Why confession and forgiveness is most of our worship

Luke 11:2-4

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

            We say it all the time. In fact, in Lutheran worship, we begin our worship service by confessing and receiving forgiveness. Then, just to make sure we got it good with God, we pray this part of the Lord’s Prayer often right before taking communion where we do forgiveness for the third time—unless we also had a baptism or the sermon is about forgiveness… like today, then it’s 4, 5, maybe 6 times we center our worship around forgiveness. It’s almost like we have guilty consciences in this particular church—almost like we hold a lot inside that we never tell anybody about.

            Now, I’m not going to say that’s any of you necessarily—let’s just say on the off-chance that any of you maybe, possibly hold some things in from time to time, this confession and forgiveness may be an important thing.

            In fact, if you are participating in a children’s sermon, or one of those sermons where the pastor is asking questions of the congregation (which I think I've done twice in my time here because I'm so uncomfortable when other people are uncomfortable), or a Lutheranism 101 class, and the pastor asks you a question and you get that deer-in-the-headlights look that you remember from 10^th grade math class when Ms. Crabapple asked you to draw a sine wave—if you think the answer is not “Jesus,” then the 2^nd best answer is probably forgiveness, because when it comes down to it, so many of our worship and sacramental traditions are about confession and forgiveness. We start the service that way; we baptize with that promise; we commune to experience is viscerally; and just to make sure we really get it, we even have a whole season in Lent where that confession is one of the central themes.

            You may well know how to confess, but just because you do it a lot does not mean you understand it. And I know many do not understand it, because they leave worship, walk down the street to brunch—OK, that doesn’t happen so much in Hallock, Minnesota, but in places where you can go out for Sunday brunch and when there’s not a global pandemic—they go out and they treat their waiters like they are their servants. They complain about their food; they complain about the weather; they complain about how terrible other people are. Having spent the last hour confessing their unworthiness before God, Christians will immediately turn to berating those who they believe should be serving them in society. It’s stunning to behold, but it happens more often than not. We confess. We receive forgiveness. Then, we turn around and become our worst selves, making grace cheap and lending credence to those that see Christians for the hypocrites we so often are.

            Sometimes, I think the Catholic Church does it better. Gasp! Things the pastor can only say when we has three Sundays left. But it’s true—sometimes, I think that our communal forgiveness isn’t weighty enough. And, of course, this is where hoity-toity Lutheran theologians would inevitably chip in and say, “Well, we also have individual confession and forgiveness in the Lutheran church, too!” Yeah, we do, and in nine years of ministry I have done it once. The reason I worry about our confession and forgiveness is that the fruits of it so often turn rotten. You simply do not understand the gift that is grace if you turn around, leave worship, and see the worst in everybody out there.

            I want to make this particularly personal as we return to worship inside today at Grace. Being together is controversial, and part of me feels I need forgiveness for even allowing this to happen. And part of me feels I need forgiveness for not encouraging this to happen sooner. And all of me needs a drink, and now I need to confess that too. So, we should confess—not as a blank slate to do whatever we want, but because we should acknowledge that in life most often there is not a right answer. There is simply one kind of tough decision after another. And it’s really fascinating to me that God does not provide forgiveness by saying, “You know, the world is tough, do your best and I’ll do the rest.” Instead, God says, “You cannot do enough, so I’ve got you. Don’t say ‘I’ll do my best’ but just admit you won’t—you can’t—and your best isn’t good enough!”

            It might seem like I’m putting words in God’s mouth here, but this is the end-product of the story of the rich man and the eye of the needle (Luke 18:25), and it is what Paul talks about with sin and the law in Romans 5 (and, really, the whole letter of Romans), and it is the far side of the condemnation we feel when Jesus told us to be perfect like our Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). We cannot do it, and so we need forgiveness. But that forgiveness must change us. As Paul asks rhetorically in Romans 6, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” To put it another way, you who are forgiven, how can you possibly forget it so quickly when you have the opportunity to show others that grace in turn?

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            I saw a graphic this past week of the most shared posts on Facebook in the last seven days. If you’re curious, don’t go looking for it. Every one of the top 10 most shared pieces was an opinion piece vilifying somebody else. Every single one. And we can both sides this all day—and we all do this to some extent. Oh, both sides are to blame! But as a Christian, you don’t have a both-sides. You are politically homeless. You are not obligated to vote any which way, even if one candidate looks more Christ-like than the other. Instead, you are obligated to love your neighbor in all things. Love God—love people. Those are the most important commandments, Jesus said.

            So, how can a Christian participate in this endless berating of other people? Only if you forget our universal need for forgiveness, and only if you lose sight of your community. Living together is hard. You don’t need to fix other people—you just need to see the humanity in them—and I say this because it is the only way we will see the humanity in ourselves. And we cannot truly confess—and we cannot truly feel the relief of the weight taken from us through forgiveness—unless we understand how deeply human we are.

            So, I confess to you today that I haven’t done enough—and I confess that I’ve done too much for you—and probably both are true. And I’m guessing that many of you could confess that you haven’t done enough for God’s church—and I’m guessing every one of you who can say that can also confess that you haven’t done enough for your families… and your work… and your community. Strangely, we never do enough—we never have enough time—we are never successful enough.

            Church should be a refuge from that kind of thinking. Here, we are not told to work harder—there’s plenty of that out there. Here, we receive a different word. “You are forgiven.” And that message can change you. It can allow you even to look at the worst in humanity and to see the common threads that you too feel. It can bring us together when everything is tearing us apart—even when we can’t physically be with one another.

            That’s a helluva promise, and it’s why we do it over and over again. It’s a good reminder that God knows you won’t fix it, can’t fix it, and won’t ever do enough. You don’t have to. You are not enough, but Christ is. And that’s all you need.