This is one of my favourite weekends of the year! When I was a student, we used to have a party on the night the clocks went back. We would dance through the night, and when it came to 3 a.m., we would put the clocks back, joyfully. It’s two o’clock again. What shall we do this time round, eh?
If you could do that, go back in time, and live one hour of your life over again, how would you choose? Which one would it be? Perhaps you would make a different decision about something, knowing what you do now; or take back something you said; or do something that you failed to do, and have regretted ever since.
Regret is a terrible thing to live with, and for some (maybe for you), the thing they regret is so painful, so all-consuming, that it takes over their lives. Life is all about the love that was lost, the injury that was done, the opportunity that was missed: something we will live with for the rest of our lives.
Psalm 51, the great penitential Psalm, is a powerful expression of that longing to return, to put things right, and to find our way back to that close relationship with God, that our sin has destroyed. ‘My sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone have I sinned . . .’ (v. 3). We fear losing our close relationship with God for ever: ‘Do not cast me away from your presence; do not take your Holy Spirit from me’ (v. 10-11).
But, hang on! This is all sounding a bit self-centred. How convenient it would be if sin was only about me and God, something to be sorted out in private, between the two of us, with no reference to the other people we have hurt, lives we have damaged, injustices we have participated in.
For sure, the relationship between the sinner and God is fundamental. ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’, and ‘all are justified freely by the grace of God’ (Romans 3:23-4, Hallelujah!). But the Bible is also clear that repentance and forgiveness go much wider than this. We sin against God, that’s true, but also against each other. Sin has terrifying power to destroy, not only individuals, but whole communities, spiraling out of control through the generations, and leaping like wildfire from family to family, or nation to nation, while Satan laughs.
But God has given us access to a greater power than this: repentance, and forgiveness is as simple as God’s grace, and as complex as the webs of bitterness it has to overcome. The great prophets cry out against empty ritual, designed only to appease the Almighty: ‘Day after day they seek me, and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practised righteousness . . . Is not this the fast that I require, to loose the bonds of injustice?’ (Isaiah 58:2, 6).
And Jesus warns that, even if I am on my way to worship God, and remember I have something against another person, I should stop in my tracks, turn back and sort things out with my fellow human beings first. (Matthew 5:23-4). Sometimes, indeed, it is necessary to withhold forgiveness entirely, as long as the sin or the injustice is still unresolved, at large in the world (Matthew 18:6-7).
Honest, diligent repentance, demonstrated in apology, reparation, restoration, and met by the practical openheartedness of forgiveness really does have the power to roll back the ravages of time and bring tough, enduring reconciliation and transformation. This is a super-power. Let’s use it!
And the wilderness
and the dry land shall be glad
the desert shall rejoice
and blossom like the rose
and rejoice
with joy and singing. (Isaiah 35:1)
Janet Wootton
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