Even Jesus repented...

Inner Life
BY DAVID TORKINGTON
IASKED A PRIEST friend of mine if anyone had ever walked out of his sermons. He admitted that it had happened often enough in the past when he was a young firebrand, but it hadn't particularly disconcerted him, until it had happened again quite recently. When he asked the offender what he was objecting to he replied, "Oh, nothing in particular, Father, I just got bored!"
At least the person who walked out of my talk couldn't have been bored because I'd hardly begun it. I merely announced what I was going to talk about and he shouted "heresy" and stormed out. All I said was that I wanted to talk about the repentance of Jesus. I wonder if you would have gone with him? If so, it would have been because you had a rather limited understanding of the word.
You would probably have thought that repentance meant to run away from sin that had been committed, and would no doubt have associated it with feelings of guilt and remorse, but repentance means much more than that. It means to turn away not just from sin, but from the temptation to sin, and from all and everything that could separate you from God.
Now the Scriptures make it quite clear that Jesus was tempted "in all things as we are tempted". The fact that He never gave in to temptation meant that He turned away from it. In other words He repented. Like any selfrespecting preacher, He first practised for Himself what He preached to others. Not only did He practise repentance in the desert, but throughout the rest of His life as the devil "who left Him for a while" returned to tempt Him again and again.
AHS THE POWER of evil conspired against im with ever greater power the human weakness that Jesus had freely chosen to accept was stretched to its limit.
In Gethsemane, the temptations were so powerful that He sweated blood, but never once did He give in to them though He cried out from the depths of his being, "Father that this chalice may pass away from me". It was in the desert at the beginning of His public life, and in Gethsemane at the end of it, that you can see most clearly the inner nature
of the repentance to which we have all been called being practised by Jesus Himself.
It involves four steps. Firstly, a turning away from temptation in order to turn back to God. Secondly, an opening of ourselves to him and to His grace. And thirdly, it involves an emptying as that grace enables everything to be stripped away that prevents the fourth or final step from taking place the total and unconditional surrender of ourselves to Him and to His will, to what he wants us to do, not what we want.
If you re-read the account of Jesus in Gethsemane, you'll see these four steps perfectly exemplified in His personal prayer. Though He went there to pray for the help He needed now that "His hour" had come, He was tortured by terrible temptations to take an easier path, but He repeatedly turned away from them to open Himself to His Father.
As He prayed His weak humanity was emptied these perfectly understandable human desires, and he was given the strength to surrender Himself totally to the will of His Father. Now, with the help and strength given to Him in His prayer He was able to go out and be obedient even to death.
If you've not already written me off as a heretic or simply got bored with what I've been trying to say, you might be able to see a little more clearly the inner meaning of the repentance that we practise, like Jesus Himself, each time we try to turn to God in prayer. It enables us to pray in exactly the same way as he did. It enables our prayer to synchronise perfectly with the prayer He practised in the desert and in Gethsemane.
No matter what forms or methods of prayer are used, they will be no more than means to help you to keep turning to God again and again despite the distractions and temptations that threaten to overwhelm you. If despite everything you persevere, his grace will gradually empty you of all that prevents your prayer from synchronising with His prayer. Then that grace will enter into all you say and do outside of prayer, so that all can see that Jesus is not dead but alive again in those who freely choose to receive Him.
David Torkington's trilogy on prayer, The Hermit, The Prophet and The Mystic, is published by Hodder & Stoughton