Come Back

Today's Gospel selection for Mass (which you can find with the other readings here: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/easter-3b/) is one of the Resurrection appearances in the Gospel of Luke. Even seeing Our Lord was a stretch for the Eleven Apostles, even in their joy, so to firm up their faith and answer their doubts Our Lord asked for, and ate, some fish. Then He really got down to business.

The big business of Jesus' ministry on Earth was not justice (though He proclaimed justice), or freedom (even though perfect freedom was an outgrowth of His message), but repentance, which has gotten a bit of a strange, bad reputation these days. "But I'm a good person!" we hear time and again, as people take umbrage that there is a need for what they believe repentance to be. To many, social justice, feeding the hungry, caring for the homeless, responding to natural disaster is more important. Truth be told, all of these ARE important, but these are not the big ticket. They are components of the phenomenon of repentance.

Our Lord said plainly, "...repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his [the Messiah's] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." (Lk. 24.47)

That is the message the Apostles carried, and we carry today...turn back to God and receive the forgiveness of sins. By repent Our Lord means to turn away from our selfish ways and our inward focus on self and to turn our focus back on God and to do His will (oh, here is where the social justice, the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the poor, the sheltering of the displaced, eliminating injustice, and practicing restitution and restoration come into play). By forgiveness of sins Our Lord means that all of what we have done that puts up barriers to a relationship with God, that our estrangement from God, that our path to eventual nothingness is halted and reversed. In short, God sent Jesus among us, and Jesus sent His Apostles and all Disciples through the ages to tell us all, "Come back, I will make everything between us okay, and let us work together."

God wants a relationship with us, and God wants us to break free of the prison of our selves, which cannot sustain either us or others. He remade our Nature in Jesus so that we can receive a new Nature and be free from the old trap of death and corruption. All we need is to heed the invitation to come back to Him.