Return to the Lord: Rend Your Hearts, Not Your Garments

In the biographical movie about Mr. Rogers, called “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood”, Lloyd Vogel, an investigative journalist for Esquire, receives an assignment to profile Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers.

Lloyd Vogel approaches the interview hesitantly, resentfully, and with jaded skepticism. Lloyd found it difficult to believe that anyone could have such a good nature, or be such a good person as Mr. Rogers.

However, Fred Roger's empathy, kindness and decency soon eroded Vogel's bitterness and jaded outlook on life, forcing the reporter to reconcile with his own painful past and broken relationships in his own family.

Lloyd Vogel had a heart of stone. His father was an alcoholic who left his mother for another woman. His father was not present when his mother had died. Lloyd was abandoned and he felt shame and rejection.

Lloyd was broken, bitter, and jaded. He was notorious for ripping apart his interview subjects. But when he met Fred Rogers, Lloyd’s heart of stone slowly became a heart of flesh as Mr. Rogers saw him, looked at him, loved him, and showed him fatherly compassion and love and asked him questions like, “How are you, Lloyd?”

Lloyd’s story was supposed to be four hundred words and ended up being over ten thousand words as he interviewed and entered into the life of Fred Rogers and received the loving care of a new friend and loving father figure.

The story ends with Lloyd finding healing and restoration with his dying father and being reconciled with his own family and finding the inner healing that he so desperately needed. Lloyd Vogel experienced the grace-filled and relentless love of Mr. Rogers and it made all the difference in transforming his life.

You have heard of the relentless love of God, but have you heard of the relenting love of God? The gospel says we get what we do not deserve, the grace, the love, and the forgiveness of God.

The gospel also says that we do not get what we do deserve. We do not get God’s fury, we do not get God’s righteous judgement, and we do not get God’s wrath—all of which we do deserve in our sinfulness. God’s love relents from judgement. God’s love is a relenting love.

What is our response to God’s gift of love for us? Our response should be repentance. God’s righteousness and God’s kindness should lead us to repentance. Just like the kindness and love of Fred Rogers, which helped soften and transform the heart and life of Lloyd Vogel.

The Apostle Paul said it this way in his letter to the Church in Rome, “Or do you presume on the riches of [God’s] kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4).

There is a response that is merited because of the grace of God. It is repentance. We must turn from our old way of sin and turn toward God in gratitude—we must turn to God in a grateful repentance.

The prophet Joel proclaimed, “‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?” (Joel 2:12-14, ESV).

God calls us to return to him with all our heart. We are called to return to God with the entirety of our being. We are invited “to observe a Holy Lent: by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and alms-giving; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”

We are called to prayer and fasting. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 6:5 and 16, “And when you pray... And when you fast”, as if God is expecting us to pray and to fast.

When we pray and fast, we should pray earnestly and honestly, and we should fast with weeping and mourning, with a deep brokenness over our sin and separation from God, even in the face of God’s kindness, grace, and mercy. We should repent, pray and fast especially in the face of God’s kindness, grace, and mercy.

However, we have been hiding in shame and attempting to cover our sin and guilt, ever since the time of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, when disobedience, sin, and rebellion made them aware of their nakedness and shame, and they hid themselves.

We all cover over our shame with garments to hide ourselves from God, to hide from others, we hide from one another, and we even to hide from ourselves.

In Eden, God saw Adam and Eve, and God sees us. God spoke judgement to Adam and Eve, saying, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

We cannot hide our sin and shame from God, and our sin deserves judgement. God speaks these same words to each of us as well, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

A religious custom of the Israelites later brought about the clothing of sackcloth and ashes, as a sign of mourning and repentance. The repentant and mourning sinner would rend their garments, they would tear them apart, and they would clothe themselves with a garment of repentance—sackcloth and ashes—a sign of suffering and death. But God desires a different response. God desires that we rend our hearts, not our garments.

This is why King David said, “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:16-17, ESV).

God is not interested in our outward appearances or outward expressions of sorrow or repentance. God is not interested in a show.

God desires us to ‘break open our hearts’ before him, to look at the truth, and to show him the truth, so that we may return to God, and so that God may return to us and relent from the disastrous judgement that he would rightfully bring upon us and our sinfulness.

What would it look like for you to return to the Lord in the areas and in the aspects of your life where you have turned away from him?

We all have places in our lives where we have turned away from God. Repentance is turning back toward God and living again for God.

The Prophet Joel prophesied, “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?” (Joel 2:13-14, ESV).

Why should we turn toward God?

Because God is gracious and merciful. Because God is not quick to be angry at us. Because God is unwavering in his love for us—God is relentless in his love.

And because God’s love relents—God holds back from giving us the judgement and punishment we deserve, taking all of it upon himself in his passionate love for us.

And what does God leave us instead of what we deserve?

When God relents in his love for us and from giving us what we deserve, he “leaves a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?” God blesses us so that we may worship him with his blessings and so that we may have offerings to give, for we have nothing good, and nothing of value, apart from our God. “All things come from you, Oh Lord, and from your own hand do we give unto you.”

On Ash Wednesday, we observe the sign of the cross upon our foreheads in ashes. This sign in ash reminds us of death, judgement, and the curse of sin. This sign of ash in the shape of the cross reminds us that Jesus has born our death, judgement, and the curse of sin upon his own shoulders on the cross.

Jesus has relentlessly loved us despite of our condition, and he has loved us by relenting from giving us the punishment we deserve by taking it upon himself, so we do not have to bear it.

This Lenten season, as we tear open our hearts in true prayer, fasting, alms giving, and repentance, so that God may return to us as we return to God, may we experience the relentless love of God. May we experience the grace of getting God’s good and merciful free gift of love.

May we experience the relenting love of God; may we experience the grace and mercy of not getting what we deserve. And may we experience the blessings that God showers upon us so that we can have the joy of offering these blessings back up to him in worship!

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Prayer from the Ash Wednesday Service:

“Show favor to your people, O Lord, who turn to you in weeping, fasting, and prayer. For you are a merciful God, full of compassion, long-suffering, and abounding in steadfast love. You spare when we deserve punishment, and in your wrath you remember mercy. Spare your people, good Lord, spare us; in the multitude of your mercies, look upon us and forgive us; through the merits and mediation of your blessed Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer, 2019, p. 549).