About Time: Ashes, Regret, and The Kingdom of God

Plus a beautiful record and a beautiful recipe

Regret is a taboo in our culture. “Don’t dwell on the past.” “Live with no regrets.” “It is what it is.” “Everything happens for a reason.” These cultural cliches are slogans that we collectively use to keep regret at arm’s length. Our mythology then is always future-gazing. The past is prologue like the midday sun. It illuminates but you can’t stare too long in its direction without blinding pain.

Daniel Pink noticed that when he would break the veil of vulnerability around the subject of regret in private conversations, people often reciprocated, sharing their own regrets. This caused him to think, maybe in our culture of no regrets, regret is much more common than we let on. So he endeavored to explore the phenomena of regret, he put out the call through social media for people to anonymously share The response was overwhelming. He set up a website called The World Regret Survey and quickly received thousands of responses from all over the world. Pink in his book, The Power of Regret catalogs and categorizes regret and dividing them into four categories: foundational, moral, boldness, and connection. What he found was that regret was the second most commonly experienced emotion. Second only to love.

In describing his research, Pink said, “regret is an emotion. It’s a negative emotion in that it’s an emotion that makes us feel worse, not better. And it’s an emotion that’s triggered when we think of something from our past and wish we had done something differently, done something in a different way, not done something, taken an action, not taken an action. It’s incredibly cognitively complex because it requires mental time travel. You have to get in a time machine in your head and travel back to the past. Then you have to imagine the counterfactual to what really happened, and then get back in your time machine, come back to present day, and see the present day reconfigured because of the decision you made.”

As Pink points out, regret is a exercise in imagination—mental time travel. And regret carries the disintegrating narrator of shame in its wake, reminding us of our failures, our fears and convincing us that we are unworthy and unloved because of our past. Pink, in his book details the way the future opens up when we name and face the mistakes and missteps of our past. His work has a confessional tone, similar to the benefits of therapy, that the past holds secrets and keys to our future.

This week marked the beginning of the season of Lent with the solemn remembrance of Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday, annually, is one of those days where my vocation as a pastor often crystallizes for me with all of its profound weight. I experienced the revelatory significance of this last night again as I looked into faces of friends and congregants, some of whom I know their struggles and their heartaches, marked them with ashes that signify our collective human frailty, and told them the truth: you are going to die.

And Ash Wednesday as a gateway to Lent is an act of collective acknowledgement of regret. “We have sinned by the things that we have done and the things that we have left undone, we are truly sorry and we truly repent.” Confession, in the hands of the mercy of our God, is the anti-venom to the shame of regret. But God’s forgiveness is beyond wiping a ledger clear. In the hands of the healing God, somehow history, even broken, sinful pasts are drawn into the story of salvation.

We often have a powerful conception of hope for how God will redeem our space. Visions of heaven in our popular imagination range from the ethereal envisioned on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel to the neighborhood feel of the TV show The Good Place. We envision the people that we will see, the delights that we will experience, the way that heaven will be a full manifestation of the beauty that we only glimpse when we stand in the Rocky Mountains are on the shores of the ocean at sunrise. But in Revelation 21 and 22, the vision of the city planted on the foundation of the salvation of God is not just spatial but temporal.

Revelation 21vv2v23

22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

The city does not need the sun or the moon, which are the biblical markers of time-keeping. Genesis 1v14 tells us “God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years…”

Jesus when he announces the beginning of his ministry, says “the time is now fulfilled. The kingdom of God is near.” Again we see the beautiful intersection between the spatial and temporal. Nearness can be a presence that is close or an hour that’s time has arrived. One of the hallmarks of our fallen humanity is the way we experience time as a curse, fleeting at best, harboring nostalgia and gratitude (Psalm 90vv7-10). But at worst, the passage of time for us is filled with the pain of bitter regret, with bridges that we have crossed and burned, with moments of horror and trauma that have altered us forever.

Jesus demonstrates this command of time in the gospels. He tells Peter, “Before the rooster crows, you will have denied me three times.” Sure enough, Peter fulfills this fatalistic prophecy and the scriptures tell us that upon the third denial, “Peter weeps bitterly.” As Peter watches from afar as Jesus is crucified, he not only endures the horrible loss of his rabbi and friend but the crushing weight of regret presses in on him. All reasonable expectation would suggest that as Peter watches Jesus take his last breaths his hope not only for Israel is lost but also his hope for reconciliation, for forgiveness.

But on the third day, Jesus breaks the bounds of time and space by the faithfulness of his self-giving love. The enclosure of the grave and the finality of it broken apart by the power of God. And Jesus takes to setting things right, meeting Peter on a beach, cooking him breakfast, and asking him three times, one question for each denial, not just to level the scales but to demonstrate that Jesus will restore time itself. God is outside of time. And yet he has placed himself within the confines of our time, to redeem not just the future trajectory of humanity, to ensure that all shall be well in the future, but to cause all things, even our most solemn regrets, to be threads in the tapestry of grace. To make all things works together for the good of those who love him.

