January 23, 2011 Isaiah 9:1-4 Matthew

4:12-23 “What Does

It Mean to Repent?”
Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

“Repent,” Jesus said, quoting the words of John the Baptist, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has
come near.” “Repent. Turn from what you’ve been doing, turn to the kingdom of heaven, the
kingdom of God. Change your ways. Change how you’ve been thinking. Change how you’ve been
feeling. Change what you’ve been doing. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
I read recently of a man who changed his ways. In the ‘80s, “he made a rather sudden lurch to the
right. He became interested in Evangelical Christianity. Rumor had it that he was at a fundamentalist
Christian Church on the edge of town. He bragged to someone that he was in a Bible study every
night.
“Then came the ‘90s. He made a trip out to the West Coast. He took two weeks at a retreat with the
theme of ‘Self-Discovery.’ When he returned, all of his talk was about ‘Astral Projection,’ ‘out of the
body experiences,’ and other ideas that someone attributed to his ‘New Age Thinking.’
“As the century changed into a new millennium, [he turned to the Democratic Party.] People said that
he was planning to run for public office. Other people said that, whether or not he planned to run,
politics had become his ‘new religion.’ He was totally wrapped up in political matters, out every
night, going from here to there to work for various causes.”
Not all change is good. Not all change means that we’ve repented, that we’ve turned from doing our
own thing to doing God’s thing. In part, this is because many times we don’t seem to know what
“God’s will” is, or we mix up our will for God’s will. How many people keep looking for something
that will fill the emptiness they feel? How many “seekers” are in our society today, looking for God,
searching for God?
Yet I wonder if they aren’t looking for God in all the wrong places. I wonder about this because it’s
been my experience that it’s not up to us to find God, as if God was off hiding somewhere. I don’t
believe God plays hide-and-seek with us. I don’t believe God is hiding under the bed, or behind the
liquid amber trees, or even in some galaxy “far far away.” God isn’t hiding. God has been and
continually is, reaching out to people. The truth is that God is searching for us. We just don’t respond
all that well to God.
This is suggested in today’s sermon text. Immediately after Matthew tells us that Jesus’ message was
a message of repentance, Matthew gives us his account of the calling of the first disciples. “As [Jesus]
walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his
brother, casting a net into the sea – for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I
will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from
there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their

1. Willimon, William H., “The Long Search,” Pulpit Resource, Vol. 33, No.1; Year A;
January, February, March 2005, p. 18.

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father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their
father, and followed him.”
Before we continue, let me just note here that Matthew’s account of the calling of the first disciples is
considerably different from the account in John’s Gospel that we read last Sunday. In John, you
remember, Andrew was one of John the Baptist’s disciples. The Baptist said when Jesus walked by,
“Look, here is the Lamb of God!” and Andrew and a second disciple followed Jesus. Andrew then
went to his brother Simon and said, “We have found the Messiah.” At that point, Andrew took Simon
to Jesus. Jesus “looked at Simon and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’
(which is translated Peter).”
It bothers some that Matthew’s account of the calling of the disciples doesn’t agree with John’s
account. They go to great lengths to harmonize the two versions, doing their best to be rid of the
differences. They feel there must be total agreement between the 4 Gospel accounts.
I simply want to say that I don’t feel any great need to make Matthew’s account agree with John’s, or
vice versa. I’ve never read a foolproof way of determining which account is the account that’s 100%
historical as we define history. How can we determine if Andrew was called the way Matthew
describes or the way John describes? And if I put the two accounts together so they make logical
sense to us today, there’s no guarantee that my version would be accurate. My belief is that both
Matthew and John are using their calls of the disciples to preach to their readers and are more
interested in getting their point across than they are in giving historical details – as we understand
history today. If we spend our time attempting to harmonize the accounts, we’ll be distracted from
hearing what the writers want us to hear.
What is it that Matthew wants us to hear in his account? It’s no accident that Matthew first tells us the
theme of Jesus’ entire ministry, tells us that we’re to repent because the kingdom of God is near, and
then gives us the call of the disciples telling us what it means to repent. You can say, “But preacher,
that’s just the way it happened.” Maybe. But I don’t believe any of the Bible writers tell their stories
without a clear plan of what they want us to understand. When Matthew tells us that Jesus’ ministry
was one of proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near,” he wants us to understand that the
way we are to repent is to answer the call of Jesus to be followers of Jesus, just as those first fisherman
answered the call. They left their nets, left their boats, left their families and followed Jesus.
Were Andrew and Peter, James and John, seeking “something,” like the man I shared about earlier?
We don’t know. John’s account tells us that at least Andrew had been following John the Baptist, but
Matthew doesn’t tell us that. Matthew simply tells us that Jesus called, and those 4 followed. I
assume that Matthew is giving us a much shortened account of what happened in the call of the
disciples, but I don’t know that. Jesus called and the disciples answered. They repented.
“Oh,” you say. “I don’t think I can leave my home, leave my family, leave my job and follow Jesus
like that. After all, things have changed. Can’t I repent at home? Can’t I repent without becoming a
traveling missionary?” The answer, of course, is yes. We don’t have to leave our homes, our jobs, our
families, at least not in a literal sense. There are those who are called by God to leave everything and
go. I think of Adoniram and Ann Judson sailing off to India and then on to Burma, leaving everything
and everyone behind. No cell phones to keep in touch. No e-mails to contact loved ones. No jets to
fly home if there was an emergency. Simply mail transported by ship. And they probably thought

