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Road
Back to Joy When I was a young man I had a wife and three children to support. I was in sales. I worked for a well-known insurance company. I was trained in skills and techniques that I now consider manipulative and insensitive. You may have seen the movie Glen Gary, Glen Ross, in which Jack Lemon and other actors sell real estate with lies and devious methods. I sold life insurance in that way. I can remember sitting in the living room or dining room or at the kitchen table of a prospect and his family. I would go over the reasons for buying life insurance, and then, without asking if they wanted to buy what I was selling, I would, in a very calculated way, start to ask questions and would put the answers in the information blocks on an application to buy life insurance. If the prospect said, “What are you doing? I don’t know yet if I want to buy this,” I would say, “Well, let me just get this information to see if you qualify.” And I would continue asking questions and filling out the form. When I was finished, I would turn the paper around so that the man could read it, and I would say, “Please write your name right there at the ‘x’ I have made at the bottom of the page.” And then I would hold out the pen toward him, right near his hand, and wait. I wouldn’t say another word. The silence was powerful and often as not, the man would take the pen and write his name. And more often than not, my new client would have bought something he couldn’t afford or perhaps had bought more than he needed. I didn’t care about that. What I cared about was my commission. In the midst of these years of selling life insurance day and night, I came home one day between calls to get supper and to wash up for my nighttime appointments. I found, instead of a waiting meal, an Episcopal priest visiting my family in our living room. One thing led to another and about six months later I was baptized and five years after that I was a new student at Virginia Theological Seminary. And one of the things that happened to me somewhere on that path was that I realized with painful clarity how brutally manipulative my sales methods had been. How little I cared for those other people and how insensitively I used them for my own purposes. I came to regret that I had done that. I became conscious of the fact that that kind of thinking had also been taking place in my relationship with those in my personal life. And I came to the time when I inwardly condemned my own behavior, found it repulsive and turned in the opposite direction. I was determined not to be that way again. I experienced what in church jargon is called repentance. Repentance is more than saying “I’m sorry.” It is leaving our old behavior or attitude behind. The Hebrew word for repent is shuv, which literally means to turn around and go in the opposite direction. One thing about repentance is that it is not a “one-time” thing. That for which we have repented will return if we are not alert. Or if it does not, we humans are of such a nature that we will come up with something else for which we need repentance – perhaps as often as every day! The thing about repentance is that it is life-changing. It is always painful, because it requires that we face something about ourselves that is usually ugly. But as soon as we recognize that it is ugly, we have begun to separate ourselves from it. In Romans, St. Paul says, “I am in trouble: I do the very thing I hate and I hate the thing I do.” Once we hate what we do, we have taken a giant step towards needed change. Another thing about repentance is that it usually comes only after we reach bottom, so to speak. If we are doing fine and are comfortable about what we are doing, there is usually no reason to change. So repentance usually comes just after a very low time. And it is at those times in life that we experience most of our personal growth, most of our evolving. Our soul grows, says Thomas Moore, mostly in the cracks and crevices of life. In the process of repentance we must be careful, very careful, to hate our behavior but not ourselves. For if the price of seeing ourselves clearly is to hate ourselves, we will not grow. Our lives will shrink. We will turn on ourselves and probably on others. Repentance is the tool of freedom. It is the path to joy. Repentance must include self-forgiveness. A wise woman once said “No sin hath befallen thee but such as is common to man….” We are all flawed; we are all in the same boat and it has got a hole in it. My manipulation of other people for my own profit was not unique. No matter what it is we hate in ourselves, our recognition of it wipes the slate clean. Our repentance makes all things new. In the Old Testament parable about the lost sheep, remember that God rejoices at one stray sheep who returns, more than at the 99 who think they have no flaw to discover. The best use our lives can be to God comes when we are not dragging guilt around behind us. God wants us to let it go. This is the season of repentance and joy. In one of the major Gospel readings of Advent we hear that John the Baptist “appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Advent is a time when we clear the underbrush from our conscience and soul as we prepare our hearts to receive the baby Jesus once again. It is also a time of joy. The pink candle, which we light today in our Advent wreath, is the Joy candle. Joy is different from happiness. Happiness is good but usually situational. Joy is a centeredness, a quiet peace that reflects the presence of God in our spirit. But without repentance our joy may be blocked.
Repentance is the path to joy. May joy be ours this day and this holy season. Amen. Copyright 2004 The Rev. William A. Kolb Gospel:
Matthew
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