THINGS DONE AND LEFT UNDONE: THE CONFESSION AS A CALL TO RIGHT RELATIONSHIP
Photo courtesy of author, via Canva.
“Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” I know, I probably should have opened with a content warning. This question sounds like I’m about to whip snack-sized Jesus out of my pocket and share him with you like a bag of chips. What a tiny, tidy, easily managed Savior if he can just be my personal one. Just the right number of calories and intervention so as not to make too big an impact in my life.
Personal Jesus brings to mind people walking around each with their private, individual connections to a Savior that was always meant to be universal and global. And claiming a relationship to this universal, global Savior has implications beyond what we might think. So much of American Christianity in all its guises succumbs in various ways to the myth of individualism. I, the individual have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and I, the individual, need to repent and accept the forgiveness that Jesus offers from the cross.
Personal Jesus renders all conditions of the world as “heart issues.” Everything from personal sin to racism can be fixed if Jesus just changes people’s hearts. Personal Jesus is very handy because as long as I can say my heart is right with Jesus, I can tsk tsk at any problem I choose while waiting for my exit without ever taking personal responsibility for anything in this world. Personal Jesus came to redeem me and be my conscience’s scapegoat, because personal Jesus absolves me of all responsibility except “thoughts and prayers.”
In more progressive circles we sometimes lose what is viewed as a heavy-handed approach to individual sin and salvation, but too often, instead of balancing and augmenting it with a more expansive view of corporate sin, repentance, and justice, we don’t emphasize sin at all. The confession in our prayer book stands as a humble reminder that we need to repent regularly, and not just from individual mishaps, misdemeanors, and more serious offenses. We as a people need to repent from our complicity in systems of oppression: systems that benefit certain people while preventing the total thriving and well-being of others.
Each Sunday before communion we confess to God “...we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” These words are a profound call to examine ourselves not merely on the individual level, but on the corporate or communal level. In fact, the communal level is the one we profoundly neglect in a culture that views both success and defeat as proof of individual merit or failing. In reality, success and defeat often function within a system that sets people on paths. These paths can be very difficult to overcome on the one hand, or all too easy to accept as proof of worthiness on the other.
“We have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” The confession stands each week as this small bit of liturgy that calls us to something more if we only will observe the reminder. Loving God with our whole hearts is tied to loving our neighbors as ourselves. It is tied to a commitment to examine things we have done and things we have neglected to do.
Potawatomi theologian Kaitlin Curtice, writes: “As humans, we are all connected at our root base, and in our struggle to learn what it means to be human to one another and to care for this created world, we are constantly exchanging experiences with one another, good medicine with one another, stories and relationships that are born from the deep well of God” (Native, p. 24). In one of the creation accounts in the book of Genesis (chapter 2), we find God forming humans and animals together out of the very soil of the planet. It is no mistake that humans are depicted as being formed for relationship with God and each other in the context of a garden. All of these directions of relationship are interconnected, and pronounced “good” by the Creator in the beginning. We as humans are connected to God, to each other, and to the planet. Randy Woodley, who is Keetoowah Cherokee, describes it concisely: “The animals in the story are formed out of the same earth as humans, sharing the same mother earth and father God as human beings” (Shalom and the Community of Creation, 51).
The “original sin” in the creation myth comes into play first with a mistrust of God’s ways that leads the humans to misuse creation, which results in a breach of trust with God and each other. And the rest of human history depicts how we either work towards repairing that breach or contributing to it. Curtice continues, “If we are responsible to and for one another, that means we are called to ask questions and to seek together, and to remain tethered all the while” (p. 24).
We are created for relationship with God, each other, and the planet we call our home. None of these can be separated from the other: it’s less a hierarchy, and more a circle. And while it is important to confess things that we as individuals have done, the things we participate in on a corporate level in a system designed to make us feel we are all on our own, a system that praises consumption as one of its highest goods, are often the greater wrongs for which we need repentance.
Repentance, as is clear in the confession, isn’t a static event. We don’t just come to the altar, repent, receive forgiveness, and take communion in order to go on about our week, confident that we can do it all over again next week with no impact on the intervening days. We ask for mercy and forgiveness “...that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways…” Delight and walking are both actions. We delight in God’s will, understanding that God’s will has always been about the thriving of all of creation. And if we truly delight in God’s will--delight in God’s divine plan for an active peace where everyone is able to live into their full worthiness as image bearers of God--then we move to a vow to walk in God’s ways. Holding this image of mutual thriving and worthiness in our mind each week as we pray should fuel our desire to do our part to work for justice and peace on the earth. The placement of this in our liturgy is significant. Only after the confession of sin and the promise to work alongside God in the renewal of all of creation do we come to the peace.
Peace isn’t a static thing: it’s not merely an absence of conflict as many are wont to define it. We only arrive at peace after a confession that calls us to amend our ways towards God and our siblings and a vow to walk in the ways of God. Peace isn’t peace if anyone is left out of it. Peace isn't an absence of conflict for those in power or the ignorance of those with more societal privilege. God’s peace--shalom--is an active peace that is only possible for us when all are included within it.
Now conscious we are formed from the very soil we walk upon daily, we move from the confession and the peace to partake of the bread and the wine. The bread is made from wheat and the wine is made from grapes grown from the soil from which we sprang. Jesus, having taken on humanity in the incarnation, then uses bread and wine to institute the sacrament of communion. God-in-the-flesh takes the gifts of the earth--gifts that nourish both his body among us, and us each day--and forever ties them to the “inward and spiritual grace in the Holy Communion…” (BCP 859) that is the body and blood of Christ.
Jesus’ work on the cross celebrated each week in the Eucharist is a work for all creation. Our participation in it must then be for the whole world as well. The weekly liturgy of confession, repentance, absolution, and communion serve as a perpetual reminder of the way we are to be in the world: co-conspirators with God in the redemption of all of creation and the restoration of right relationships with God, each other, and the planet we call our home.
