“Repent and believe in the gospel.”
Brene Brown, the renowned social scientist, in her book
“The Power of Vulnerability” talks about
how today in America, we live in a culture of scarcity,
that there is never enough.
We get up in the morning and we say to ourselves,
we have not had enough sleep.
We go to bed at night and we say we haven’t done enough.
And in between, we have heard or said to ourselves there is not enough;
not enough time;
not enough money;
not enough things;
we haven’t got enough.
And maybe even that “I am not enough.”
She talks about how this culture of scarcity
has a huge impact on all of us
because we have this mentality that we always need more;
or there is always a “have-to-have” more.
There is not enough so therefore I need to keep what I have
and get even more of what I don’t have.
It plays into all sorts of things like consumerism and selfishness
and all other sort of challenges for us as humanity.
In today’s readings, we are presented in the gospel
a completely counterpoint to that culture.
It is a culture of abundance.
Jesus constantly says it over and over again in all his ministry
that there is more than enough.
There is enough time.
There is enough money.
There is enough resource.
There is enough love.
There is enough!
More importantly, we are enough.
Between the two poles of this culture and mentality of scarcity
and this mentality and culture of abundance,
is a point of conversion which Jesus introduces time and time again.
It is less a point of conversion although it does start at a point
as much as it is a process of conversion.
And it is “repent and believe in the gospel.”
Now this word “repent” we think of it as
repent from sins as of John the Baptist
but the word that is used in scripture and throughout the gospels
is the Greek word “metanoia.”
Metanoia means more change your mind;
change your mindset;
in a sense but change your heart,
change your heart from a scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality;
to change your heart to being a different way.
This is what we are called to do in discipleship.
This is what Jesus calls us to do time and time again;
not once but every, single day of our life
to see that God is enough
to see that God is in all things at all times.
And that we are enough and those around us are enough
and we really live in a culture of abundance.
Somebody that just brought this to life for me in this last week
was at the inauguration ceremony:
Amanda Gorman, the beautiful poet,
who proclaimed this nexus point of conversion.
She really proclaimed.
She didn’t just say.
She proclaimed this wonderful poem called “The Hill We Climb”
and it is pure gospel message for all of us.
I want to just share with you one component of it
because I think it says it so well:
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
…
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside…
Wow. She proclaimed the gospel of abundance to us.
That we are called to choose unity, goodness and truth
over division, evil and lies.
And that each one of us has to choose that for ourselves
and we have to find inside of ourselves to say,
“There is enough,
there is more than enough for me and for everyone else.”
All we have to do is to share;
and we have to understand that there is enough.
We have to believe in the gospel.
