When Remorse is Enough

When Remorse is Enough

There are many “church” words that we sometimes use so much that we think we know what they mean. One of those words is “repentance.” That’s a fancy Greek and Latin term for changing one’s thinking in a more godly manner and then promising not to commit a sin. But it’s not first and foremost saying we’ll never do it again. It’s first understanding why we do it again. For some Episcopalians coming from a different church, “repentance” has also been perceived as a barrier to God’s grace rather than as an aid to that grace. The Good News that Jesus has for us today is that “repentance” is not always necessary for the grace to enter God’s kingdom.

Our Gospel today begins with the chief priests of the Second Temple in Jerusalem asking Jesus: “By what authority do you do these things? And who gave you this authority?” What things? A few verses earlier in chapter 21: “Jesus then went into the Temple and drove out all those who were selling and buying in the Temple; he upset the tables of the money changers and the seats of the dove sellers. He said to them, ‘It is written, my house will be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a bandits’ den.’ Blind and lame people came to him in the Temple, and he cured them.” Those are the two “things,” which you could expect the priests and elders to be upset about. But it’s worse than you think.

If you made a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, walking with whatever you could carry or perhaps pull in a small cart, you would have to buy the birds or sheep or cattle for your sacrifice when you got to Jerusalem. And the priests wouldn’t accept the Roman denarius because it had the image of Caesar’s face. So, you would have to exchange your denarii for shekels. So, for the rest of that Monday after Palm Sunday at least, there were no more sacrifices in the Temple after Jesus was finished. The priests certainly understood what Jesus was saying, that the Temple was no longer the access to God’s mercy. Why? According to Jesus, they the priests had turned it from a house of prayer for all nations into a “den of robbers,” but more precisely undisciplined gang members or private militias.

Jesus had a harsh critique of the Judaism of his time as practiced by those who claimed leadership of his fellow Jews. They had turned the Temple into a symbol of God’s wrath that would one day destroy their enemies when they should have been working to convert them. The Temple, Jesus believed, had become a barrier to God’s mercy. The other “thing” Jesus was doing was healing specifically the “blind and lame” in the same Temple where he had just expelled the sellers and money-changers, even though Israelite tradition had long held that those with such physical disabilities as blindness or lameness were not permitted in the holy places. The priests also got Jesus’s meaning there.

Thus, their question about authority, because the only authority Jesus could claim would have been divine. He turns their question back on them by asking about John the Baptist. And when they won’t answer, he tells them a parable about two sons: One who said no to his father but later regretted his refusal and went to work, while the other said and did the opposite.

But who else regretted their actions and “believed” John the Baptist? The tax collectors and the sex workers, both groups of people who were only doing that work because they either had no alternative to survive or they were slaves being forced to do it. They weren’t able to fully repent. But the remorse that John managed to awaken in their conscience was, apparently, good enough for Jesus.

So sometimes, regret and remorse are enough for God’s mercy. And those of any time and of any faith who demand obedience to their judgement, without any effort to understand why someone isn’t meeting their moral standards, are also in danger of going behind those whom they judge into the kingdom of God.

We are, of course, about to say, “We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.” That is, we’re going to seek to understand what it is that causes us to seek our own will instead of God’s. And then we will take that changed heart and mind back into the world with the same temptations and circumstances we can’t always escape. But that repentance, or maybe just that remorse, is enough for Jesus.

September 27th, 2026

17th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21, Year A

The Rev. David P. Kendrick