Rev. Dr. Kristin Johnston Largen
These verses come after David has done something horrible: he has slept with Bathsheba [in all likelihood against her will] and had her husband Uriah killed; and Nathan has pronounced God’s judgment on David. There will be consequences of his actions, but David hopes to avoid them, and so he repents: he prays, he weeps, he fasts. Over and over in scripture, God’s people put on ashes and repent in hopes that God will look upon them with mercy and forgive them. “I’m sorry, God, I really am, and I won’t do it again.”
This works sometimes—God is abundantly merciful after all: slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. But it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the things that our own actions—and others’ actions—have set in motion come to be, in spite of our best efforts to stop them. Repentance as a means to work a deal with God is an uncertain business at best. So, let’s not fool ourselves. The repentance into which Lent calls us is not about trying to win a favor from God; in fact, there is no need. We already have received everything from God: new life, healing, forgiveness, and salvation.
So why repent? For me, I think our repentance is both a response to all we have been given (which we sometime squander), and a recognition that we are not yet all we could be, all God wants us to be—that the world is not yet all it could be, all God wants it to be. And just as God grieves our sinfulness, which causes so much pain, we grieve it too. Therefore, we repent, expressing our ongoing desire to love God and love our neighbors, following Jesus Christ. In our repentance, we continue to open our hearts to the power of the Holy Spirit, recommitting ourselves daily to the vision of love and justice God has for us and the whole world.