Let’s take a moment to get reoriented to where we are the in the gospel of Matthew and the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. This passage in Matthew is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry which occurs after Jesus’ birth, baptism, and then the temptation by the devil in the desert. Those stories just ended and here we are with Jesus going north where he begins his ministry in this gospel. And the first words he says in his ministry to the people is to repeat John the Baptist, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

It’s quite the beginning, imho, because it sums up a lot of what he came to say. This opening line, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” has a lot of meaning that gets unpacked through his life, through his teaching and healing, and ultimately through his death, resurrection, and ascension.

Let’s start with the word repent. What does repent mean to us, typically? Guilt. Shame. Regret. Admitting that we’re all naughty even though we knew better. Maybe it means, “I promise to do better in the future.” Or perhaps, it means to us to strive for purity of thought, heart, and mind, maybe?

In the Bible, you may have heard that the word repent means is to turn, to do a 180, perhaps, or to return to God. But that’s when it’s translated from Hebrew. In Greek, the word metanoia is translated as repent, but what it means in the Greek context is to change your mind or to let your mind be blow wide open and see in a new way. These are obviously related ideas to each other and either definition is different than just feeling bad about doing something wrong. In fact, our way of understanding repentance assumes we know what we’re doing wrong and are empowered to do something about it. However, Jesus telling you to be ready to have your mind blown assumed you don’t know.

What Jesus and John the Baptist are telling us in the gospel of Matthew is to stop thinking you know what you think you know and be ready to learn or see something new.

It is amazing to me how much trust us humans put in our own ideas, opinions, and “what we know for sure.” We haven’t earned that trust, really. We often don’t know what we think we know. Many years ago, Nate and I had some friends over for dinner. This was during the time when all us eco-conscious folks were busy switching our light bulbs from incandescent to whatever the hot thing was at the time. I knew Nate had switched out all the bulbs in the house over time and we were talking about this change at dinner. Later in the evening, my friend’s husband asked me about the bulbs in the bathroom that hadn’t been changed and I defended the fact that the bulbs had been changed because I knew that they had been changed. Well, after they left that evening, I noticed the incandescent bulbs in the bathroom that had indeed not been changed. What a thing to fight a friend over! What a lack of curiosity I had! (Nate had changed them, btw, but those early whatever bulbs broke all the time and he had to change them back so we had light in the guest bathroom.)

Now, this is such a small story and an embarrassing one, at that. Rest assured, I’m much more mature now … maybe. But it’s an example of how incurious we can be about information, even about the most basic and non-threatening information, when it challenges what we “know” to be true.

Given this human propensity, it is interesting that Jesus’ first teaching is to tell us to be ready to learn new things. He tells us all to stop knowing, stop being so very sure that we know all the things that we think we know.

Even if we’re on the right track with what we think we know, we only understand so much, right? What we know is always guaranteed to be at least limited and wrong to some extent.

Our confidence in what we know when we really have no claim to such assurance is such an unhelpful, yet common thing that humans do. So, why do we cling so dearly to all the things we “know” are so “obviously” true when we are also aware of our limitations and tendency towards being wrong? The easy answer is perhaps that humans are addicted to the illusion of control. We like to believe we know all sorts of things so that we can feel confident about our plans and judgements. This kind of knowing is very cerebral, though. We can “know” all sorts of things if we stay in our heads and in our bubbles so that reality doesn’t threaten what we “know.”

However, Jesus is telling us something else. In his opening argument, he tells us, “Let your mind be blown wide open by the Kingdom of God which is here on our doorsteps.” He’s telling us to pay attention to what is actually happening and attend to what we can see, feel, touch, and experience. Look and see what the Lord our God is doing. Get into the world and pay attention. This is a more sure path for knowing what is true. As in I could have asked my dinner guest a question and gone to look at the light bulbs with him. That would have helped me to know what was real, instead of what I thought I knew for sure.

There are two essential ways of being and ways of knowing described here. One is super cerebral where thought and ideas are dominant, while the other is more embodied, meaning more experiential. Both of these ways of being are represented in Bible and scholars talk about this distinction between the two as being Greek thought (cerebral) vs Hebrew thought (embodied).

Jesus’ opening line is representative of Hebrew thought. It is an embodied approach to faith where people are invited to watch, wait, listen, and see for what God’s going to do next. Think of Isaiah 43, “See, I am doing a new thing!” In Hebrew thought, new things happen in the world because that’s how they expect God to behave.

On the other hand, Greek notions of truth tend to be much more dis-embodied, conceptual, and therefore static and unchanging. This is where we get the idea that we have to believe certain dogmas are true in order to be a person of faith. The belief in a “truth” is more foundational than how life is lived or experienced. In ancient Greek ways of thinking, truths and logical propositions are more foundational, more important than reality. This is a little like me and the light bulbs. This is also where you get folks preaching that empathy is a sin because they say that they can’t risk another person’s experience, pain, or reality to tarnish their moral clarity.

This distinction about how we think is highly relevant because Jesus was Jewish. He was not a gentile and didn’t have that funny way the Gentiles aka the Greeks thought. However, a lot of our New Testament was written in the context of highly-educated Greek people who were Christian, but already had their own way of logic, reason, and understanding of the world. So, in the Bible, we get these clashes of understanding about God. In one scripture, we may hear that God is out there, untouchable and unchangeable. In another, we hear that God is here in us, around us, moving through us, ever creating us anew. Both ideas are in the Bible. Both ideas are in our culture. This church, and many like us, lean into the Hebrew thought as most representative of God and Jesus’ teaching. That is why, if you ask me a question, I am likely to ask you about your experience.  

So, in my mind, Jesus’ first teaching in the gospel of Matthew is very instructive and powerful. Open your mind, open your eyes and see God’s Kingdom coming into the world. Open your eyes and your mind and let the reality of the world, the reality of God, the reality of pain and the reality of love change your mind and your ideas that are, by the way, inherently flawed and limited.

Notice in Paul’s letter, he says that he was sent to proclaim the gospel “not with eloquent wisdom.” He didn’t want the eloquent wisdom of Greek philosophical foundation to interfere the raw power of the experience of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The raw, reality-shaking experience of Jesus is and was “foolishness” to the Greco-Roman worldview. The raw, reality-shaking experiences we still have of the death and resurrection of Christ is “foolishness” because it declares that vulnerability and love, not purity of thought or control, is what defines God’s power.

Reality has a way of winning. Love has a way of winning. New life has a way of winning. The call of God on our lives has a way of winning, even if we find ourselves resisting all of these things at various times.

It’s too simple and easy for us to assume that we see the world clearly. We pretend our ideas and notions of “truth” are more real than actual reality. Well, Jesus’ message seems pretty clear. “Repent.” Let your mind be changed by reality. Let yourself learn and grow. Let yourself wonder why your dinner guest is asking about the light bulbs. Have the humility to let your mind be blown open by the reality of God’s action in the world and that it might be different than you imagine it would be or could be. And when you do, respond boldly with your own action and your life.

AMEN