Room for Repentance
Marjory Zoet Bankson

‘WHY can I be more honest at my AA group than I can at church?" Mother asked. At 74, she was new to Alcoholics Anony- mous. "I don’t really know, Mom," I said, "maybe it’s because they know it’s a matter of life and death at AA and they don’t at church." I think church structures typically invite individual feelings of guilt but do not provide a relational field with room for repentance and time for restoration.

For my mother, repentance began with telling the truth about herself where it could be received without judgment or condemnation. At church, she tried to hide her drinking and keep a good face. As she slowly worked her way through the first few steps of AA, she admitted her addiction and began to experience her shame and repentance because there were others who could be there with her.

When Jesus encountered people in desperate need, he often linked healing with forgiveness – the woman taken in adultery, the man lowered on a pallet by friends, the woman with a jar of ointment, the man born blind. None of them came with a confession of sin. All came because of their raw need for help. All had been marginalized, if not outcast and stigmatized, because of their "impurity." Jesus responded to their isolation first, engaging them as humans who were neither better nor worse than others.

Ann Lamott’s intriguing novel, Crooked Little Heart, is a contemporary story of repentance. In it, 13-year-old Rosie has been cheating on close line calls to win crucial tennis matches. Rosie’s shame grows as she is unable to stop herself. She even hurts herself in a physical attempt to get her mother’s attention, but she is trapped by her compulsion to win.

There is an ominous man, an outcast named Luther (!) who comes to every tournament, watching her, but she knows he will not tell. To simplify the story unmercifully, Luther finally invites Rosie beyond her self-absorbed guilt with his own confession: "I did what you did."

"What do you mean?"

"I cheated."

As her secret becomes visible to both of them, Rosie calls herself a cheater. "No," Luther says, "you cheated." Then he tells her that other people cheat, too. By doing that, he invites her into the company of flawed humans. He also gives her a way to claim her identity as one who can make different choices, who can tell the truth. He makes room for her repentance to begin.

Rosie begins to change. She is reprimanded by the sportsmanship committee, but they allow her to continue playing. In the final game, she over-compensates, not calling points out because she wants to avoid the appearance of cheating. Then she finds the courage to call a long shot correctly and Luther stands up to leave. "Aren’t you going to stay and watch Rosie win?" her mother asks.

"I already have," he says and disappears from the rest of the story.

By grace, we’ve seen the same thing in my mother’s life. Maybe that’s the reason why the 12-step program waits until Step Four before asking participants to make "a moral inventory" and waits until Step Eight before "making amends" is indicated. Change from the inside out takes time and testing of a new sense of self in relationship with others.

During Lent, I will be looking for places where I feel isolated, where I cheat to succeed, ashamed of my own flawed humanity. Perhaps we can experiment with telling the truth in church – in smaller groupings where we can wrestle with shame that keeps us isolated, afraid we have no right to be there at all. In that setting, I believe repentance can develop and God’s family can be restored.

Marjory Zoet Bankson is the President of Faith @ Work, a resource for relational Christianity, and author of The Call to the Soul.