“We don’t do confession.”

I remember the conversations I used to have as a child about church. And it was usually how we do things differently or what is an E-piss-co-palian? Which always was accompanied with laughter.

This childhood was in Alpena, a small city in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Alpena was largely Polish, then; still is I think; which means that the city is full of Roman Catholics. And one way to differentiate Catholics from non-Catholics was to ask “what are the things they do that we don’t?” Like confession.

'There’s a whole 'we’re all in this' vibe to the confession.' Share on X

This wasn’t true, of course. That’s just what I thought; mostly because confession to me was what I saw on TV and movies. It was some person walking into a wooden phone booth, sliding over a panel and talking to the priest in the neighboring phone booth. We never did that. Perhaps because we didn’t have any phone booths in our church.

It’s funny that it wasn’t something I ever asked my father. I just sort of assumed that it wasn’t something we did.

Keep in mind that I was in church every Sunday of my life and every Sunday we made our confession together. I just never put the two together.

Corporate Confession

The Episcopal Church, like many churches do actually have private confession, it just isn’t handled the same way. Nor is it as common. I’ve only heard a few private confessions in my ministry. But it is blessed and powerful experience for me as a priest.

I’m more interested in that other kind of confession, the kind I never really noticed we ever did. The one we do right after the Prayers of the People. In our church, we introduce it by inviting the community in:

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

We are already establishing that confession is about relationship. It is about a transgression of some sort, something we’ve done has been against God and against our neighbor.

Then we confess some variation of this:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

That transgression we name as sin and we remind one another what sin actually is: that it isn’t some unpious act or some violation of a code which has no consequence. It isn’t cheating on a diet, for instance. It is always about a transgression, about the damage to the relationship: with GOD and neighbor.

So we confess that we have all sinned. That we sinned in our thinking and speaking and acting. That we have sinned in our actions and those actions we didn’t take that break relationship. We have sinned by not loving GOD fully or our neighbor as ourselves as we have promised. In another version of the confession, it includes sins that we have done and those sins done on our behalf.

All this sin talk is to take responsibility for the brokenness of our relationship to GOD and to all the people around us. That we all have responsibility in this: that we have contributed to the brokenness or we have not prevented further brokenness. We have not reconciled the world and we have sometimes forgotten that reconciliation is actually our job. We’ve hurt people. And people in authority, in church and in cities and states and nations have hurt people to benefit us. That’s our sin. And we make our confession. And we repent. Every week, we repent.

We repent and we ask for forgiveness. Tomorrow I’ll be talking about that forgiveness, but for now, let’s stay in the confessing.

Copping to the Problem

I think it’s kind of funny that I didn’t realize we were confessing each week. It literally says “Confession of Sin” in the Prayer Book. I should have known. And I did know. I just saw it as different, I guess.

It sort of is, actually. It is different because it is personal, it is a confession that I can make because of the stuff I’ve done or not done or whatever. It is my sin that I’m confessing, I guess. But I’m not saying it to a priest in a phone booth or in an office or in a chapel. I’m standing (or kneeling) with all these other people and we’re saying, not the same thing as a whole bunch of individuals exactly. It’s more…connected than that. We’re more connected than that. There’s a whole “we’re all in this” vibe to the confession.

And unless we’re using the penitential style of service in which the confession is at the beginning, we pray, confess, bless, and share in the peace in one swooping moment of reconciliation. And those prayers are outward, beyond the scope of our individual cares, and direct our hearts toward those out in the world who are responsible for the welfare of others, for those who are sick or in need or imprisoned or without food or shelter, and we pray all together that they might be safe and given healing and hope and restoration.

It is no wonder that we would confess, because they are in need because we have not brought the Kingdom close enough, we have not enabled the full reconciliation of the world, and we have a lot more to do. So we have to confess for all the pain and strife and hatred in the world because we bear some of that responsibility because the Kingdom isn’t fully here yet and that’s our main job description:

Heal the damned world.

That’s like top line and all the duties are listed as

• healing the sick
• visiting the imprisoned
• clothing the naked
• feeding the hungry
• shelter to the homeless
• kindness to the refugee

and all that other stuff that we do the rest of the week like cleaning up after coffee hour and folding bulletins come under “other duties as assigned” apparently.

So we confess because the world isn’t done yet and our jobs aren’t finished and we’re all responsible for making that happen. Together.

Ask Yourself

How easily do I accept responsibility? For myself? For my family and friends? For my congregation?

Do I accept responsibility for my race? Or gender? Nationality? The Church? Why or why not?

It is probably easier to name the things I’ve done that feel like sin. Maybe things we’ve said or done to other people. Maybe it’s the small bit of road rage or the little white lie we told to take advantage of a clerk. That stuff is easy. Much harder to name the stuff I have left undone or the stuff others have done for me. What are some of those things?

What would it be to come to church this morning or next week with these confessions to name? To offer to GOD? To seek repentance and mercy, not for the easy stuff that we all do, but the sin we tolerate and the sin we ignore? What would it be to seek forgiveness for the stuff our elected officials do, even when we haven’t voted for them?

What does it do to our church if we were   to face all of our sin? To name, not as individuals or even as congregations, but as denominations and world leaders and own up to the sins of

racism and violence;
war and genocide;
apartheid and ethnic cleansing;
deforestation and fossil fuel extraction;
carbon in our air and arsenic in our water;
destruction of habitats for humans and for animals;
to name our greed and consumerism;
our nationalism and our pride;
to confess all of this.

And seek forgiveness from each other and from GOD. What would it be? Wouldn’t that be kingdom work? Wouldn’t that fit the number one goal in our job description?

What if we started doing that right now?

 

[This is Day 18 of How to start deconstructing church. The next in the series is “Absolution”. To start from the beginning, read the introduction here.]