Readings:
Daniel 9:4-10; Psalm 79; Luke 6:36-38

‘To the Lord our God mercy and pardon belong, because we have betrayed him, and have not listened to the voice of Yahweh our God nor followed the laws he has given us.”
Daniel 9:9, 10

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge, and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves; grant pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.‘
Luke 6:36-38

One of the symptoms of our split spirituality (see chapter 1) is the way in which we regard penance. Instead of seeing it as an attitude of mind which should affect every aspect of life, secular as well as sacred, public as well as private, we see penance as giving up certain pleasures, or practising some hardship, to be done individually and at particular times, such as Lent.

This passage from Daniel is a typical passage of Jewish national repentance and it was from the nation that the prophets demanded repentance. It is rare for any church, as a church, to repent publicly of its sins, except in most general terms: rare, too, for any public institution, any political party, any nation to repent publicly of its past crimes. Any admission of guilt is considered a weakness, so the wrongdoing must be justified and the guilt denied. Where there is no confession of guilt, there can be no healing, no real reconciliation. Peace imposed through power can suppress external violence for a time, but violence breeds violence, and sooner or later it will erupt, more destructive than before.

Penance means a change of mind and heart, and Luke sums it up by saying ‘Be compassionate, as your Father is compassionate’, and then elaborates on its meaning. One of the best commentaries I have ever read on this passage was by a man who did not profess to be a Christian, Carl Rogers, a counsellor. He advocated listening ‘with unconditional positive regard’, a clumsy but important phrase, which means listening without judging or condemning the other, neither approving nor disapproving whatever their views or behaviour, but always thinking well of them as persons. He also recommended ‘empathy’, the ability to enter into the mind and heart of the other, walking in their shoes for a while. When we are listened to in this way, we are much more likely to discover for ourselves what is creative and what destructive in our lives, and this is the knowledge which effects change, a process beautifully summed up in the book of Wisdom, ‘You overlook our sins, so that we can repent’ (Wisdom 11:24).

We are reluctant to be compassionate beyond a certain level, because compassion is risky and may demand change. Bishop Helder Camara said ‘When I give a starving man food, they call me a saint: when I ask why he is starving, they call me a communist.’ Listening to other people’s ideas and beliefs can lead us to question our own, which can be very threatening. It is much more comfortable, in the short term, to avoid compassion, seal ourselves off from disturbing influences, declare any threatening ideas or attitudes to be wrong and defend ourselves against them. In this way we build a divided world in which a fraction of the money spent on destructive weaponry could feed the millions doomed to starvation and house the homeless poor.

The call to repentance, to compassion, is not a call to devout Christians during Lent, but a call to the whole human race and it concerns the survival of us all. If we could learn to listen as individuals, as groups, as nations, then there will be gifts for us, ‘pressed down and flowing over’.

Prayer
Lord, we thank you for the gift of hearing. Help us to use this gift so that as individuals, as groups, and as a nation, we may learn to listen without judging, without condemning, and to pardon and forgive as you pardon and forgive us. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.