Here's an excerpt of a letter from the archbishop of our province in the Charismatic Episcopal Church, Chuck Jones. The archbishop is a man of faith that I respect greatly, a bearer of God's grace and mercy. He's also a generally cool guy. ;) It prompted a response as I read it, so I thought that I'd post it here.
From Archbishop Chuck Jones, SE Province, CEC:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Grace and peace,
God is releasing a spirit of repentance on His Church. As we have been saying it is a time of deep cleaning, filling, and healing. What's confusing some people is that it doesn't sound like repentance. There seems to be so much laughter and joy and not enough weeping.
What we have to remember is that true repentance thrusts us into the effervescent river of righteousness where joy and freedom overwhelms us. Of course there is heartbreak and weeping as you face your sin.
Fallen self is a horrific thing to be staring back at you, but this isn't a facing sin and self so you can have another round of guilt, shame, and self-hatred. This is facing something not for the purpose of morbid introspection, but release and liberation. So even in the initial stages of repentance there is a glorious relief in the heartbreak and weeping that gives birth to a full blown celebration that the truly liberated can't contain. The religious spirit says these people look too happy to be repentant. " Where is the sorrow"?
Trust me; sorrow came. It happened during the night, but now morning has come and JOY is our mantle. The joy that only released captives can express. Come join THE PARTY OF THE REPENTANT. Ask Jesus to pierce your heart with His sword and watch what healing flows out of the wounds caused by your loving Bridegroom-Friend.
"ALWAYS"
In Christ, +Chuck
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
WOW! Bishop Chuck's letter was really pointed and I think a real revelation for the church. It seems, initially, like fairly common sense. However, there rose up in my heart something that wanted to rail against that. It said, "but I have to continue to feel bad about my sin . . . it was such a bad sin." But my spirit, having taken in the Bishop's exhortation, responded immediately, "no that's just your wanting to hold on to the memory of the sin (as it has been forgiven) to be able to pull it out periodically to wallow in self pity." This also circumvents repentance; if you feel you haven't been forgiven, then it's less of a burden to commit the sin again.
Many might say that the Bishop's message is cheap grace, but joy has to be the end result of the grace of forgiveness. If it isn't, why in the world would an unbeliever want to turn to this faith. It is like the comment Fr. Mike has shared about the French girl who said that she didn't want to go to church because everyone she saw coming out of the church always looked sad. It seems to me for repentance to be effective, to paraphrase the comedian Gallagher, you gotta' wanna. You're more likely to "wanna" if your experience with repentance is a pleasant one.
I recall when I was a kid attending the Catholic church that I hated going to confession. Aside from the fact that I had basically two sins, bugging my sister and disobeying my parents, I just didn't get the whole penance thing. The idea of saying 18 hail marys and 5 our fathers, just didn't equate with the point of not sinning again. It seems that God's way would be more oriented to positive reinforcement until the point of apostasy, as in many old testament stories. But Jesus didn't have Zaccheus perform penance. Zaccheus was met by Jesus' mercy to want to be with him, which elicited a repentant act on his part (returning all he had taken and then some). The response to his repentance was the Lord's presence. To nutshell: there was Jesus' invitation, He wanted to be with him; Zaccheus' repentance; Jesus' presence. Zaccheus did what might be termed penance: he offered to repay 4 times what he cheated someone out of. But that was a spontaneous expression born out of the Joy of his repentance and Jesus' presence.
This is a pretty big departure from the paradigm that I grew up with and have practiced. I expect that I'm not alone in that. What do you think?
Peter
