order of worship — Page 2

Affirming Our Faith Together

August 9, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and Philippians 2:1-11
preached on August 9, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Over the last twenty years, researchers have been watching a sea change in our American society. We have gone from a nation of organizations to a nation of individuals. Think for a moment about it: what organizations are you a part of other than the church? Sixty years ago, most people could have immediately identified several different groups that they were a part of, not just a church or religious organization but likely a civic improvement group, maybe a fraternal organization like the Masons, perhaps the Lions or Rotary clubs, maybe even a musical group, a sports team, or a bowling league. But as a noted researcher on these topics described it, we have gone from a nation of bowling leagues to a nation that goes bowling alone—with friends or family, not with strangers.

The time we share in worship, then, is especially unique. In our increasingly individualistic society, are there really all that many opportunities to gather with a group of people and do something together? At my choir’s annual meeting, we close by singing a song together, and it is not unusual for other gatherings of like-minded people to have a similar ritual to mark our gatherings in one way or another. When our friends at Alcoholics Anonymous gather in the basement here four nights each week, they greet one another very distinctively by name and close the gathering with the Lord’s Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. At a sporting event, we might stand and sing (or hear someone else sing) the national anthem or some other song, and there are the occasional whole-crowd cheers and the all-too-inevitable wave that emerges when things get a little boring. And at a public meeting or in a school classroom we might recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Beyond those rare occasions, though, we pretty rarely get together with other people, let alone do things as a group—so reciting a set of words about what believe as we do in the affirmation of faith is doubly unusual!

Affirmations of faith have been important in the life of the church since its earliest years, but I’m not sure when they became something to be recited week after week in worship. Maybe it is a Presbyterian thing—after all, we do have an entire book devoted to the official affirmations of faith of our denomination! Our first reading this morning from the book of Deuteronomy reaches into the origins of this tradition in the Jewish roots of Christianity. These words are known as the Shema and recited regularly by faithful Jews everywhere. After the introduction that instructs that these words be heard and taught and observed and kept, the affirmation is clear:

The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.

This affirmation stands at the core of Judaism, shaping belief and practice even in this tradition that does not understand faith in quite the same way that much of Christianity does. Still, even with the distinctiveness of Jewish thought, this affirmation of faith immediately makes it clear that who God is has immediate consequences for our lives, too:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

God’s presence and mere being is not enough—those who claim this are called immediately to faithful action.

It is no surprise that the early church, emerging as it did from the traditions of Judaism, quickly found itself affirming its faith. In hymns and sayings, the church described what it had come to understand about the man Jesus, and some of these have been captured in the writings collected in our New Testament. The portion of Paul’s letter to the Philippians we read this morning includes one of the most famous of these, a beautiful hymn describing the early church’s beliefs about Jesus—and the desired outcome of that belief. Paul directs the Philippians to what they likely knew as an early creed of the church that describes the attitude that Jesus took in his life, death, and resurrection—an attitude of humility, grounded in his divine nature yet lived out in his humanity, that resulted in his execution and ultimately his exaltation. This creed expressed, then, not only what Paul felt that the church ought to believe but how it should act, for we should “be of [that] same mind” and live “in [that] same love,” demonstrating in our lives the ways the same way of life that we first saw lived in the life of Christ.

The affirmation of faith in our worship, then, is not an academic exercise. It is not an opportunity to quiz one another and check up on the status of our conformity with the orthodoxy of our tradition or frame beautiful and perfect words that offer the most accurate human description of God possible. Instead, the affirmation of faith in worship is the first chance we have to live out the Word we have heard proclaimed, the moment to rise and begin to proclaim that Word for ourselves in our lives and our world, the opportunity to stand in community with others to declare how we intend to go forth to live the Word in our lives and bear it into our world.

While the creeds we use in the affirmation of faith often come from the approved traditions of the church, the point is not to check up on one another’s faithfulness to them or make sure that we all agree with their every word. Instead, affirming our faith together reminds us that we do not go bowling alone in our faith in this world. When the circumstances of our lives or our world make some portion of our affirmation difficult, one gift of living and worshiping in community is that others can claim those words for us, raising their voices to claim and live these things even if we cannot do so for ourselves at this time. Other times, the community may challenge us to think differently about these words, opening us to different understandings of faithfulness in our lives and our world so that we might all grow in our faith and understanding together. And even when we do have our differences with these words that are before us, even when we cannot claim them as our own in this particular moment, even when our hearts are too heavy to bear our faith into the world in this way, this affirmation of faith belongs not to any one of us but to the whole church, to believers in every time and place, to those who come before us, those who live and walk beside us, and those who are yet to follow us.

Whatever we may feel about the particulars of the words we might share along the way, however the circumstances of our lives or our world may affect our ability to join the community in this affirmation at this moment, the affirmation of faith ultimately is a moment of beginning for us—the beginning of responding to the Word proclaimed. As we join our voices to proclaim this particular understanding of our faith, whether its words date to the earliest years of our Christian tradition or come from a more contemporary time and setting, whether we know its words by heart or must carefully think of each and every word, these words are a springboard for us to begin living out the Word we have heard proclaimed in our worship. When we stand and say our affirmation of faith, we take our first steps toward living out what we believe not on our own but as a community, trusting that we journey better together, acknowledging that we are stronger in our individual lives because we share this time each week, honoring our sisters and brothers in the faith who have walked before us, who journey beside us, and who will follow after us, and recognizing that we can know more of those places where God is at work—and where we are called to join in—if we have more eyes and ears and minds and hearts attuned to finding the place where we can join in.

