Most people avoid Ash Wednesday and any kind of general confession not so much because they don’t believe they actually do things that offend the divine and other fellow human beings and that it would probably be the right and civil thing to do to actually apologize.
I don’t think people really want to avoid apologies.
Certainly not “in general” as in recognizing that we all have a part to blame in the mess we are in.
Take the current economic meltdown. In the current “blame game” most of what I have read is that there is enough blame to go around. Every one of us is implicated, from greedy financial folks to overzealous consumers.
And in the “particular” too it’s not too hard to find folks willing to say “I’m sorry, I overstepped my bounds.” You do have to look harder for this than the “in general” admission of guilt. But it does happen and many people are morally up to the challenge.
No, I think the general avoidance of confession is not an unwillingness to say “I’m sorry” or admit fault in various parts of our life. In fact, confessing ones failing can not only be good for the soul (“I feel much better already!”) but also suggested as good for the pocket book (witness the many observers and analysts who recommend(ed) Tiger Woods be transparent of infidelity as completely and as quickly as possible and thereby position himself as upright and earnest in reformation, if not marital commitment. Then, we have something good to feel again about Tiger, if not his golf, which will then open wallets again for him). Confession of foibles or faults can hurt, but it can also help. And we see that. And so we confess.
This kind of confession is really not so hard to do.
Recently on Ash Wednesday I stood with many others in a worship Service and recited aloud a virtual pandora’s box of failings. And one thought that occurred to me was how easy it was for all of us in that sanctuary to claim all these offenses. I mean really, you had to be amazed at all the bad things we were saying about ourselves! But that’s not the really amazing thing. The really amazing thing was not the list of offenses, which, by the way, I do believe are all true enough, but the fact that we weren’t all collapsing on our knees and in tears, distraught with grief at such admission. How could we possibly admit to all this rottenness and stand there calmly reciting (while we are simultaneously wondering if our DVR is recording properly the shows at home we are missing?) I know what you are thinking! You are thinking I am going to accuse us all of being too shallow and not genuine in our confession. Like we were simply going through the motions and not being real. No, I think it was all heartfelt and we all meant what we said. So, authenticity was not the issue that kept us from falling apart.
It was remedy, not authenticity or sincerity. What kept us in one piece in that room is thinking that we could in fact turn this thing around. We can and would be better! We may need a bit of help, which, thank God, God provides in Jesus, but we can pull ourselves together and make this thing work. In fact, being here doing the confession is the first and necessary step of this reformation!
Confession is easy when it is assumed that it’s simply the precursor to redemption by our reformation. By, in other words, what we do to change (and not, by definition, what God does to us).
We can and will do better, after all. All we need is a little help. And that is what we are here admitting. We need a little help. Maybe even a lot of help. We are human after all, aren’t we? Just give me another chance. And you will, won’t you? That would be, after all, the kind and loving thing to do.
Confession is generally viewed like the “self help” shelf at Barnes and Noble. You’ve got issues you need to deal with and improve….but the operative thing here is that you are still in control and can deal with things…all you need is some help.
Now you are going to start getting upset with me because you are thinking I am going to undermine that bedrock value we hold dear: that, in fact, people can change their behavior and go from bad to good. No, no, no, I am not going to do that. Of course we all know that it is possible to stop cheating and start being honest, to stop trashing and start recycling, to stop working obsessively and start spending more time with your family.
Confession as admission of guilt and need for help is not incomplete (not to say “wrong”) because guilt is not true or reform possible. Confession in this way simply does not tell the whole truth. It lives on the surface and protects us against the depth of truth. It lives in the world of our activity and accomplishment and protects us against God, of all things.
[I even think that this approach to confession is a big part of what keeps so-called non-believers away from church services. It’s nothing new. “What’s the big deal?,” says the non-churchgoer, “ I can (and do!) confess all the time before God that I have done wrong and ask for help to do better. Why do I need to come together with others anywhere, let alone a church building with rituals, to do that?”]
What? “Confession protects us against God”? What do I mean by that? You’re probably thinking “hey, confession exposes us to the wrath of God! How can you say it protects us against God”? Well, watch the particulars. I said “this kind” of confession: the kind that really only asks for the help of God and not the hope of God.
What happens in real confession is all the nonsense about getting things better or getting things right stops. And you are just there. Just there with no hope. Except for God.
You are at the mercy of God.
Martin Luther spoke of how we live on two levels and we dare not mix them up. The first level is the level of relationships with each other and our world, all of which we are actually capable of doing something about. The other is our relationship with God, the one thing we can do nothing about.
Many people need a lot of confession about how they have messed up the first level…and they need to straighten up and fly right. For everybody’s sake.
But you can do this kind of confessing all day long and never deal with God. You don’t even have to believe in God.
But real confession….the kind where you are saying you’ve got nothing to bring to the table and are totally in need of rescue, not to say also reform? Well, that’s living in the truth and something that religious people, perhaps especially religious people, have a hard time doing. Why is this real confession so hard? Because it means you really don’t have a prayer. All you have is God.