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they were fortunate to have the mail, because there were others before them who went out from
Europe who never made contact with home again. Some are called to leave everything.
But for most of us, the call to repentance is only a figurative call to leave everything behind. God
doesn’t ask us to literally leave everything and everyone. I do believe, however, that God asks us to
leave family and friends and job and leisure figuratively. At the very least, God asks us to move
obedience to God to the top of our “To-Do” list and move all the other things in our lives down a
notch. We aren’t asked to give up our job, but we’re asked to put our love for God before our love of
money. We aren’t asked to give up our families, but we are asked to love God as we love our family,
even love God more than we love our family. We aren’t asked to give up our love of our self, but we
are asked to put our love for God before our love of our self – as difficult as that is to do. To repent
means to follow the ways of God, rather than our own ways, or the ways of humanity. In all that we
say, and even more, in all that we do, we are to follow God’s ways.
What does this mean? It means that we’re to be obedient to the prophets of old and to the teaching of
Jesus. Following the prophet Amos, we’re to “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like
an ever-flowing stream.”(Amos 5:24) We’re to follow the words of the prophet Malachi: “He has
told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love
kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”(Micah 6:8) We’re to hear and obey the words of Jesus
himself when he said that we’re to love God and love our neighbor as our self. And we’re to do this
both individually, and as a society. At least, as individuals we’re to work to implement these teachings
into our world.
We’ve done this by offering our Fellowship Hall to reduce the overflow numbers at the Torres Shelter,
something that could take place as soon as this week. We’ve also done it by allowing the Rose Scott
School to use our building. Yes, their use of the building helps us meet our budget, but it helps the
ADHD students even more. Cindy and her teachers do a great job of helping those students. There
are other things we do. We serve at the Torres Shelter as well as providing towels and milk for them.
We collect food for the Salvation Army. We support Catalyst and the Catholic Ladies Relief, and the
Jesus Center. I know that many of you serve in many different ways in the community.
It’s also true that as our congregation ages, we don’t have the energy or ability to go out into the
community as perhaps we once did. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be obedient and “let justice
roll down like waters.” Throughout Christian history, Christians have been a people of prayer, a
people who have raised to God concerns for the poor, the homeless, the hungry. No matter our
circumstances, we can raise our concerns for the needs of Chico to God in prayer.
To repent means to turn away from everything else but God, to understand that God loves us so much
that God sent Jesus Christ to earth for us. True repentance is difficult to accomplish therefore, because
we all tend to slip back into the ways of the world. It’s difficult, maybe even impossible, not to get
sidetracked from time to time by the lure of a worldly promise of an easier time, for example. And it’s
sometimes difficult to sort out God’s will from our own will. It’s amazing how often God calls we
ministers to churches with higher salary packages than God calls us to churches that pay less.
Repentance is hard. Fortunately, God is forgiving, and gives us the Holy Spirit to help us repent.
We’re not left by ourselves with this business of repenting. God helps us – especially when we ask for
God’s help. It’s probably better to think of repentance then as a process or a journey rather than a

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once-for-all event, because our hearts change too often. The Good News of Jesus Christ is that God’s
Spirit travels with us on this journey once we first turn towards God. We are not left alone. God is
always with us as we seek to love one another. Thanks be to God.