Some words just work, don’t
they? They roll off the tongue as
if they were designed simply for that function. Metanoia is one of these words. It just rolls off the tongue – meta … noia. It’s the kind of word that should be
placed into a poem and spoken while sipping tea and munching on a Ginger
Snaps. It comes from a Greek word
meaning to change one’s mind. We give it a Biblical sounding status
by translating it, “Repent,” but it really does simply mean to change one’s
mind.
Simple, right? No! Not at all. Have you ever tried to get somebody to
change their mind on something?
Really change their mind?
Actually turn around from what they once thought and embrace a new way
of thinking and being? Turn around
from self and self-ways to God and God-ways.
Somewhere Swiss theologian,
Hans Küng, says, “We are to preach metanoia. We must entice people from the world to God.” Oh, that’s all? Just entice people from the world to
God? I’m in. I feel powerless to do it, mind you,
but I’m in. Metanoia, world. Repent. Turn around.
Embrace the God life.
We Christians say that God
has entered into human history in the person of Jesus and that Jesus brings
into our world the very life of God.
He, we say, is the best news ever to make its way onto the human
stage. Yet, many people refuse
this good news and summarily dismiss Jesus from their thinking. Why? You will have to ask them. I’m sure the reasons are as varied as are the people holding
to them.
I Corinthians 2:14 says, “The
person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit
of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they
are discerned only through the Spirit.” This is a challenging
word and leaves me wondering how in the world a person without the Spirit of
God could ever possibly come to know Jesus. How does a person come from dismissing Jesus as irrelevant
to the place of faith in Him? How
does one turn around from the position of thinking that things of God are “foolishness,”
to that radical place of embracing God and God-ways?
To turn around this way may
just be the bravest and most courageous act known to mankind. It’s huge. It is God-size huge.
I don’t have the capacity to convince people to come to Christ. Lord knows, I’ve tried through the
years. And, I’ll keep on trying
because I have experienced Jesus in my own life and I am convinced He is who He
says He is. How to get someone
else to be convinced is another story.
All I know to do is live the Jesus-life as the everyday and ordinary
expression of who I am and pray that some how, some way, the Spirit of God will
connect with people at a deep level in their lives so that they will see Jesus,
be intrigued by what they see, and choose to check Him out.
C. S. Lewis’ story of the
moment he came to faith has always struck me as a light shinning in a dark
place. I think too often we feel
that people need to get their act together and come to Christ in the “getting
it together.” I don’t think it
works this way, though. I think
Jesus works in our “don’t have it all together” lives. Maybe a part of turning around and
embracing Jesus is the fact that we don’t have to have all things “worked out.” In Lewis’ case he wrote in, Surprised
By Joy,
"You must picture me alone in that room at
Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second
from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly
desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In
the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt
and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all
England"
Can you come to Christ
dejected and reluctant? It is
almost as if Lewis came kicking and screaming into the life of faith. He desperately did not want Jesus to be
who Jesus said He was. Lewis’
intellectual integrity, however, wouldn’t let him escape the possibility that
maybe there were things about God he didn’t know. Maybe God was at work, perish the thought. Maybe God’s love was real. Maybe Jesus is who He says He is. Maybe God was so big that “having it
all together” wasn’t necessary. At
any rate, Lewis wrote,
"I did not then see what is now the most shining
and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such
terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly
adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in
kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a
chance of escape?... The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men,
and His compulsion is our liberation".
So, my brothers and sisters
in Christ, faint not. Don’t let it
rest on your shoulders. Trust the
Love that will not let people go without a fight, without a genuine reaching
out in compassion and forgiveness.
Trust the Christ who desires that we be saved more than we desire
it. Trust the God “who emptied
Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race.” Trust the God who loves His creation
with a love that will not let it go.
He got to you, after all, and it has changed your life. Maybe He can get to those you love,
too. Go ahead sing it loud and
clear,
I stand amazed in the presence
of Jesus the Nazarene,
and wonder how he could love me,
a sinner, condemned, unclean.
How marvelous! How wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
How marvelous! How wonderful
is my Savior's love for me!
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