Sackcloth & Exile

Because repentance is a major theme during Lent, it is helpful to distinguish between terms like confession, remorse, and repentance. And between words like desire and action. Sometimes a certain aspect of an idea becomes the meaning of the idea itself in our minds. Regret or admission can pass as repentance, and likewise a show of desire can defraud repentance of true fruit.

This short-changing of repentance is part of our heritage. What we experience on an individual level was prevalent on a national scale with Israel. Naymond Keathley explains in the Holman’s Bible Dictionary:

In ancient Israel repentance was first expressed corporately. When national calamities such as famine, drought, defeat, or a plague of locusts arose, the people did not feel responsible individually for these catastrophes. Rather, they sensed that the incidents were caused by the guilt of the nation. All shared the responsibility and, consequently, the ritual of repentance. Fasting, the wearing of sackcloth (the traditional attire for mourning), the scattering of ashes, and the recitation of prayers and psalms in a penitential liturgy characterized this collective experience of worship.

It was an elaborate remorse, but not always relational in nature. Keathley continues:

With the use of such outward tokens of repentance, however, the danger of sham or pretense also arose. Ritual not accompanied by a genuine attitude of repentance was empty. Against such misleading and, therefore, futile expressions of remorse, the prophets spoke out. Their attacks upon feigned worship and their calls for genuine contrition on the part of the individual gave flower to the characteristic biblical concept of repentance. What was needed was not ritual alone, but the active involvement of the individual in making a radical change within the heart and in seeking a new direction for one's life. What was demanded was a turning from sin and at the same time a turning to God. For the prophets, such a turning or conversion was not just simply a change within a person; it was openly manifested in justice, kindness, and humility.

The term used extensively by the Prophets – shubh – means “to turn” or “return”. So the idea of returning from exile is in view. John the Baptist was cut from the same fabric as the prophets. He called his own generation to make a radical turn in the direction of their lives by pointing them to the soon-coming Messiah. Life as usual is crooked. Right side up is upside down. Make room for the straight path of Jesus.

So where does that get us? In repentance there is an apprehension of where we are (and are not), a feeling of regret that we ended up here, a decision that we will change course, and an act of the will to do so.

Hmmm, that sounds mechanistic. I mean, that defines repentance technically, but where is the mysterious working of God in this? What is the dynamic of spiritual repentance that differentiates it from natural penitence? And more practically, how do we get from regret over my sin to true repentance?”


Scripture Reading: Hosea 11 (and 12-13 if you are up for it).