“Wallowing in Mercy”

Lenten Series 2007 – Confession

Ps 51:1-17
Luke 18:9-14

Last week we began a series of sermons in the lead up to Easter in which we plan to focus on different spiritual disciplines that are traditionally emphasised in the Lenten season. Jim spoke about fasting – we will also think about prayer, bible study, fellowship, and some themes that you may be surprised to think of as a discipline – such as joy and generosity. Tonight Sarah Bachelard - someone well acquainted with Meditation as a Christian discipline - will be leading our Sunday@seven and you may find that of interest too. We are also making use of a series of bible studies that have been put out by the Baptist World Alliance to prepare for Easter. All of our study groups are using the studies, and you may like to join a group for the series as Janelle mentioned last week. But if you are interested in looking at the studies individually please ask one of us about that too.

This morning in line with the first study I want to focus on the discipline of Confession.

In the ancient church confessio meant the profession of faith by a martyr, or confessor, who had withstood persecution for their faith, so had the meaning of a firm declaration of religious convictions. In a more positive sense, Augustine’s Confessions is really a praising of God, celebrating the author’s conversion. During the Reformation this sense of the word became prominent again, where credal statements of the Protestant churches were made to clearly state their understanding of faith over against the Catholic church. Examples of these are the Augsburg Confession or the Westminster Confession – one of our members regularly quotes the beginning part of that confession from the Church of Scotland.

However the meaning of the word confession that probably more readily springs to mind in relation to a spiritual discipline is that of confession of sins – something that in the early church was connected to Baptism and therefore a public event. It gradually came to be a prerequisite for receiving the Host in Eucharist, and was insisted on at least once a year. Still a practice in the Catholic Church, many mainstream churches also include prayers of confession as a regular part of the liturgy, and most of us practice some form of confession as part of receiving communion too.

It is interesting to realise that confession in the confessional booth only came into existence at the time of St Patrick. Confession of sins had continued to be a public event with the understanding that sin was not only against God but also against the church. St Patrick established the practice of private confession heard by just one priest – acknowledging that a person’s sin was between that person and God.

But what is the relevance and meaning of confession today?

I picked up a volume of the journal Concilium at St Mark’s library which was devoted to confession. Most of the dozen essays begin with comments about the difficulties of the practice for the modern church -  difficulties arising from various factors – some cite negative childhood experience of being forced to list sins at a young age when not really conscious of the difference between good and evil; there is the problem of ritualisation where confession becomes an empty rite performed out of habit. There is an acknowledgement that in a post-enlightenment and post-modern world where questions of morality are up in the air some people don’t regard themselves as sinners who need to confess. After all, what one person considers sin may be seen quite differently by another – think of examples such as sexual orientation or the practice of abortion, or participation in armed conflict. I know people on both sides of each of these issues who believe their view is consistent with an active and responsible discipleship. It may be that a sense of guilt brought to confession has more to do with parental expectation or personality type than objective wrongdoing. And there is a very different attitude to the institution of the church these days, with little trust in the power and wisdom of the institution in comparison to earlier centuries.

And while few of us here would admit to being perfect, are we not in a firm Protestant tradition of grace and freedom, where God’s “yes” far exceeds our “no” as your former pastor regularly said. We have just sung the confident hymn based on 2 Timothy 1:12 – “I am not ashamed for I know the one in whom I have put my trust and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.” Do we need to keep coming as guilty sinners in confession? How can it be a meaningful discipline for us?

In his book Life Together Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote “A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light.” Despite being firmly grounded in the knowledge of God’s grace Bonhoeffer clearly believed that confession had an important healing function, and that it belonged in the community, not just as an individual response to God. Many of the stories we have of knowing healing and forgiveness speak of this aspect of bringing an acknowledgement of the failing into the open – the story of David being confronted by the prophet Nathan is one that comes to mind but another story I heard has a similar theme – of a priest in the Philippines who carried the burden of a secret sin he had committed many years before, a sin of which he had repented but still had no sense of God’s forgiveness. In his church was a woman who claimed to have visions in which she spoke with Christ and he with her. To test her the skeptical priest said, "The next time you speak with Christ, I want you to ask him what sin your priest committed while he was in bible college." The woman agreed.
A few days later the priest asked, "Well, did Christ visit you in your dreams?"
"Yes he did", she replied.
"And did you ask him what sin I committed in bible college?"
"Yes"
"Well what did he say?"
"He said, ‘I don’t remember.’"
The story doesn’t go on to say this but I assume the priest finally found a sense of forgiveness, healing and peace after this encounter. So there is certainly a psychological power in admitting to wrongdoing and hearing words of forgiveness. Richard Foster who wrote the well known book “Celebration of Discipline” tells a similar story of his own experience, of feeling compelled to write down all his remembered sins from childhood, adolescence and adulthood – taking them and reading them out to a trusted friend who took the paper the list was written on and shredded it into hundreds of pieces. A metaphor Jim spoke with me about was the idea that confession is simply taking out the garbage – if we didn’t regularly empty our rubbish bins we would soon find it hard to live normal lives. With such a simple understanding confession does not aim to make us feel bad about ourselves, but instead lifts us out of the mess and heals us.

I mentioned the story of David and Nathan, the confrontation following the actions David took because of his desire for Bathsheba and the problem of her being legally married to one of David’s soldiers. We can certainly imagine the weight of guilt David would have felt, and the story as it is told in 2 Samuel shows him accepting responsibility for his actions and also alludes to the restoration of his relationship with God through fasting, prayer, petition and worship. The bible is an amazing holy book in that it preserves so honestly many stories of failure amongst God’s people. But such stories can be an encouragement to us as we see that it is not necessary to be perfect in order to be in relationship with God, and that true worship is bringing all parts of ourselves before God – failure as well as success – sorrow as well as joy.

