As many of you know, I grew up around high school athletics.

My dad was a high school football coach in our little town of Glen Rose; he coached basketball and track too, which, of course, is not uncommon in small towns. Athletics gave our lives rhythm: Friday night lights in the fall, then basketball on Tuesdays and Fridays in the winter, and then track meets on Saturdays in the spring; that’s how we marked the progress of the year in our family (although we never neglected God on Sunday like too many do today).

It was a great way to grow up, and it shaped me, instilling in me a work ethic, responsibility, and a sense of teamwork. Athletics can do that for a kid, it’s invaluable and it’s why it belongs in education. Growing up around athletics, and particularly around coaches, taught me a great deal. So many lessons in life I can trace back to a few great coaches, not just my dad. Lessons, as I said, which still teach me.

Coaches, most of them, are good judges of character, good shapers of character too. I remember, one of the worst things my dad could say about a kid, about one of his players, was that he was “un-coachable.” May dad coached kids with the talent of a fork; he also coached kids that went on to play in the NFL. And he never really said much about a kid’s talent, not much that mattered at least. But he did talk about character.

“He’s good kid, tries hard”—that was high praise from my dad. “He’s un-coachable”—that wasn’t good. Does a player listen to his coach, to his teacher? Is she a student of the game? Does a player watch tape looking for highlights or to look for mistakes, to learn from them? You talk to good coaches, they will tell you: character is more important than talent; for vast majority of kids, that’s what matters, that’s what athletics should give them—character. That’s what my dad meant whenever he talked about a kid being “coachable” or not. Because that’s how you could tell character: by how well they took coaching, how whether or not they could learn from mistakes.

A life lesson, as I said. Self-awareness, humility, the ability to acknowledge and own your mistakes and misunderstandings: it’s all part of being a fully developed human being, a well-rounded member of society, an adult. Even when it’s bad, when what you have done and what you have become is ugly and grotesque: accepting the brutal truth of it is the beginning of hope, which is the beginning of change.

Forgive me quoting a pagan, but it’s apt: it was Lao-tzu who said, “The holy man is not sick because his sickness sickens him.”[1] To see the trouble you’re in is to be in less trouble than if you didn’t see it. To learn from your mistakes is better than pretending you didn’t make any. Truth might sting, but it’s better medicine than sweet delusion. Again, I’m talking about character. Are you coachable? Can you admit and learn from your mistakes? That’s what your parents tried to teach you, your teachers and coaches too. “Search others for their virtues,” old Ben Franklin said, [but] “thy self for thy vices.”[2] It is what separates fools from the wise, children from grown-ups no matter their age.

Now I bring this up—this universal truth about human character—to suggest that it applies in the religious realm as well, the moral and spiritual realm. I bring this up to suggest that even in this area of life—especially in this area of life—it matters whether or not you’re coachable, whether or not you can admit your mistakes and learn from them.

Because the word of the Church for you and I today, the word of Jesus Christ, is “repentance.” John the Baptist, in advance of Christ, said that the acknowledgement of sins and repentance from them was a necessity—if Christ’s advent was to be to your advantage.[3] The Lord does not wish us to perish, it says in 2 Peter, but that we come to repentance, so that Christ’s coming will be for us the coming of a new heaven and a new earth.[4] That’s the word of God for us today: to acknowledge our sins, to repent for our sins, and to work to change our lives, for the better holiness God is calling us to embrace, leaving our sins behind.

But, of course, for this to mean anything, you have to ask yourself, “Am I coachable?” Where are you on that? Kierkegaard said once that it’s “edifying to find oneself always in the wrong before God,” but that’s not how most of us think these days, is it?[5] Are you coachable?

Is it possible, for instance, for the Gospels to convict you and not just affirm you? Is it possible for the Church to teach you anything, tell you you’re wrong about anything? Or do you just like the bits you like? Can God, as he is revealed in scripture and not just as you’d like to imagine him, tell you, “No, that’s not right”? Or, when it comes to some things, do you become a clever “interpreter” of the Bible, a “sophisticated” reader of biblical texts, even though you may have not actually read the whole thing? You see what I’m getting at? I’m picking on you on the left and on the right; because let’s be clear, it’s a problem for both sides.

Are you coachable? Does the idea of repentance even have a chance of meaning anything to you at all? It’s a difficult question, but important. Because without genuine repentance, you will not see Christ; the “Christ” you see will not be real, just a figment of your imagination, not a redeemer. It’s why the Church will always talk about repentance—over and over again—because it’s really important. And it’s why her genuine preachers will always call you to it—because it matters.

People sometimes get on to me for not really hitting very hard particular topics. Why don’t I preach on this or against that; I get it from both the left and the right, although they always want me to preach on topics that would upset other people and not themselves. I’ve never had a liberal, for instance, ask me to preach about abortion or a conservative ask me to preach about immigration—funny that.

But, of course, they’re right. I should preach on such things, and maybe I will someday. But for now, this seems more important, more foundational, more pressing, something we must think about before we could ever think about anything—that is, the question of repentance, whether or not it’s even possible for you to consider repentance at all.

I must admit, I’ve met very few who can tolerate it. I don’t think we’re very coachable at the moment. It’s one of the reasons ours has become this age of endless bitterness. It’s why many of you don’t want me to preach the whole gospel of your Christ—not really.

And, of course, it’s why we need a prophet again and a religion more wild than the one we have tamed. Amen.

[1] Lao-tzu, Tao Tê Ching 71

[2] Wit and Wisdom from Poor Richard’s Almanack, 37

[3] Mark 1:1-8

[4] 2 Peter 3:8-14

[5] Cited in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, 230

© 2020 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield