Repent and Believe

By Rev. Daniel J. Commerford, Senior Pastor

Let's pray

Amazing God. We thank you for giving us your eternal love that has been revealed to us in your son Jesus Christ. We thank you that in him, we are assured new life, and that nothing in heaven and nothing on Earth will ever separate us from your love. We thank you that your word continues to speak to us today through your spirit. So as we gather here this morning, we pray that as we hear your word read and proclaim, your spirit would illuminate that reading and draw us closer to your son Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.

We have two scripture readings for today. The first comes from Psalm 91:1-16. As I read this, listen for God speaking to you.

You who live in the shelter of the most high, who abide in the shadow of the almighty, will say to the Lord, "My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust." Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the most high your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands, they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot. Those who love me, I will deliver. I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them. I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue them and honor them. With long life, I shall satisfy them and show them my salvation.

Our Gospel reading comes from the book of Mark 1:14-2. Again, as I read this, listen for God speaking to you.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news. As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea. For they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately, he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Family, this is the word of the Lord.

I'm sure that after last week's fantastic youth Sunday, all of us went home or went to the home of a loved one. I'm sure that many of us watched the Super Bowl. It happened to be the most-watched television event since the landing on the moon, which is pretty amazing. So there are so many of us who watched the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime. It was a thrilling game. In that victory, there were begins to have conversations of the Chiefs being the new dynasty in the NFL, that Patrick Mahomes is the new Tom Brady. I'm sure then that on Monday, so many of us in this community woke up. There were a lot of Carolina Panther fans and maybe a couple Minnesota Vikings fans who woke up and started to ask, "Why can't we have the same success that the Chiefs are enjoying right now? What is it that is so different between us? We languish in our futility and the success and the glory of the Kansas City Chiefs."

But I think in asking that question, I think we are compartmentalizing all that it takes to achieve something so difficult. We might compartmentalize the one game that we watch and all the bounces that went their way and, of course, all the hard work that went into it. But I think that if we were to take this organization in its totality and see all of the decisions that they make, maybe it's not a surprise that they are where they are and we are where we are.


Some of the decisions started as long as more than a decade ago when the Chiefs were looking for a head coach. They could have hired a young up-and-comer person to coach them, but instead, they chose to hire a grizzled veteran in Andy Reid who had some success but was also known for not getting quite past the finish line too often. They were decisions that happened maybe five or six years ago when the Kansas City Chiefs had a quarterback who was pretty good, but then they spent their first-round draft pick on this young quarterback from Texas Tech named Patrick Mahomes. Every year between that, they had to make decisions to let players go who were very popular but maybe weren't performing. In all of these decisions, they were risky, they were controversial, they may have been unpopular to people of a certain perspective, and it was difficult making those decisions. They had to weather the criticism in the short run, and now we see where they are, and they are enjoying this success.


But I think it's important for us to see the success and to see what took to get there. When we take everything into account, it's no surprise that the Kansas City Chiefs are where they are.


In similar fashion, I think that we have a tendency to compartmentalize our faith in Jesus Christ. I think that we like to think about Jesus who walked on this Earth, who revealed God's love to us, who showed us what it means to love God and to love our neighbor, and we do our best to model his love in our own lives. Then we also like to worship Christ who was raised from the dead, the Jesus who conquered death for us, the Jesus who has assured us eternal salvation. Then in the middle, there's this Jesus who died on the cross.


As we look at Jesus's life and we see the glory of the Resurrection, we might ask ourselves, how on Earth could those authorities back then look at Jesus and look at what he was teaching and crucify him? How did Jesus end up on the cross? It might be a surprise if we look at everything in its own season, in a vacuum. But in reality, if we look at the totality of Jesus's ministry, we should find that it's no surprise that Jesus wound up dying on the cross. I'm not just talking about God's cosmic plan to reconcile humanity in God, but rather I am talking about this individual Jesus who lived here on Earth. In revealing God's love, he managed to stir up a lot of people who were in leadership. It is through his ministry and the lessons that he taught and the way that he revealed God's love, which was very different than what the status quo was at that time. If we look at all of that in entirety, we shouldn't be that surprised that those people who had the power to make those decisions, instead of following him, decided to crucify him instead.


But what does that mean for all of us here today? What do Jesus's teachings mean for us today?

That's what we're going to focus on for the entire season of Lent. If you look in your bulletin, you'll see that we are starting a new sermon series titled "Lead Me To the Cross," and we're going to examine some of Jesus's most well-known and popular teachings. Those of us who grew up in Sunday school no doubt have been raised with these teachings being taught to us in Sunday school, but we're going to examine them from the perspective of how they impact us today and how, in doing so, how challenging Jesus's teachings can really be. Just as those same teachings led Jesus to the Cross, how following Christ will similarly lead us in the same direction as we make this journey of Lent together.

Today, we begin this series by looking at the very beginning of Jesus's Ministry. In the first chapter of The Gospel of Mark, Jesus begins his ministry after John the Baptist is arrested. He begins by going along the countryside and preaching to the people, saying the good news, preaching the Good News of God. He says, "Look, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in this good news."

If we look at this passage in its entirety, we'll see that there's this threefold response that Jesus requires of us. First, Jesus says to repent. Repent is this word that means to turn away from our broken, sinful ways, to turn away from our broken, sinful priorities and values, and to turn to Christ. So we repent by turning away. Then we believe in Jesus Christ. As we turn away from our brokenness, we turn to Jesus Christ. Believing in Jesus Christ is to trust that it is Jesus who is God's revelation to the world, and it is through Jesus that we know God's way, that way of love and mercy and grace that is given as abundantly and freely as it is powerfully.

