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When Jesus begins his ministry, he joins forces for a brief period with John the Baptist. The message both of them preach is “Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand.” The Koine Greek word we translate as “repentance” is metanoia, which literally means to change or redirect one’s mind. To alter the direction of one’s mind means not only to redirect the direction one is headed, but also to change the manner in which one is traversing that path. Repentance is all about engaging in a clear and careful examination of the direction your life is taking, and seeking a better way. Someone has said, “a dead-end is simply another place to turn around.” Repentance takes a dead-end and makes it into a cul-de-sac wherein we can seek a new direction in life.
Significantly, Jesus begins his ministry in two of the Gospels by calling people to a change of mind and a new direction in life: “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near’” (Matthew 4:17), and “after John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15). |
The Spiritual Disciplines of Jesus |
Following Jesus is much more than adding his ideas to our overcrowded collection of good thoughts and helpful aphorisms for living. It requires a reordering of our priorities and challenges our most basic assumptions about what is important in life. Throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged and called into question the prevailing assumptions and practices of power and domination, value of persons, relationships between rich and poor, men and women, clean and unclean. His call to repentance was not just a one-time event. It was a lifelong practice.
The most basic form of repentance involves the daily examination of the things we have thought, said and done that day. Placing them up against the life, teaching and conversations of Jesus provides a good measure of what path we are on, and where we are on that path. The act of repentance, especially when done daily, serves as a continuous course correction for the path our life takes.
To seek out the spiritual life usually requires that we redirect our lives in some way. Whether it is due to a personal crisis, or the need to completely reorder our priorities, or the need to disentangle ourselves from social systems that are degrading, violent or dehumanizing, a spiritual life is at core a redirected life. Jesus speaks of repentance 25 times in the first three Gospels. So it is that it is usually the first spiritual practice any person must engage in when they start out on the spiritual path.
The most basic form of repentance involves the daily examination of the things we have thought, said and done that day. Placing them up against the life, teaching and conversations of Jesus provides a good measure of what path we are on, and where we are on that path. The act of repentance, especially when done daily, serves as a continuous course correction for the path our life takes.
To seek out the spiritual life usually requires that we redirect our lives in some way. Whether it is due to a personal crisis, or the need to completely reorder our priorities, or the need to disentangle ourselves from social systems that are degrading, violent or dehumanizing, a spiritual life is at core a redirected life. Jesus speaks of repentance 25 times in the first three Gospels. So it is that it is usually the first spiritual practice any person must engage in when they start out on the spiritual path.
Next Practice: Works of Mercy and Justice, Love and Compassion.
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