Metanoia

I began this blog on November 1, 2010, just a month after I ended eleven years in youth ministry at the Church of the Good Samaritan. 

I think at the time I was concerned that without the weekly schedule of lessons and talks to prepare, I'd lose the discipline of study and reflection. I posted almost every Sunday for the next six years, then more sporadically the next four, and ended a bit abruptly in June of 2021. 

I called that last post Owlets, UFOs, Microbes, Miracles. Toward the end I wrote:

"We miss so much by our own inattention, our determined refusal to listen, our predetermined categories, our amazing arrogance. We know so little, yet we think we understand enough to say what's real, what's not, what's worth our time, what isn't."

Maybe I stopped blogging after that because in a world where so many were arguing so fiercely over science, health, politics, faith, I didn't want to argue. Even a weekly blog post seemed too much of a challenge. I was deep into work with Fair Districts PA, an organization I helped form in 2016, advocating for better voting maps in Pennsylvania. And I was exhausted by a year of pandemic, by extended family health complications, by the rising tide of political ill-will. Silence seemed easier, and sometimes easy may be what we need. 

But recently I've had nudges to start posting again. I've started a few posts, then set them aside. But today is the start of Advent, one of my favorite times of the year, and I'm feeling the need to settle back into a more consistent discipline. I'm going to revisit and revise some earlier Advent posts, then see where that takes me in the new year ahead. 

This post is a revision from December 4, 2011. 

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Advent is a time of preparation: four weeks of waiting before the day we celebrate Christ's birth. In the liturgical church, John the Baptist is one of the voices of that challenge to get ready. The gospel texts describe him calling “Prepare the way." "Make straight the path." "Repent and be baptized.”

“Repent” is one of those words badly flattened in translation. The original word is “metanoia” – “meta” and “noia.” “Noia” is easy: “mind.”

“Meta” is harder. It’s a prefix we see in “meta-narrative” or “metaphysics.” It can be translated “beyond,” or “after.” But the meaning seems larger, more like “encompassing,” or “like this, only bigger.”   

So “metanarrative” is the bigger story that contains, and explains, other narratives. “Metaphysics” is the bigger vision that contains, and explains, the physical world. 

And “metanoia”? Literal attempts at translation read it as “a change of mind.” But it’s more like moving from a small mind, our own, to the “meta mind,” the larger mind that encompasses ours: God’s own.  

So when John the Baptist calls "repent, " he's calling us to let our small minds go, and find our place in God’s. To let our own agendas go, and find ourselves in God’s. To set aside our own narrow view, and ask God to help us see his larger vision.

C. S. Lewis, struggling to explain this larger view of repentance, put it this way: 

“[F]allen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.  Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of a "hole."  This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance. . . .  It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years.  It means undergoing a kind of death." (Mere Christianity) 

If we think of repentance at all, we're likely to think it's something we can check off, a quick confession, a grudging acknowledgement of guilt, a half-hearted "I'm sorry," then on to other things. But metanoia is much bigger, more lasting. As Lewis says, it’s a kind of death, letting go of our own great ideas, our own fiercely held prejudices, our own self-importance. It’s a willingness to take on a less selfish way of living, a less self-absorbed way of seeing.

The difficulty, of course, is that we can’t really do this on our own. We see what we see. We are who we are. We hold tightly to our smallness. Conditioned by our experience, our upbringing, our temperament, the voices of our culture, our families, our favorite tv shows, we are locked into our own way of knowing, and trapped in our own ways of living.

From prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to a former student: 

“One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. . .  I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia . . .” (Letters and Papers from Prison)

I'm struck now, rereading this, at the great heartache Bonhoeffer must have felt, seeing so many of the Christians he'd known fall in line with the Nazi regime. I'm struck by the fear he must have felt, knowing the brutality of the regime he had opposed, no doubt knowing his own execution was not far off. 

What was it like, for him, to live “unreservedly” in the perplexities and struggle of a concentration camp? What did it mean "to watch with Christ in Gethsemane"? 

Hesychius, a fifth century Greek theologian and church historian, wrote, "We will travel the road of metanoia correctly if, as we begin to give attention to the spirit, we combine humility with watchfulness . . ."

There’s that word again: watchful.

In some ways, much has changed since I my 2011 post. We've had some tumultuous presidential elections. A pandemic. Divisions in churches, friendships, families. We're surrounded by epidemic anger, grief, anxiety. 

Yet the need for metanoia remains unchanged. John the Baptist's call is as insistent as it was two thousand years ago.

Each week I say the prayer of confession with others in my church: "we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent." 

What does it mean to love my neighbor now, in this time, in this place, in this context? How have I fallen short? Am I truly sorry? What would it take to love my neighbor better?

I have friends who see repentance in any form as a negative thing, who think that acknowledging wrong is bad for the psyche, that confession of any kind is unnecessary and potentially harmful.

I find it deeply comforting. 

I’m not perfect. My attitude, my thoughts, my words, my actions. None are perfect. Not even close. I say the wrong thing and hurt people around me. I get too busy and let people down. I hold fiercely to my own ideas and react with frustration when asked to explain them. I procrastinate when prompted to reach out in ways that might cost me time, or risk my emotional safety.

And God still loves me. Still surrounds me with his kindness. Still calls me to deeper wisdom, clearer vision, more consistent faithfulness. Forgives my failings, calls me to change, and gives me grace to take the next step forward.

So I ask for grace to move on toward wholeness and holiness, to be able to watch with Christ in Gethsemane, whatever that might mean. I pray for wisdom to inhabit the callings we are all called to: agents of reconciliation. Light in a dark world. People who love in the way we’ve been loved.

And I wait for metanoia, for myself, and for all who claim to follow Jesus: a change of heart, of mind, of life, so we can see and act with a love and wisdom greater than our own.