Most days, I go home for lunch. It is delight to get to have lunch most days with those in my family who are home. Each day, Felicity greets me with a question that has been working on her. Sometimes, it about what were are doing that day or friends that she wishes to see. About three weeks ago, she asked as I sat down for lunch, “Why do people need God, Mommy?” The other adults in the room looked at me and sighed saying almost together, ‘We are glad you came home for lunch today and that isn’t our question to answer’. We talked about how God made people, loves us, and wants the best of who we are. Then, I said but we mess up even when we don’t mean to and God forgives us and seeks us to make the world a place with more God than oopps! She nodded and said, “You mean we need to say oopps! sorry and help God to make it better.” As I nodded, I thought how rarely we talk about confession, pardon, reconciliation, and redemption – but she gets it!
When we say: For something that I did not do, I am sorry. For those who my actions affect, I am sorry. For that which I have done intentionally, I am sorry. For that which I have not done, which I should have done, I am sorry. For all of my Oopps! I am sorry.
As Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season, the forty days, excluding Sundays, leading to Easter, this sermon begins a series on one-word prayers. On prayers and types of prayers that we pray regularly, sometimes prayers on the go. This series is an opportunity to more fully explore prayer and what is behind our one-word prayers.
On Ash Wednesday, we take the opportunity to confess, to admit, to acknowledge all that we have done wrong, by commission or omission. We confess our sins. When we speak of sin, we speak both of personal sin, those things which we have done and left undone which have missed the mark and distanced us from God, as well as corporate sin, those social sins, which you and I together contribute often unknowingly that cause the ill will of others.
This is radical and different from the lists of sins that many of us grew up with as dos and do nots. We learned not to chew with our mouths open, pull our classmates hair, and stop at stop signs. If we put our relationship with God and others at the center, then all causes ill-being that is sin. While we maintain that do not murder, covet, commit adultery or lie are central to our relationship with God and others, we see them then in the light of how we relate, rather than ends in themselves. It is then, as Jesus states, that even thinking abusive thoughts about our enemies that causes ill being. But this can be a mixed up business. Theologian Marjorie Suchocki writes: “For seldom is it the case that our acts of sin have no good in them, or that our acts of goodness have no sin in them. We are mixed creatures, hungering after a purer good.” 1 It is even when are attempting to do good that we may cause ill-being to others. And we who seek to live in harmony with our neighbors desire nothing more than peace.
When we confess, we always allow for that which we did not even know that we did or did not do that caused ill being. “Unacknowledged sin is not absent sin, it is simply disguised sin.”2 Confession becomes an essential portion of the restoration and reconciliation of relationships, both with God and with people. Confession of sin must recognize this through the double confession: we have sinned against others, and in doing so, have sinned also against God. “Sin is like the dam that holds back the water of God’s grace; confession is like the breaking of the dam, releasing of divine waters for our thirsty souls. The divine will toward our wellbeing is itself God’s forgiveness .” 3
But in confession, we shed the myth of innocence, that we have always only been good, individually and corporately and ask God’s help to heal our world. Confession of corporate sin allows us to bear together, approach together, seek to transform together the sin that is too great for any one of us to bear alone. This is why we confess together the ills and evils of the world. With prayerful hope, that together you and I, may through God’s grace, change the pattern or the system in some way.
As we walk again the journey of Lent, we look towards the glory of the empty tomb and realize we have some work to do before we get there. Lent is one of the periods in the Christian year in which we do that very work. What are the ways in which your relationships with God and with others have become blocked? How has ill being invaded and overtaken your peace and joy? What do you need to confess as an individual or as a member of the human race? Where do you need to move towards the peace and reconciliation that God offers after confession?
As we confess our sins, we remember that God is infinitely more forgiving and full of grace than we can imagine. We marvel in that gift for ourselves and seek to emulate that gift for others. God’s grace and love give us inspiration and vision to forgive those who have brought ill-being to us. We have misunderstood forgiveness. Our colloquial phrase – forgive and forget has lead us as a culture to understand forgiveness as wiping clean of the slate and forgetting of previous actions. Instead, I appreciate the theologian Marjorie Suchocki’s definition “To forgive is to will the well-bring of the other and live accordingly.”4 To forgive those who have hurt you is to seek the good will of those who have hurt.
This is such rigorous work. It is the tradition of the church that the Lord’s Prayer is prayed daily by the gathering of the church, as well as individuals. The Lord’s Prayer is daily, because daily we need and extend forgiveness. God works with us as we are- and through confession, leads us to where we yet can be.
Like a recovering alcoholic, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. We are still sinners. We still have the propensity to do the very thing that brings ill will to those around us. What has changed, what is different, what gives us hope: is the grace, love, and forgiveness of the great God of heaven for each and every one of us as we turn towards God. And it is our very “Faith lives in the forgiveness of sins.”5
Like Felicity’s perceptive question, we ask: Why do people need God? People need God for redemption and salvation – the very work of our souls. As we have confessed our oopps, big and small. Let us turn to God’s redemption and salvation, God’s gift and grace to us through the Sacrament of Holy Communion and through this season of Lent. Let us turn to God in prayer – taking on the commitment to intentional prayer throughout these 40 days.
This is the Gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ, Thanks be to God, Amen.
1Suchocki, Marjorie. In God’s Presence. Chalice Press, 1996, 72.
2Ibid., 82.
3Ibid., 77.
4Ibid., 54.
5Ibid., 81.