if not with Thee

Whither should we turn, if not to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ?

Where might the sufferer find consolation, if not in Thee?

Ah, and where the penitent, if not with Thee, Lord Jesus
Christ?

- Soren Kierkegaard

Trained within a tradition that vaunts itself in certitude, this prayer is for me both a conviction and a breath of cool air. With these words on my lips I am not any longer the sure messenger of Christianity’s claim to exclusivity preaching repentance to others and at a great distance. I am the sinner and no stranger to exasperation who has found a hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. I know no one else to whom I could have turned and now can simply imagine no other at all.

We are all of us sinners. And we were penitent long before we repented. We were sorry for our sins but utterly without the strength to leave them. We wallowed in a toxic pattern of repetition and entrenchment within the sins we hated ourselves for. Even when we self-justified. Even when we put on our bravest of faces. We were vexed. Desperate. Sorry. And, somewhere deep within, we knew it.

As a student chaplain I once sat at the bedside of a dying woman who was gulping for breath and with every gasp whispering to me, one hand extended, “I am heartily sorry for all of my sins…I am heartily sorry for all of my sins…I am heartily sorry for all of my sins”. I was uncomfortable. Unnerved. I tried to assure her that her sins were forgiven, that salvation was sure. I left the room feeling that I had failed this woman and needed a chaplain myself. A wiser minister than I looked at me and simply told me I had missed the point. “Perhaps she didn’t need you to convince her of anything. Perhaps she just needed you to hear her confession.” I was a young Pentecostal with no capacity yet to hear confessions. Sin is a past thing, always a past thing, you see. We sinned. We “got saved”. Now we’re okay. We’ve moved on. I could not hear her gasping contrition because I was out of joint with my own.

Who can we turn to, Lord Jesus? Who else knows our estate? Who else can see the blackness of our motives, our pride, our selfish acts, and receive us with care? Where can go the penitent…and we all are in our sinful ways penitent…to unload the guilt and despair of it all whether for good or just for now, but to you? Is there salvation outside of Jesus? I’ve no care to look. My soul runs to Jesus and finds rest there. My suffering is consoled. My penitence turns to repentance. My homelessness to belonging, in him.

Let us not miss the point: salvation is not a truth we believers have a corner on; it is the place to which we run and from which we call for others to come. They come not to us; we are so often deaf priests at the bedsides of the dying. They ask in their many ways, “where can we go?” Our answer, not dogmatic, but empathetic, “where if not to Jesus?”