Part III of III
Some Scriptural Roots
of Confession and Reconciliation
In this session, our third on the practice of confession and
reconciliation, we will be looking at the scriptural roots of confession and
reconciliation. Before we do this,
let's take a few minutes to review our first two sessions.
In our first session, we learned that confession is rooted
in our baptisms. We are asking to be
lifted to a new life by a loving God.
Our intention is not just to confess, but then to repent, to turn toward
a new way of living. By examining our
lives frequently and faithfully, we attempt to determine if our thoughts and
actions are directed at loving God and loving each other. If they are not, our
minds and our hearts may be directed toward the need for both confession and
reconciliation with God and with each other.
Our forgiveness is assured in our baptisms, but we must claim that
forgiveness. We live our lives on a
timeline from birth to death. At the same
time, the Kingdom of God cannot be placed on a timeline. It is here and now, and was, and will be
forever. The intersection of our
timeline and the Kingdom of God forms a cross.
This is where we have an opportunity to enter the practice of examining our
lives. This is the place where we recognize and confess — where we repent and
turn toward a new life.
Our second session in this series focused on the history of
confession in public and private worship. We saw that we could trace our idea
of public confession through our Jewish heritage. Healing through
reconciliation strengthens community. And in the early Christian church,
restoration of a penitent to community was important. As the church expanded to
new areas, individual confession became an accepted practice beginning with
monastic communities. The importance of confession in maintaining a right
relationship with God and each other is emphasized by the incorporation of
confession into our worship. In our 1979 Book of Common Prayer, a separate liturgy
for the reconciliation of a penitent appears for the first time. At the same
time, we have developed an increased appreciation of the importance of
confession in our daily spiritual lives as we grow into our baptisms.
When Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold wrote to the primates
in 2002, he began his letter, “We are reconciled in the Risen Christ.” He went
on to say that as we read scripture, we can see that from the earliest time all
differences — slave or free, Jew or Gentile, male or female — all differences were
subjected to the fire of God's unrelenting reconciling love. He pointed out
that reconciliation is not easy to bear because it demands of us an undefended
heart.
I believe our understanding of God's word is very limited,
at best. If we use snippets of
scripture out of context to prove our point, we often miss the big picture. We
can get hopelessly bogged down in literal language.
It often makes sense to us to understand scripture by
looking at it in terms of the world we know and the relationships we've
experienced first-hand or by observation.
So… just a very short story — When I was in third grade, we were required
to memorize all the states and their capitols and to be able to correctly find
them on a map. Eventually, most of us
knew the states, their capitols and their locations. After we memorized all
this, our teacher told us a most remarkable thing. She said the lines, the
boundaries on the U.S. map were created by people — by governments. They weren't really literally there! For
example, she said, “we couldn't go to the state line between Indiana and
Michigan and drive or walk on black lines that would border those states.” I
was amazed. I'm sure I didn't focus
on my arithmetic problems much that day. When I got home, I begged my mother to
drive me the seven miles to the Michigan-Indiana border so I could see for
myself if what my teacher said was true. Well, she did drive me the seven miles
there and back because I think she knew it was very important to me. Sure enough, there was no line. The weeds in Indiana and the weeds in
Michigan were one!
I share this story with you because I think when we study
scripture, we need to look for themes, for threads of truth. We need to look,
and focus not at only a tiny piece of the puzzle but at the overall picture. The
Bible was inspired by God but written by people so when we read scripture and
try to understand it, we do so remembering that the Bible is a collection of
books which contain history, poetry, myth and stories among other things. That which is true is not necessarily
factual. Each part that we read and study was written in the context of time
and culture.
And so, now I want
to share with you just a few of the
parts of our confession and reconciliation scripture story as part of a pattern
and a whole —a s I see them. I hope I
won't limit them by “state lines” and artificial boundaries.
One focus of confession, repentance and reconciliation which
forms a motif in the Bible is that of man — that means us — and our brokenness and
estrangement from God and how in our hearts we long for healing from that separation.
Words of scripture remind us over and over, what is required to mend our torn
and broken relationship with God so we can live as new men and women in a new
life. And as much as we think we would like our relationship with God to be
pure and separate from our relationship with each other, it just doesn't work
that way. To get straight with God, we
must confess our sins against both God and
our neighbor intending to lead a new life.
It is very easy to get trapped in the detailed directives in
the book of Leviticus, if we let it happen.
But if we can avoid that, we can find some grains of wisdom regarding confession
and reconciliation there.
