Repent!

When you go to a buffet, no matter how good your intentions, there is a still, small voice at the back of your head that is demanding you get your money's worth.

This still small voice is a jerk.

For this still, small voice will whisper to you 'Hey, you know you paid $17.99 for this chinese food. you'll eat until you feel sick.

Don't you think you should have another egg roll? If you don't you're just throwing money away!' Thanks, small still voice for convincing me to eat more than I wanted in the first place!  Now, if you were eating at home, this wouldn't be a problem.  You could just tupperware the leftovers up, and sneak back downstairs in the middle of the night to eat more.  But if you're at the buffet, there are no doggy bags.  You can't take any of it with you.  You have to eat what you've got whilst you are there present.  And this means that if you're like me,

Yes indeed.  To quote an obscure comedian, the meal isn't over when I'm full.  It's over when I hate myself.  And if I'm at an Indian buffet, or a chinese buffet, I will assuredly be hating myself in the near future.  This is when I send my wife a text letting her know that I'm never eating again.  And she responds with an eye-roll emoji, because we both know how I ended up in this particular situation.

And that feeling, a half hour after you're done at the buffet, when you get the meat sweats, and you find it hard to move around, when you want to undo the top button of your trousers, that feeling is the best feeling I could come up with to try to communicate to the secular world the concept of repentance.

After all, what is repentance?  It's understanding that you have done what you didn't want to do, that you don't like what happened, and you're sorry for having done it.  Many is the time after a Christmas or thanksgiving dinner, when a great number of us have regretted eating what we ate, and have promised to never do it again.  Until next year.  When we repeat it all over again.  This festive indulgence is what the Christian conception of sin and repentance is all about.  And I'll illustrate it with this page from Frog and Toad.

This is the way of sin and repentance.  Even while you're in the throes of doing something you don't want to do, you're doing it.  We must stop eating cried toad as he ate another.  No truer words have ever been spoken.

I know repentance is one of those churchy words that people don't take too seriously, but really they ought to, because they are used to moving through repentance fairly regularly.  With the Christmas season approaching, most of us are going to go through probably several hangovers that we can absolutely see coming.  You know for sure that you're spending too much on Christmas, but it doesn't

sink in until the Visa bill comes in.  Then the repentance starts.  You know for sure that you shouldn't have that fourth glass of wine, but everything still seems to be going fine until the next morning.  Then the repentance starts.  You know you're not hungry anymore, but you keep on eating at Christmas dinner, and everything is going okay, that is, until you get to about an hour after Christmas dinner.  Then the repentance starts.

Regular as the tides. You know how predictable this is because unlike talking about 'sin' and 'repentance,' we can talk about the real world things you know, and how your overindulgence in the face of Christmas always leads to that moment, at least, of repentance, in which, like frog and toad, you know you need to stop, and yet you keep on going.

This is what this season is all about though.  Advent is the season of repentance.  John the Baptist says as much when the people come to be baptized by him.  When the crowds assemble, John calls them vipers, snakes, and asks who warned them to flee from the wrath to come.  He runs down with the various people what they have to do if they want to flee from the wrath that is to come, and he's heavy on the repentance.  

Repentance which, as you may have realized, is absent from most discussions about this time of the year.  But this is the time of year when we need to focus on repentance most of all.  It's all about repentance, absolutely all of it is!  This is the time of year, when the baby is to be born in the manger in Bethlehem, when we get to muse through what we are going to bring to him.  No, it's not going to be gold, frankincense or myrrh, it's not going to be the little drummer boy's song, none of that. We bring him our sin.

The angel on Christmas day echoes that same sentiment, telling the shepherds 'unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord.'  Unto you.  You who bring nothing to that manger but your sin.  Not your gold or ointments, not your performance, but the hangover of all the things that you don't want to do.  The hangover of all your bad decisions, promises broken, shame uncovered.  You bring nothing but the fruit of your repentance dragged forward through the Advent season.  For there is something amazing that happens at that manger in Bethlehem.

When someone tells you they have a newborn, or have adopted a new child into their family, you are happy for them, certainly, you enjoy said child, you are pleased because they are pleased, but it's not the same as bringing a new child into your family.  When a new neice or nephew is born into your family, when a new son or daughter is adopted into your household, there's a whole new impact that it has on you.  This is the difference that going through Advent in a spirit of repentance does. 

If you move through Advent whilst just buying and selling, baking and cleaning, you will hear the angel say 'for born this day in the city of David is Christ the Lord.'  Sure.  Jesus is born, and we are all the better for it.  But if you've been working through this season in a spirit of repentance, if you've been living in a repentant mood, and existing in repentant space, if you bring to the child in the manger your sin, then something else happens, which is that the child has come to take your sin.  Your hangover, the weight of the things you've done time after time that you'd rather not do the first time.  You know that hangover feeling, and you know that the worst possible hangover cure is the proverbial hair of the dog, right, to keep on drinking so you never sober up?  dreadful.

Your best bet is the same as all of ours.  In the hustle and bustle of this time of year, when everything is at a fever pitch, take time to repent.  Realize that you're not who you want to be, you don't behave the way you feel other people should behave.  You feel as though you should be better, and you ought to be.  So your best option moving forward to to do the work John has called you to do. Repent.  Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.  Trust not in a savior, but in your savior.  For he was born for you.