I had a dream yesterday morning. Or, I should say, a nightmare. I was in a discount book store buying a book. In fact, I was buying two books, and I was delighted to get them. I took them to the register, where the cashier immediately noticed that one of them was marked at full price rather than the typical discount. I had been aware of that, but it was OK with me, because the book was pretty rare, and I had thought it was worth the full price. But the cashier said something to the manager, who nodded, and my book was rung up at a reduced price!
      So far, so good, right? But then, evidently to justify the lower price, the clerk opened the book and made a grand display of tearing out the top right corner of the half-title and the title pages. As you can imagine, I was more than a little unnerved, but he had barely avoided removing actual text, and I knew I could carefully repair the damage if he gave me all the pieces (in a way, it wasn’t all that different from the remainder marks that booksellers use capriciously to deface the edges of books before the books are sold at half price). And to this sales associate, I now had a book that “warranted” his discount.
      But then he looked at the book again and apparently decided he needed to do a more thorough job. So he bent the book across the middle, partially breaking the spine. Next, he dog-eared and ripped some other pages. And finally—I can’t remember whether it was by chewing or what, but he managed to put a bite-sized hole in the middle of the front cover and through a number of pages. And triumphantly handed me the book!
      As those of you who know me can probably imagine, by this point I was in a cold sweat.  I picked the book up, looked at it in horror, and—you must remember, this was a dream—I used some language I wouldn’t ordinarily use in polite conversation. I threw the book back on the counter and, as he stared at me in uncomprehending astonishment, I told him the book was now garbage and that he could try to sell it to someone else.
      At that instant, my alarm clock rang, and I was spared the agony of seeing how the situation would resolve itself. But I can assure you, it wouldn’t have been with my accepting the book for the price he expected!
      You see, the problem was that I had initially been prepared to pay full price for the book, because to me it was worth the money; but a half-witted sales clerk did two things: he first devalued my payment, then reduced the product to a condition that matched his estimate of the price but that was in fact well below my standards for any price.

      We’ve just heard the scripture read—Mark 1:9-15—a passage that begins with Jesus’ baptism and forty days in the wilderness, but then in verses 14-15 turns to the core of Jesus’ proclamation to others about the imminent kingdom of God and about the preparation essential to entering it.
      I want us to reduce our attention to one thing: the difference between what is in the text about Jesus and what is the message of Jesus to others (verse 15). If you’re looking at the Gospel in your own Bibles, you may quickly figure it out. Let me state it simply: 
      Jesus didn’t have to repent, though that’s the central thing both John the Baptist (in verse 4) and Jesus called others to do; and we aren’t instructed to spend forty days in the desert, though Jesus did and our Lenten traditions have adapted the season of temptation into an annual practice of self-denial for Christians.  

      Now, I’m not particularly opposed to the season of Lent, but I do think it can cause us to get some things mixed up.  If we confuse Jesus’ forty days and our need for repentance:

   • We can make the mistake of thinking that repentance is only for a season. So we end up with the Mardi Gras partying that precedes Lent, and the lives we return to afterwards—to say nothing of the purely superficial nature of our Lenten observances. Repentance becomes an activity for forty days only!
And that brings up a second problem:

   • We can wrongly begin to think we can practice, not just our Lenten discipline but, indeed, the whole of our lives in whatever limited way we want.

      But my dream reminded me that we don’t accept that standard when somebody applies it to us. And the Scriptures consistently warn us that God doesn’t accept it from us either. The salesman in my dream had in mind a “price” for my book—a price that he might even have thought was favorable to me. But then he somehow decided he should “prepare” the book to suit the bargain price. And in the process, he produced something I wouldn’t pay anything for.
      Christ has paid a price for you and me as we are. That’s the story we retell ourselves at the end of Lent.  But too many of us, and too many people everywhere who go by the name “Christian,” undervalue the grace of Jesus’ sacrifice, cheapen it, and then think we can present to God in return whatever we want. Christ’s grace, we imagine, will cover our sin, so why prepare in a way that would involve very radically renouncing that sin?  Since the price seems assured, the sin (the condition of our book) seems to be irrelevant.
      It’s time for us to repent. Not just during Lent, but as a way of life that is consistent with both John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ message.
      I’m not talking about living a morbid life, but about beginning to value rightly the fact that we form the contents of a book that is being presented to our Purchaser. 

      What is repentance? One writer has aptly pointed out that it isn’t a practice that aims to make us sorry for our sin or merely to allow us to express our sorrow. Rather, it is a discipline of getting ready. “It is a turning of the soil of our hearts for a new planting” from the Lord (Francis Frangipane, Holiness, Truth, and the Presence of God, 66). But that introduces a different (an agricultural) image. So let’s put it in terms of my dream: repentance is a careful handing of our life’s book to the One who has valued us and paid for us.

      Jesus spoke to his hearers about the good news of the kingdom of God, which we can perhaps state simply as the Lord’s living presence among us. Or, if you will, the kingdom represents our full acquisition (like my book) by the Lord. But that acquisition isn’t automatic, and it doesn’t allow us to keep making of ourselves whatever we choose. We are all in imperfect condition; repentance is about presenting ourselves as we are for repair of our brokenness.  

      So Lent is our seasonal reminder that we need to prepare in the Lord’s, not our, way—and not just during this season, but year-round.
      Do you want Christ to dwell in you more richly? Hear again, this Lent, the word that applies to all of our living: “the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news” of what we receive through Him who loves us.