This story is traditionally linked to Ps 51 but we don’t have to know that to understand the meaning of the psalm and to be able to make it our own prayer. It is an important psalm because it actually does transcend any possible historical event that may lie behind it. You’ll notice that the petitioner doesn’t give a list of sins or even mention a particular sin. Rather it is the state of having become distanced from God that is lamented – not physical suffering but spiritual affliction – and this recognition demonstrates the essence of true confession.

To continue to speak about confession as an acknowledgement of sin we need to ask what sin is, and see that there is a subtle distinction between confessing our SINS and confessing our SIN.

Western philosophical theology has long reflected on the gap between God and humans, ie the fact of human limitation. The idea of sin as specific immoral acts for which we are held responsible has become a dominant model for talking about this gap. The response of faith is coming to a self awareness of our limitations before God who is limitless. This understanding is firmly rooted in the bible – in the Old Testament God is described as a God of judgement and mercy which implies that humans need forgiveness. The Gospels speak of Jesus as the one who forgives sins. Paul, Augustine, Anselm, Luther and a whole string of Christian theologians have seen the basic human condition as being in sin and far away from possibility of God’s saving love. Paul Ricoeur has pointed out that one of the best translations of the verb “to sin” in the bible is “to miss the mark” – another way of expressing human limitation.

So while we may practice the confession of SINS where particular acts might be listed – and we are familiar with that through liturgical  phrases such as ‘acknowledge our failures’ or ‘call to mind our sins’ or ‘sins of commission and sins of omission’, there is a difference between doing this and confessing SIN as the human condition of limitation. When thinking about confession as a discipline it may be helpful to consider other models for human limitation – also models that can be found in the biblical witness.

One such image for human limitation is mortality – the fact of death as part of human existence. The answer to this problem is the good news that is life-giving, that God in Jesus took on the full experience of humanity including death and overcame it. In this model baptism emphasises and celebrates rebirth into new life rather than forgiveness of sins.

Injustice is another image for human limitation, again strongly supported by the biblical tradition beginning with Exodus where God liberated a suffering people from an injust system. Also the apocalyptic literature describes the world as a place where evil reigns, and expresses hope for the future as the rule of Christ where the just will be vindicated.  In this model baptism is an anointing to participate with Christ in the struggle against injustice.

Another image for human limitation is sickness/disease. Often psalms of confession are prayers for healing, and the stories of Jesus link healing with forgiveness. The opposite of disease is wholeness, and that is the goal sought by bringing such limitation before God. In Ps 51 there is a powerful image in the line “let the bones that you have crushed rejoice” – this spiritual affliction nonetheless has a very physical manifestation – guilt and forgiveness can be felt in our bodies.

A further image is that of meaninglessness – before God created an ordered universe Genesis tells us there was meaningless chaos. Lady Wisdom in the Old Testament, the call of the prophets to have a new vision of life, the designation of Christ as Logos by John’s Gospel; all of these are biblical images of the way in which God can bring meaning and order into chaotic experience. This may be one of the most powerful of the images for us today, where people are not troubled by a sense of sin, or necessarily afraid of death, or experiencing injustice, or living with disease but where they ARE desperate for meaning.

Each of these images look to God to bring a solution to the problem of human limitation. The result of confession, then, is not an achievement of humans, but a gift of God. (Titus 3:5) In Ps 51 ‘mercy’ the first and abiding concept. In the context of God’s mercy we can confess limitation and find hope. And notice that the vow in verses 13-17 speaks of a renewal of attitude in worship rather than physical penance – the psalmist recognises along with prophets that sacrifice and outward signs are not ways of influencing God but rather if we come as we are, humble, empty handed, giving ourselves over to God’s grace we will be able to teach others of God’s ways, to sing aloud, to praise.

In the New Testament after Jesus the most important characters who make an appearance are tax collectors and sinners –– they are the ones who recognised the nature of grace and mercy offered in face of the human predicament of limitation. The familiar gospel reading that we heard reiterates this – in the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee it is the one who humbly recognised his limitation before God who was justified.

I entitled this sermon wallowing in mercy – partly I am linking it to Jim’s title last week swimming in Egypt but partly I chose it to facetiously emphasise the paradox of confession. So often we think of it as brow-beating, hair shirts and wallowing in guilt. But if we turn around the image, remembering that confession is an acknowledgement of our finite condition and our human longing for love, life and freedom made in the knowledge of God’s infinite mercy, then we will be like elephants wallowing in mud or water buffaloes in Kakadu, wallowing in a lily pond; delighting in our good fortune.

Listen to a confession of faith:

I believe in the mercy which is from everlasting to everlasting to those who love God, and even to those who love but a little or at this moment love not at all.

I believe in a mercy that always free as the wind, generous as the sunshine and rain, and more boundless than the stars of the Milky Way

I believe in a God who from ancient days made glimmers of mercy known, from continent to continent and to islands in the distant paths of the sea.

I believe bright shafts of such knowledge are especially reflected in the insightful poems and prophecies of the Hebrew people as they were called to be a light to the nations.

I believe that in the fullness of time God has exceeded all expectations, and made divine mercy incarnate; visible and touchable in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I believe in a God who at this moment is more ready to embrace us with Christ’s mercy than we are to receive and trust it.

I believe that this very belief is itself only possible because of God’s mercy which precedes all our thinking, understanding, and speaking.

So I believe, and pray for the wisdom to express my belief in all I do and say.  
So help me God. Amen!

(prayer by Bruce Prewer)