pasted it into the thesis.

The footnote section copied right where it belonged and even renumbered the footnote accurately. My advisor was computer literate by this point. But even so she was totally taken aback by what I did because doing it that way now at that time had never dawned on her.

The moral of the story: change happens. Sometimes we see it and use it. Sometimes we don’t and miss the boat. Further, even when we think we know what’s happening, we think we’re up to speed with where the world is now, we might not even recognize things have changed. Change can and will sneak up on us. (Slight pause.)

These words are from the work known as Luke/Acts in the section commonly labeled as Acts: Peter said, “…who am I to stand in the way of God?” (Slight pause.)

You’ve heard me say this. Our culture teaches that to repent means to be sorry. But from the Biblical perspective, repentance means to turn one’s life and heart over to God totally and wholly. (Slight pause.)

In her book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor says (quote:) “When everything you count on for protection has fled, the Divine Presence is with you. The hands of God are still there— not promising to rescue, not promising to intervene— promising only to hold you no matter how far you fall.” (Slight pause.)

In Letter From a Birmingham Jail the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said (quote): “…the strangely irrational notion is that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively”— used destructively or constructively— our call.

Taken together, these two quotes would seem to indicate we need to do two things. We need to trust God in the midst of constant change and we need to do the constructive work of constant change God calls us to do.

Then when we add this story from Acts into this mix, I think we get a fairly clear cut picture of what that work might look like. We may not like it but life completely changes regularly.

Further, change is the place to which we are called. Indeed, the very witness of the journeys and the proclamation offered in Acts affirms a radically new idea has been ushered in with the resurrection of Jesus Who is the Christ.

What kind if change? Peter explains to those assembled that the sense of exclusiveness with which they had lived in their community was no longer operative. They had to look outward, look both forward and beyond their narrow prism.

Why? Because of Jesus the Dominion of God, the Realm of God is at hand and God insists everyone, not just a small tribe or group, is valued and invited to participate. (Slight pause.)

So, the community of Christ, both then and now, finds itself in an old, familiar ballpark but playing a new game, playing a different game, a game of change. The new game constantly demands not just change but a fresh start daily— each and every day.

Why very day? We may not like it but this game of change is constant. We, in this tribe called church, are constantly and daily invited by God to repent, be renewed and turn our lives over to God. (Slight pause.)

I get it. This sounds dangerous since we like to know where we are going, we like to know outcomes in advance.

But take what I’ve just outlined about change as a given from someone who was married but entered seminary in pursuit of a 90 credit Master of Divinity Degree at the age of 44. Risk is real. The result of change is never certain. On a personal level there was no guarantee that my journey would be worthy.

But we are also constantly, daily invited to trust God as we strive to recreate a welcoming community, recreate a community that invites change. We are invited not— not— to get new members. Rather God asks us to invite people to discipleship and to be disciples ourselves without being apprehensive.

But we are human. Perhaps because of all that, this is a time when apprehension, excitement and expectation are simultaneously real. And this apprehension, excitement and expectation— this time of change— is what makes it a time for us to fully trust God.

Indeed, the place to which we are continually called reflects the description I offered moments ago: old ballpark, new game, real tensions. And that— old ballpark, new game, real tensions stuff— is something that we need to realize both happens daily but defines change.

We also need to acknowledge change is the prime definition of repentance. It is a definition of repentance because it requires us to be humble enough to turn our lives over to God and to understand we need to do that, we need to renew that each and every day.

So, what does that really mean? Turning our lives over to God means to fully trust God. Why?

Because change is a given. And to paraphrase Barbara Brown Taylor who I quoted earlier, God will hold us when we allow change to happen.

And of course, both you and I know— things are changing outside these walls and inside these walls. Certainly part of our calling is to keep up to speed. Amen.

05/18/2025
Elijah Kellogg Church, Harpswell, Maine

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This is a précis of what the pastor said before the blessing: “Do churches move slowly? Well, the great schism of the church is not between the Roman Church and Protestantism. It’s the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches. That happened in 1054 of the Common Era. The first signs of some reconciliation between them happened in 1999, just short of 1,000 years. Now that’s slow. On the other hand one of the founding principles of Congregationalism is flexibility. That’s one of many things that sets us apart. Here’s another word for flexibility: change— change because we hear the call of God.”

BENEDICTION: Hear now this blessing: God is with us, always. When we love one another, God is pleased. And may the steadfast love of God and the peace of Christ, which surpasses understanding, keep our minds and hearts in the companionship and will of the Holy Spirit, this day and forever more. Amen.