Repentance and Ashes
Rev. Kristin Johnston Largen, Ph.D.
The theme for this week is “Repentance and Ashes,” and so in this passage, I want to focus on verse seven: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
This passage starts out with the Pharisees grumbling—like they so often do—complaining that Jesus is not associating with the “right” kind of people. There he goes again, eating with sinners and tax collectors again. Doesn’t he know better? Why does he keep hanging out with the riff-raff?
Jesus responds to their criticisms with three parables right in a row: the lost sheep, the lost coin; and, in the verses that immediately follow this passage, the parable of the prodigal son—the lost son, so to speak. All three of these parables illustrate Jesus’ embodiment of God’s unconditional, expansive, ever-seeking love—love that is particularly directed toward those who are in the most desperate need, love that holds particularly dear the runaways, the strays, and the rebels.
I don’t know the person who needs “no repentance”—but I do know lots of us who like to put ourselves in the “righteous person” category; and we like to think we have earned it. This kind of thinking leads us to act like the Pharisees, condemning others from an illusory vantagepoint of superiority. It makes us feel good, lording our righteousness over others—but that feeling is built on a lie.
In offering these images, Jesus exposes that lie by disrupting our categories of righteous and unrighteous, insiders and outsiders. In this way, he invites us to embrace repentance as a gift of true [Christ’s] righteousness and release our desperate clinging to our own [imagined] righteousness. Repentance is the mechanism by which we are able to truly acknowledge how we have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God, thereby opening ourselves up to the restorative, renewing love of Jesus Christ. Simply put, repentance is the recognition that we are all lost sheep, who again and again go astray and need Christ to find us and call us back—which he does, relentlessly and patiently.
It is never too late to be found. No sin is ever too great to keep Christ from scooping us up and carrying us home.