It would be very hard for me to remember if I was supposed
to bring a male goat without blemish or
a female sheep for offering — and … if
two turtledoves trumped two pigeons. And ... which burnt offering was to be offered for which of my many sins. But I do know in my heart that when I am
open to realizing my guilt in my everyday living and when my pride doesn't get
in the way of confessing that sin, I can offer it to God; it is already forgiven.
I will be given the chance to begin again with a clean slate — to be reconciled
to God and my neighbor. You and I live in the Kingdom of God now, if we but
reach out and claim our heritage.
A wonderful book that has helped me understand how the
psalms speak to me — to many of us in this different time and place is: Psalms for Praying — An Invitation to
Wholeness by Nan C. Merrill. The intent of the book isn't to replace the
psalms but rather to help us “reflect the reciprocity of Divine Love that opens
the heart to forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing.”
Psalm 51:17 speaks to the kind of sacrifice God wants — not a
pair of turtle doves nor an unblemished sheep but a broken and contrite
heart. “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a
broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” I
envision this as a heart with a little (or maybe not so little) crack in it — not
a perfect heart but a heart that is a little broken and cracked so we can look
in and see, a bit at a time, the alienation and estrangement that live there.
Remember the beautiful Collect for Purity that we pray at the beginning of each
Eucharist? “To you all hearts are open, all desires
known and from you no secrets are hid.”
Our hearts don't need to be open for God to know what is
within, but our hearts have to be open for us
to truly know. For until we see and
acknowledge our imperfections and shortcomings, how can we possibly begin to
have a contrite heart? An open and contrite heart is where we start to confess
and repent and be reconciled with each other and with God. As Edie pointed out
in our first session, it doesn't happen in a heartbeat nor overnight, but as we
practice, we become better at self-observation, examination of conscience,
confession and repentance.
Numbers 5:7 seems to speak to the triangular nature of sin
and reconciliation. “When a man or a woman wrongs
another, breaking faith with the LORD…” In other words, when there is
brokenness and estrangement between us,
there is always a brokenness and estrangement between us and God. When we harden our hearts and turn from our
neighbor, we are also turning from God.
And isn't turning from God what sin is all about? And isn't turning back
to God and our neighbor what reconciliation is all about?
2 Chr 6:28ff conveys much to us.
“Whatever suffering, whatever sickness there
is; whatever prayer, whatever pleas from any individual or from all your people
Israel, all knowing their own suffering and their own sorrows so that they
stretch out their hands toward this house; may you hear from heaven, your
dwelling place, forgive and render to all whose heart you know, according to
all their ways, for only you know the human heart.” God doesn't need us
to tell him what our sins are; he already knows what's in our hearts, but we need to examine our own hearts and
then confess; we need to claim the
forgiveness which was so completely given to us in our baptisms. We need to be
reconciled with our neighbor — both those we love and those who challenge the
limits we put on our love!
James 5:16 emphasizes that confession to each other is part
of the healing process. “Therefore confess your
sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”
Sometimes we are able to confess our sins to God but confessing them to another
person can be risky and threatening. I believe the philosophy of twelve-step
programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Alanon can be powerful and liberating.
The taking of “a searching and fearless moral inventory” is followed by “admitting to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact
nature of our wrongs.” God's love and grace will support us but we must seek reconciliation with each
other ourselves; God doesn't do that for us.
In 2 Co 5:14 Paul speaks
very beautifully about our part in reconciliation:
From now on, therefore, we regard no
one from a human point of view, even though we once knew Christ from a human
point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything
old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through
Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God
was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against
them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
We have been entrusted with the
ministry of reconciliation by God. What an awesome responsibility and what a
sacred honor that is!
We had visitors in our home this past week. After I checked with their mother, I gave the
two little boys — ages 3 and 7 — small cans of orange soda. In the way of all
mothers, this mother looked at the smaller boy and said, “What do you say, Evan?” He looked up at me and said, “I'm
sorry.” Even if we don't always get it
quite right, the responses of “I'm sorry” and “Please” and “Thank you,” spoken
to God and to each other from our hearts are healing and reconciling.
Although these three short sessions haven't allowed us to
explore in depth the practice of confession and reconciliation, we've made a
good start. Looking at our historical
journey and our scriptural roots and then applying self-observation,
examination of conscience, confession and repentance to our every-day lives, we
can draw nearer to God and to each other.
The Rev. Betsy Porter
July 23, 2006