I wonder sometimes if people who don’t like church life with all its trappings do this disliking because it so often simply does not tell the difficult truth. Church life too often confesses failings and a way out with proper believing and behaving instead of confessing being stone cold lost without the mercy of God.
I do know this: confessing doing wrong things is easy because tomorrow you can do better. Confessing being lost without God is hard because all you are left with is the waiting and the trusting that God will be as true to you as the Story goes.
But I am going to encourage you to go there. To real confession. It’s way hard. But man, when you look God in the eye and tell that truth about how you are least, last, lost, little and dead…..just watch what happens. Because that is where God works: in the darkness. On deadness (the live cannot be raised! Only the dead!). God’s light, there, in the darkness, makes all things new!
What is confession anyway? We like to say that it is “good for the soul” if not also “necessary” for forgiveness.
Good for the soul, certainly.
And “necessary,” but I would venture to say not for why we normally think.
We often think “necessary” means “contingent upon,” that is to say “we don’t actually have forgiveness unless we confess.”
Now if that were true, that God’s forgiveness isn’t for us unless we apologize, or “repent,” turn back toward God, then we have cut Jesus and his death and resurrection off at the knees! He died and was raised not only because we wouldn’t stand for it when he first gave it to us (you remember his “blasphemy” was that he forgave sins!) but also for the eternal privilege of saying it to us forever…if we would but take him at his word.
“if we would but….”: our problem is that we don’t take the forgivenss that is ours. The forgiveness of God is simply always there. It was there from the beginning and it never left and it never goes away. But we go away. We will not have it! Its too much of a threat to our own control and position to let God simply forgive us without our participating in the whole process! After all, there “certainly must be something I must do!” and “I’m not unimportant am I?”
So forgiveness is not “contingent” upon confession, but confession is necessary for forgiveness!
Why?
Well, its kind of like having been given a gift and not opening it. You can appreciate it without opening it, but you can’t really use it. You can’t enjoy it for what it is for you even though you might appreciate it for what it could be.
Let me turn this over to someone who does a better job of explaining all this than I do. Robert Capon in The Foolishness of Preaching (1998).
What follows here is kind of lengthy, but even so it’s just a tidbit. I encourage you to hang in there with it. I trust your heart and soul will thank you because your confessions may just be opened up to allow for a deeper forgiveness.
Here’s Capon:
“Our fascination with guilt is a blind alley (especially for preachers) because the New Testament isn’t about guilt at all; its about forgiveness. The Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world, not laid them on us like a coat of tar. Furthermore, we celebrate the absolution every Sunday in the Nicene Creed: “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” Notice what a remarkable statement that is: it proclaims that by the grace of God, we live all our lives in an irremovable suit of forgiveness. It tells us that every sin we ever commit will be committed inside that suit – and therefore that every sin in our lives is forgiven before, during, and after our commission of it. We don’t need to get forgiveness; we need to learn how to cheer up in the forgiveness we’ve had all along. ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ (Romans 8:1).
Of course there must be repentance. But even repentance is a celebration, not a bargaining session in which we work up enough resolve against sin to con God into putting up with us. It’s not a turning from sin but a return to faith – a reawakening of our trust that all our deeds, bad as well as good, have been done in God (see John 3:21). God doesn’t run away from our sins or from the sins of any human being; he meets us in them by the indwelling of his incarnate Word in every last child of Adam and Eve. And thus, since even our sins were done in the Light that is Jesus, all we have to do about them is the truth (John 3:21, again). We don’t have to feel guilty about them. We don’t even have to overcome them (which, in any case, is more than we could realistically promise). We have only to admit them – to own them as they are in the truth of our condition, and to celebrate them as the death in which grace gives us life. ‘O feliz culpa’ (‘O happy fault”) one more time. ‘Amazing grace!’”
Let me try my hand at it some more. You know how Jesus’ mode of operation was to seek out and hang out with “sinners” (see Luke 15:1-2 passim)? He went to them. He did not wait for them to come to him. I reckon that pretty much amazed them because they knew by standard definition (their own conscience and the rule of religion all rolled up into one major “casting out”!) that they were not the perfect bunch. So by his presence with them he legitimized them, if not their behavior. You might say he “saved” them. He “justified them.” By being with them he “exposed” them for what they were : sinners. You could say that his justification “made” them sinners: exposed the truth. So, Jesus made them sinners! But while he made them sinners by exposing their sin he did a most amazing thing at the same time. He made them whole. There is foundational church teaching here: we are simultaneously sinner and saint. Stately bluntly for effect: Justification makes us sinners and being made sinners makes us justified because that’s what Jesus Christ does: he justifies sinners!
The truth about us is hard to take.
The transparency that Christ brings to us is hard to take.
The truth about God in Christ is amazing grace.
The transparency of God…how he opens his heart to us and simply gives us everything….is amazing grace.
And trust??
We trust that its all true and for us!
