As I reread Isaiah 58 and think about the communal nature of repentance, I realise that I’ve too easily given myself the role of prophet, declaring and calling out the sins of the people.

There’s a time and a place for this… but only if I also acknowledge that I am one of the people, part of the community that needs to act in repentance.

One of the temptations (for me, at least) when it comes to lamenting the sins of my community – be that my nation, my race, my church, my class, my religion – is to echo the Pharisee who prayed:

“Thank God I’m not like those people.”

Luke 18:11

But I am like those people, I am part of that body and I too need to join in the communal repentance.

For instance, when it comes to racism and xenophobia. I’m aware of the sins of my people in this and I’m doing some things to declare where there is injustice and oppression. And there is much I’ve learned already about being anti-racist. But it would be arrogant, hypocritical and wrong to think that I don’t need to repent here too. As a concrete example, I sometimes laugh at jokes/situations where the entire premise for humour is that non-native accents are worthy of derision. I believe that to be wrong, racist and xenophobic, and I need to change. As I become aware of the ways that I absorb and enact the racism of the communities I’m part of, I need to repent – acknowledge the Not Good, receive Goodness, and act differently as a result.

We often cast ourselves as Jesus in the story of the woman being stoned, where he calls those without sin to cast the first stone. And sometimes, yes, I follow Jesus’ example by naming hypocrisy and advocating for grace and mercy instead. But actually, often the characters I need to learn from in this story are those receiving the challenge to repent first before asking others to.

Here am I, one of the people, declaring and repenting of our communal sins so that together we can overturn injustice and oppression. 

[ I am aware that sometimes being told not to be hypocritical is used to silence those who call out communal sins. That’s wrong too (maybe it’ll be a theme in another blog post) and that’s not the message I’m hearing or sharing! ]