What comes to mind when you think of repentance? What does it look like and mean in your life today? What is it asking of you?

My guess is that for most of us, especially during Advent, our image and understanding of repentance is John the Baptist calling us to shape up or ship out, turn or burn, produce or perish.

In today’s gospel (Luke 3:7-18) it goes something like this. “You slithering sons of snakes. I don’t care who your family is or how well connected you are. Shape up and do something. Make some meaningful changes. If you don’t, you’ll be cut down like the fruitless trees that you are.” 

That’s a rather loose paraphrase of today’s gospel, but you get the idea. Repentance tends to invite our attention to the broken and hurting places in our lives and world, and rightfully so. They need our attention and best efforts. But what about joy? What about gratitude? 

After all this is Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday. It’s the pink candle on the Advent wreath Sunday. 

So I want to offer another understanding of repentance. I want us to hear a different call and different words of repentance. This is not in opposition to John’s repentance but in addition to it. And it just may be even more difficult than John’s call for repentance. How do we rejoice and give thanks when there is so much to lament and heal in the world today? 

Several years ago I met a priest named Fr. Bassam. We were classmates in a doctoral program and quickly became good friends. He is Lebanese and a priest in the Antiochian Orthodox Church. He still lives and serves a parish in Lebanon. 

One morning at school I asked him, “Fr. Bassam, how are you?” “Oh Fr. Michael,” he said, “thank God.” I waited for him to finish, leaned in a bit expecting more, and thought to myself, Thank God for what? He never said. I smiled, nodded, and said, “Yes, thank God,” still wondering for what. 

Every day it was the same answer, “Thank God.” After a few days of “Thank God” I asked him, “Thank God for what?” He tilted his head a bit and gave me the strangest look. It was a combination of shock, disappointment, and disbelief that said, “Do you really not understand? Did you really just ask, ‘For what?’” But Bassam is kind and gentle and he said, “Nothing. Just thank God.”

I wondered what I was missing. What was he seeing and experiencing that I wasn’t? 

A few years after we finished school we were talking on the phone and I asked, “How are you?” He said, “The port in Beirut exploded, the government is corrupt, there’s not enough food, we have electricity only a few hours a day, a parishioner was killed by terrorists, and my youngest son has covid.” And then he said, “But thank God for everything.” 

I realized that he is not connected to circumstances and outcomes the way I am. They don’t determine his joy or gratitude they way they often do mine. I felt a disconnect within myself between the circumstances of his life and his gratitude and joy. But there was no disconnect for him. He didn’t oppose the pain and brokenness of life to joy and gratitude. He held the two together as one reality. 

That just may be the repentance to which we are called today. It’s easy to name the pain and brokenness today. But what about our joy and gratitude? Can we have gratitude without a reason? Can we rejoice regardless of the circumstances? Maybe gratitude and joy are acts of repentance you and I and the whole world need these days.

We hear that from Zephaniah in today’s Old Testament reading (Zephaniah 3:14-20) when he says,

“Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!”

How can they sing aloud, shout, rejoice and exult with all their heart? Why should they? It’s a time of social turmoil. The political and religious leaders are corrupt. The poor and oppressed are forgotten. 

Likewise, in today’s canticle (Isaiah 12:2-6) Isaiah calls the people to “give thanks to the Lord,” “sing the praises of the Lord,” and “ring out [their] joy” in a time of great suffering. It was a time of foreign invaders, political instabilities, and social crises. 

And in today’s epistle (Philippians 4:4-7) Paul is in prison and telling the Philippians to rejoice always and give thanks. He lived with a thorn in his flesh. He suffered weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. He was shipwrecked. For Paul, however, there was no disconnect between his imprisonment and sufferings and his joy and gratitude.

I want to live like that, don’t you? I want to name and respond to the pain and brokenness of our lives and I want to rejoice and give thanks. I don’t want to pick one over the other. I want to hold the tension of both. I don’t want to become cynical and hard hearted but neither do I want to live in denial and spiritual sentimentality. That’s the Advent challenge on Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday.

Where is joy and gratitude in your life today? Are you rejoicing and exulting with all your heart? And if not, why not? Are you giving thanks and ringing out your joy? 

What would it take for you and me to live like Bassam?

For years I’ve wondered how Bassam could live like he does. Today’s readings gave me some insight and helped me understand just a bit better. Divine presence is the thread that runs through all of them. Zephaniah said, “The Lord is in your midst.” Isaiah said, “The great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.” Paul said, “The Lord is near.” And Fr. Bassam said, “Oh, thank God.” 

If we’re not choosing and expressing gratitude and joy maybe we’re just not aware of the divine presence. Gratitude and joy are not circumstantial. We make them circumstantial but they’re just not. Zephaniah knew better. Isaiah knew better. Paul knew better. Bassam knows better. I want to know better and I want you to know better too. 

Gratitude and joy are the response to the divine presence that is always and already here, in every life, and in every circumstance. 

So let me ask you this. “How are you?”

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Image Credit: By Michael K. Marsh, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Uvalde, Texas