Rethinking Confession: Psalm 103: 11-18; I John 1
Many times, church folk get a little nervous about that word “confession.” The first question is usually, “exactly what am I supposed to tell?” I’ll never forget a friend inviting me to his church’s Bible study years ago. At the end, they all confessed their sins and prayed over them. One by one around the room, they talked about whom they’d lusted after, the extra drinks they’d had, certain photos/magazines/books they may or may not have looked at. It got pretty lurid. I looked at her and said, “I’m about to take a bathroom break, and not come back, because this is ridiculous.” At a Catholic church I visited once, there was a sign that said, “Please do not go into extensive detail during confession.”
And yet we still hear the old saying that “confession is good for the soul.” And we read in I John 1: 9 that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and, essentially, fix us. Theologian Walter Brueggemann says, “Churches should be the most honest place in town, not the happiest place in town.” But I believe we’ve been more concerned about happiness and appearance than honesty. Anne Sexton’s poem “Protestant Easter” says, “Jesus was on that Cross./After that they pounded nails into his hands./After that, well, after that, everyone wore hats on Easter,” as if that has become the focal point.
Confession should be the point at which we stop to be honest with ourselves, to be still and converse with God, not as if everything is alright, but as if we understand that sometimes we need a bit of help. Confession is when we are honest about our doubts, honest about where we have made mistakes, honest about where we are too intoxicated with certainty to even allow God to speak and teach us. Psalm 103 reminds us that God knows at times we are weak and vulnerable. We have to be willing to be vulnerable or we will be unwilling to learn.
In her book, Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans talks about how she stopped going to church. First she began with questions, very tough questions that came forth uncontrollably. And the church, instead of honesty, offered platitudes. There is a very deep difference in saying, “praying for you!” or telling someone they need to have a little more faith, try a little harder, and actually showing up and walking a difficult road with them. Perhaps even at those times we’d have to confess that we also struggle, worry, and doubt. So Rachel became loaded with questions and doubts, and her church family recoiled instead of embracing honesty. And that is because we’ve come to believe church is for good people, not resurrected people, not the beloved but still messy people.
Confession means we come into this place to say, “sometimes the truth is we’re hurting because of another person’s sin (yes I said it), or as a result of forces beyond our control. Sometimes the truth is we’re just hurting, and we’re not really even sure why.” Confession should be the time where we have the chance to admit that in some ways we’re not okay, and then to seek healing and reconciliation, together, in a community. “So we are lying,” says I John, “if we say we have fellowship with God, but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth.”
What is truth? Rachel writes, “We come [to this place] with our addictions—to substances, to work, to affirmation, to control, to food. We come with our differences, be they political, theological, racial, or socioeconomic. We come in search of sanctuary, a safe place to shed the masks and exhale. We come to air our dirty laundry before God and everybody else because when we [all] do it together, we don’t have to be afraid [of not being perfect].” Faith reminds us that in order to be made whole, to be healed, we must begin with admitting that at times we are not okay. Even those who have been saved, believed, baptized or however you call it for even fifty, sixty years, at times we are not okay spiritually and need help and healing. The spirit is no different that the physical here. You get an infection, you get an antibiotic from your doctor. You get a spiritual infection, you need healing as well.
And so, to fix this problem, Rachel writes, “We could not become like God, so God became like us. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of long for more. When we nailed God to a tree, God forgave. And when we buried God in the ground, God got back up.”
We could not become like God because we have not worked on healing. I John says, “But if we are living in the light as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other,” and we are, essentially, healed. I have seen churches where no confession and healing, and restoration took place. They usually attack one another to preserve their precious comfort. Billy Graham once said, “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.”
I have watched and been present with friends abused by church and church notions: a friend who is a fabulous musician whose church insulted and fired him for being gay…he left the church and his faith; a friend and her daughter were ridiculed for an improper divorce (from her abusive husband)…she left her church and her faith; a friend who used to work in ministry who told me once that she found meaner people in church than in groups of atheists. None of that will do. Church should be a place of healing, not a place of hopelessness, not a place where we practice nice words to say to people in need.
When we are attempted to see the evil worked from the inside and abandon all hope, there is a moment where we stop. There is a litany of things done wrong: when Christians became the Roman empire and reveled in the combat games, when crusaders murdered the innocents in the Middle Ages, when people were tortured and hurt in the Inquisition with signs of Soli deo gloria, defending slavery, standing against equality, and hating/fighting anything that interrupts comfort. But for every bad story, Ambrose, John Huss, Teresa of Avila, Maximilian Kolbe, William Wilberforce, and others who loved, welcomed, who died for others, and made the church a place of healing and restoration and hope.
God is light, and there is no darkness in God at all. Kathy Escobar, a pastor in Denver, founded a church called “The Refuge” where people from all walks of life come together to be healed from their spiritual struggles. Their mission statement says this at the end, “At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.” So the church should invite: come with doubts and questions, come hurting, struggling, uncertain, worried, angry, and even hurt. Instead of being drug to the foot of the cross kicking and screaming, let’s have a conversation, a confession, about where we are, what we need to help us, and where to go. Come in faith to place where you should be never comfortable, but always safe.