Metanoeite! Metanoeite! “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here.” Metanoeite and believe God’s Message. Can you hear the urgency in Jesus’ words? Can you hear the call to change? Of course we can’t you say, we don’t speak Koine Greek. What’s that Greek work Jesus used? Well, Jesus didn’t speak Greek either, he spoke Aramaic, but, since Mark was writing for a community that did speak Greek, he quoted what Jesus said in Greek instead of Aramaic. And he used the word metanoeite to convey something important about Jesus’ opening message.
So what does this word mean, and why should we take it seriously? To be honest – and I risk sounding pedantic here – “repent,” the word used by the NRSV, the translation of the Bible that we Episcopalians commonly use, does not begin to convey what the evangelist thought Jesus was saying. “Repent” sounds like something we do on Ash Wednesday, as we let the priest put an ash cross on our foreheads and say the Litany of Penitence. Or perhaps “repent” suggests confessing your sins to a priest and receiving absolution. That’s not what metanoeite means at all! The Message, a very contemporary translation of the Bible, comes a little closer to its meaning. “Change your life,” Jesus says in The Message.
Metanoeite. Let’s see if we can hear a little more clearly what Jesus actually said. First of all, metanoeite, is an imperative verb. Did you need to dust off your high school English? Remember that an imperative verb is a command. Jesus was commanding people to do something. He was not asking, requesting, inviting, or suggesting. He did not say, “If you have time,” or “when you feel like it,” or “if it interests you.” He commanded. And what did he command? He commanded people to change direction, to stop doing what they had always done and start behaving differently. He commanded them to stop looking back to old ways and old laws, to face forward, and to look to the future. He commanded people to realize that, with his coming, everything has to change, and, indeed, everything has already changed. He commanded people to embrace that change and to realize that God is doing a new thing.
Metanoeite. Secondly, metanoeite is in the present tense. In Greek that means an action that continues to go on. So Jesus was telling people that the kind of change he was calling for in their lives was not a one-off thing. It was not something they did once and never had to do again. It was a continuous process. Jesus was commanding people to reassess God’s work every day, and to accept and embrace daily the kinds of changes God was bringing about in the world.
And thirdly, and maybe most important, metanoeite is a plural verb. Jesus wasn’t commanding individual people to change, he wasn’t talking about “me and sweet Jesus,” he was commanding everyone, people everywhere to change their way of life, and to do it together. Hearing Jesus use that word, Mark’s community understood that being followers of Jesus meant that they were to follow Jesus together, that their new lives as Jesus’ disciples would always comprise both their relationship with him and their relationship with one another.
Can you hear the same call for change in Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth? Paul was writing a few years before Mark. He and the community to whom he was writing believed that Jesus would return within their own lifetimes, and that belief colors what he says in this part of the letter. We no longer share Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ return, but we still hear his call – his urgent call – to change. Paul himself had experienced the most radical possible change of perspective in his own life after encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus. Now, as he wrote to the fledgling disciples in Corinth, he understood that, because God had acted, because the Word had become flesh in Jesus, because God has established God’s reign, the Corinthians too were called to metanoeite, they too could no longer live as they once had. They were called, urged because the time is short, to see their lives differently. Paul called them to see their lives in a wider context, to understand, in the words of one of our wonderful old hymns, that “God is working God’s purpose out.” Because the Corinthian Christians had committed themselves to following Jesus, they needed to see their lives differently. They were put their relationship with Jesus above all earthly relationships. Consequently, Paul told them, they were to regard nothing and no one, not spouses, not possessions, not business associates, not rituals, not anything, as more important than their relationship with Jesus.
Even our reading from the strange and satirical book of Jonah embodies a call to change. First, Jonah was called by God to change. After refusing to do as God had asked him to do, he finally, grudgingly, accepted God’s call to “Get up, go to Nineveh … and proclaim.” Jonah’s proclamation did not explicitly call the Ninevites to change their ways. Nevertheless, hearing that their great city would be destroyed in forty days, the Ninevites understood their need to beg God’s forgiveness and reform their way of life. And, as Jonah had predicted, in response to the Ninevites’ repentance, God himself demonstrated a change of heart in refraining from destroying Nineveh after all.
Metanoeite. Do you hear the urgency in it? Do you hear the call to change? Is this the time to truly commit yourself to turning around, to changing your orientation, to following Jesus more closely? The time is short: now is the time to accept Jesus’ command. Is faith just an add-on to your life? Now is the time to commit to letting Christ nourish you in the Eucharist regularly, not just when you feel like it, or when you have time. Now is the time to pay attention to your spiritual life – regularly, daily, throughout the day. Now is the time to have what Buddhist monks call “a beginner’s mind,” or to follow the Franciscans in their commitment to always begin again. Now is the time to acknowledge that nothing and no one have a higher claim on you than Jesus and your relationship to him – not your spouse, not your relatives, not your work, not your play, not your politics, not your business. Now is the time to change your life and act as if you believe that God’s reign has already begun.
Can you change the way you see things, can you look to the future and see the possibilities for change that the full coming of God’s reign might bring? “Listen to a young Cambodian, Chath Piersath, praying for his country: There will be playgrounds instead of war zones. There will be more schools instead of brothels and nightclubs. The children will sing songs of joy instead of terror. They will learn how to read love instead of hate.”1
Or hear the story of small farmers in Nicaragua. They too have embraced change. In a recent post for Episcopal Relief and Development, Sara Delaney described attending a workshop on sustainable agricultural development in Nicaragua sponsored by ERD and the Council of Protestant Churches.2 As part of the program, Juana Francisa Saldaña and Octavio Delgadillo have learned new techniques in planting and in soil and water management. They then have shared the new techniques with five “disciples” among their group, staying with them as they try out the methods on their own farms. Everyone involved in the program could see that patience was needed before they could see change. But change did happen! One of the women had lost her land when her husband unexpectedly died. “Undeterred, she has worked to slowly build up her new land, digging trenches, using compost and planting fruits and vegetables. She told [Sara] that she is hoping for the day, in two or three years, when – ‘I can see the fruits on the trees, my children can go and eat, and we can share in solidarity with our brothers and sisters.’
What would it take to bring Chath Piersath’s vision closer to reality? What would it take to help the Nicaraguans continue to change their way of life to develop more sustainable agricultural practices? More important, what are our visions? How is Jesus calling us to change ourselves, our families, this parish, our community? I have visions of a people nourished by Jesus and sent out to be Christ for the world. I have visions of adequate food and healthcare for all and of people of different races, ethnicities, and faith communities working and living in harmony with each other. I have visions of the increased use of sustainable agricultural techniques in this country and the development of sustainable energy sources, so that we may stop our rape of the earth. I look forward to the day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Metanoeite! “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.”
1. Elizabeth Rogers and Elias Amidon, eds. Prayers for a Thousand Years (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1999), pp. 4-5, quoted in Synthesis, January 25, 2015, 3.
2. “The Art of Patience – From the Garden to the Subway Platform,” http://us8.campaign-archive2.com/?u=671f8d0cc20ebfcdbef7f9c19&id=b4671f08c4&e=74e7ab0bc8, January 23, 2015.
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