Now, how often, though, do we look at this passage and start to think about how can we follow Jesus Christ? What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? We skip right to the belief part. We skip past that important first part that Jesus mentions about the good news of Jesus Christ. We love to believe in Jesus Christ, but how often are we willing to repent of the ways that necessitated Jesus coming in the first place?

When I was in seminary, I heard a pastor once preach this in such a simple way, so I'm going to steal it from him. But he preached about the beauty and the offensiveness of the gospel. He preached about the beauty of the good news of Jesus Christ, that there is nothing in heaven, nothing on Earth that will ever separate us from God's love. Af we look in this Psalm that we read today, we see the foundation of God's promises to humanity, that God is a God who is faithful and God is a God who will do anything to bridge that gap between humanity and God.

The good news is that this has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. There's a beauty in that, right? It's beautiful that God loved us so much that God sent Jesus to live, to die, and to be raised again for our sake—that we can stand here today not because of anything that we have done or earned, but because of the grace and the love and the mercy of God that has been shown to us in Jesus Christ. That's beautiful. There's a beauty in the good news of the Gospel.

But there's also an offensiveness to the gospel as well. Because as Jesus came to proclaim the good news and this beauty, Jesus also came to shine a light on the many ways that we woefully fall short of God's perfect standard of perfection. It's important for us to begin to see our faith and our belief through the lens of repentance. There's a reason that Jesus started with repent, which leads to belief, because genuine belief in God naturally leads us to proclaim the reason that we needed Jesus in the first place.

There was a theologian who lived in the 20th century, about 100 years ago. His name was Karl Barth, and I think that his words still ring true today. He says, "Grace is the gift of Christ who exposes the gulf which separates God and humans, and by exposing it, bridges it." Grace is the gift of Christ who exposes the gulf which separates God and humans, and by exposing it, bridges it.

Karl Barth was writing about the necessity for us to believe in Jesus Christ. But if we are to genuinely believe who Jesus is, we must also acknowledge who we are. And the good news that Jesus came to proclaim is bad news for us if we are trying to do everything on our own. Because just like the people of Israel and just like the world in Jesus's time – a time that struggled with financial inequity, that struggled with power dynamics that kept the rich and powerful very rich and powerful and kept the poor very destitute – in Jesus's time, that struggled with the role that religion plays in our lives and how to please God, Jesus came to blow all of that up because we as humans didn't get it right. Just like Israel struggled, I think we struggle with that as well.

So for us to believe in Jesus Christ means to repent, to acknowledge and confront the same brokenness that has plagued humanity since the moment that Adam and Eve took a bite from that apple. To follow Christ, to believe in the goodness and beauty of the Gospel, is to also embrace the need to repent and return to God.

We've talked about the first two elements of following Christ, that he begins his ministry by proclaiming. But then there's that third part – we're called to repent, we're called to believe. That third part: follow. Notice how Jesus didn't come and say, "I'm going to teach you a system of theology and a 10-point list of what to do so that you can be pleasing to God." Rather, after proclaiming the good news, after saying the time is here for God's promise to be fulfilled, he goes and commands his people to follow him. He goes and finds fishermen and ordinary people and says, "Follow me." If you notice, they didn't say, "How about we just incorporate you into our existing life that's so comfortable?" No, his followers dropped everything – their jobs, their family, their home – everything about them that identified them, in order to follow Jesus.

This is what we are called to do to this very day. As Jesus calls us to repent, believe, and follow, this ultimately is what the Lenten journey is all about. The Lenten season is this 40-day journey that brings us to the glory of Easter. There is so much to praise God for when we get to that place, but in order to do that, we must follow Jesus by examining ourselves, being open and honest about the areas in our lives where we still fall short, repenting, turning away from those broken areas so that we can trust Jesus to heal us and show us the way, and then following Jesus where he leads.

I'll give you a spoiler: the only way to follow Jesus is to follow him to the Cross. There is hope beyond the horizon because I know that Lent can be an arduous, anxiety-filled journey as we start to think about the parts of our lives that we have to let go. But it's important for us, as we think about the season of Lent, to reflect on why we're doing it and where it leads us.

I'm sure that throughout all of those years of criticism and risky decisions, through the years of maybe newspapers and reporters critiquing the coaches and the management staff of the Chiefs, I'm sure there were moments of second-guessing as they made sacrifices. But I bet now all of that is worth it because of what they are experiencing now after winning a Super Bowl.

The journey of faith is tough because it requires us to die to ourselves. It requires us to admit that we don't have it figured out on our own and that we desperately need Christ to heal us, save us, and show us the way. But when we do, Christ leads us to something that's so much better than anything we can create on our own.

So over the next few weeks as we make this season of Lent and journey through it, we're going to see how some of Jesus's teachings challenged those of his contemporaries when he lived. We're going to examine how it might challenge us today. But in doing so, my prayer is that we will find the beauty of the gospel. As we repent, believe, and follow, may we find this good news of God's love that is as deep, as wide, as powerful, and as available as it is to all of us. May we trust in that love and follow Christ even when he takes us to the Cross, continuing to follow him until the day that Christ comes again. To God be all glory, honor, and praise. Amen.