One of our most cherished cultural cliches about time is that time will all wounds. But the Jesus story doesn’t use eternity as a temporal solvent for all of the salty tears of pain, loss, suffering, and regret. Jesus rather uses his tears, his loss, his suffering to heal time itself. No time does not heal all wounds. Rather, by his wounds time is healed.

Revelation 22vv1-5

On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

The city does not need the sun or the moon to mark time not because the lamb has obliterated the concept of time but rather, has filled it with his saving presence, the glory of God. The trees are no longer seasonal, they are evergreen in offering their fruits. There is no more night. There is no more curse. We will see his face and worship him forever.

So what do we do with all of these regrets?

During a sleepless night before the birth of our first child, I stumbled upon a movie which instantly became one of my all-time favorites. The movies was “About Time.” I still don’t know why I initially kept watching but the warmth of the film drew me in and before I knew it I was weeping at the beauty of it as the credits rolled. In the movie, the main character, Tim, learns of the family secret from his father: that all the men in the family have the power to travel in time. Throughout the film, Tim tries to use this power to clean up monumental mistakes and only finds that time spirals out of control, and that when he returns to his present, things have changed completely. So Tim realizes his profound limits even with this significant power. Towards the end of the movie, Tim’s father entrusts him with the real secret of this power. Not the power to change the past but the power of being present. He says the key is to live through a day once, with all of its challenges, unpredictability, and struggle and then immediately go and live the day again, to experience it fully knowing what’s to come.

Tim, in living these days all over again, experiences his past as both present and future. The redemptive love of Christ has this kind of arc. His love takes our past and transfigures it in the present, crafting beauty and grace from the ashes of the ruins. We can’t change what’s come before but only offer it in trust and confession to the one who holds time in his nail-scarred hands. And we cannot alter our future, only offer ourselves on the altar of the present to a future that is secure, where there will be no more night, no more curse, where he will wipe every tear from our eyes—even the tears of regret.

I was very tangentially familiar with singer Sandra McCracken’s work until a couple weeks back. I was studying for a teaching on how Jesus takes pain and suffering and weaves them into beauty (like our discussion of regret above). I was listening to a Thad Cockrell Album that I love dearly and one of the suggested related albums was McCracken’s “Songs From The Valley”. I was instantly moved to tears in the coffee shop where I was writing. A little research revealed this record came out of the depths of the dissolving of her marriage. Here was grieving, loss, and yet still and unshakeable hope and beauty.

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A Tribute Section To Anthony Bourdain and Robert Farrer Capon:

Salsa Verde Roasted Pork

I have heard that people really love and value the long extended sections on recipe websites that tell the story of how the recipe came about so I’m going to take a risk and skip that part. I love being a home cook, making delicious stuff, and love what food preparation and the table embody in the kingdom of Jesus (Speaking of The Table, you should read my friend Bryan Halferty’s newsletter which happens to be called The Table). Ok on with it. This is one of the simplest dishes that people will seriously think you are a wizard.

Ingredients
Boneless pork shoulder butt 2-5 lbs cut into 2 in cubes
Salt
Pepper
Chicken Broth
Olive oil

For the Roasted Salsa Verde
15 tomatillos, husks removed
One white onion quartered
Lime juice
Cilantro
Salt
Cumin

Optional, nice but not necessary
Dried guajillo chiles
Roasted poblano peppers
3 cloves garlic

Preparation
1. Heat a cast iron skillet (we’ll get into the theology of cast iron skillets at some point, but this one is simple and rules!). Place tomatillos and onion directly on the skillet and roast. It’s really hard to overcook these items but you want a nice char on the onion, which usually takes about 8 minutes. If using chiles/garlic wait 5 minutes and then put those on the skillet. Both chiles and garlic get an unpleasant bitterness if roasted too long. Once properly roasted remove from heat and let cool for five minutes.
2. Place all items from the skillet in a blender (remember cast iron stays hot for a while!). Add salt, cumin, a bunch of cilantro, and 1/2 cup of lime juice. Blend.
3. Cut pork shoulder into 2 in cubes (this is not an exact science, just make the huge hunk of meat smaller so more flavor can get into every bite!). Season liberally with salt and pepper. Preheat oven to preferred temperature (I like oven temp at 275 for a longer roast, say 5 hours but you can do 325 degrees and this will be done in 3-3 1/2 hrs).
4. Heat a cast iron dutch oven (I love this one!) on medium high. Once pot is hot pour in enough oil to coat the bottom (about 2-3 tablespoons). Working in portions if you need to, sear the pork for 3-4 minutes. If you need to work in shifts, place the already seared pork on a plate with a paper towel down and add in the remaining pieces. Once all pieces are seared put them all back in the pot.
5. Pour over the most of the roasted salsa verde that you made (save a little for garnish!) covering the meat. Add chicken broth to cover the meat, put the lid on and place in the preheated oven. Roast until temperature of the pork chunks is between 195-205 (pork is “done” at 165 but you want all that fat to render which takes time, love is patient).
6. Pull from the oven and shred the pieces in the pot with two forks. Serve on your favorite flour tortillas with freshly shredded cheese, onion, cilantro, and salsa. And prepare yourself, your life will be changed.