So may God strengthen us to join our voices to proclaim the words of our affirmation and live our lives to offer actions of faith, hope, and love in our world, joining these words and actions with those of the saints before us, beside us, and after us to share God’s song of love and joy with all creation until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord and we sing God’s glory for eternity. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

A Sermon About Sermons

August 2, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Jonah 3:1-10 and Acts 20:7-12
preached on August 2, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

In our wanderings through the parts of the worship service this summer, we’ve finally made it to the center of everything about Presbyterian worship: the sermon. If you look at our bulletin each Sunday, you will see headings that show us that everything has something to do with “the Word:” gathering around the Word, proclaiming the Word, responding to the Word, sealing the Word in baptism and communion, and bearing and following the Word into the world. Since worship stands at the center of all that we do as a community of faith and the Word stands at the center of our worship, the Word of God is very much at the center of everything that defines us as God’s people. So as we think about all the various parts of our worship each week, it seems very important to spend some time thinking and talking about the sermon—but it does seem a little bit strange to have a sermon about sermons!

All this isn’t quite as surprising if we remember that the Bible itself describes a number of sermons as it tells the story of God’s life with God’s people. A lot of these sermons show up in the New Testament. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is probably the best-known sermon of all time, though I wonder if people have ever really heard what it says, because we very often end up doing exactly what Jesus says we should not in it! Before any of Jesus’ sermons, though, let alone the Sermon on the Mount, John the Baptist offered his own words of proclamation, calling the people to repent and prepare the way for one who was coming to open a new and different way. The book of Acts contains a number of sermons by Peter, Paul, and the other early apostles of the church, and it seems reasonable to think of the epistles of Paul and others as written sermons intended for oral proclamation when they were read to the communities that received them.

But even before this time, the Old Testament prophets and others also delivered messages that are quite reasonably also considered sermons. Much of the book of Deuteronomy is cast as a farewell message—a sermon—from Moses to the Israelites as they prepared to journey without him into the promised land. The message of many of the prophets in calling God’s people back to God’s ways is very much like what might be shared in a sermon today. And even God seems to offer Job a bit of a sermon at the end of the story of Job’s encounter of trial and testing at God’s hand.

But even with all these interesting sermons in the Bible, it is hard to forget the two stories of sermons that we heard this morning once we have heard. First, we hear of the prophet Jonah, who so famously avoided God’s call to preach a word of repentance in the great Gentile city of Nineveh and ended up spending three days in the belly of a big fish, and then was astonished when the city actually listened to his message and changed their ways! In a day and age when the audience for sermons seems to be shrinking a bit, when fewer people in our country make their ways to a pew on Sunday mornings to hear the Word proclaimed, when sermons seem to be getting shorter and their content less notable, it is good to know that at least a few people over the years have listened and taken what we preachers offer seriously! And our second story today from the book of Acts is a little-known but very surprising story about the consequences of falling asleep during the sermon! Even in the early church it seems like preachers tended to drone on a little longer than they should have and leave their hearers to nod off, though the primary lesson here seems to be, “don’t sit in an open window if you’re sleepy during the sermon!”

But these two stories mostly provide a jumping-off point for us to think about why it is important to take time out each week as we gather to hear God’s Word proclaimed in our life together. After all, wouldn’t it be good enough if we just read the Bible each week and endured a little less commentary from people like me? Can’t we get everything we need to respond to God’s Word in faith, hope, and love simply by reciting a portion of these ancient words? Wouldn’t it work just as well to finish worship ten or fifteen minutes earlier and give me three or six or eight hours of my time back during the week to just make things a little simpler and let our readings, songs, and prayers speak for themselves? The consensus of the church over the centuries has been that such simple reading is not enough—we need someone to proclaim the Word of God to us and help us connect it to our lives in this world.

From its very roots in the work of John Calvin, our Reformed tradition has made it clear that the true church is first and foremost marked by the proclamation of the Word. In our tradition, from its earliest days in Switzerland and Scotland, the first mark of the true and faithful church has been the true preaching of the Word of God. As it is well-put in our most recent revisions of this nearly 500-year-old statement,

The Church is faithful to the mission of Christ as it proclaims and hears the Word of God, responding to the promise of God’s new creation in Christ, and inviting all people to participate in that new creation. (Book of Order F-1.0303)

And so the proclamation of the Word still stands as central to our faith and life together.

So what exactly is this Word that we hear proclaimed each week? The great twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth helped us to see that there are actually three different meanings of the phrase “Word of God.” First, Barth reminded us that the gospel of John identifies the Word of God as Jesus Christ, the “Word made flesh,” as John describes, “the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death,” as Barth and others put it in the Theological Declaration of Barmen (Book of Confessions, 8.11).

Then, we know the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit as we read and hear and seek to understand the words of scripture. Scripture is the Word of God shared with us in our human words, inspired and revealed by God to point us to Jesus Christ. Our reading of scripture relies upon prayer and discernment, grounded in the prayer for illumination that asks for God to light our way as we read together, so that we might see the wonder and grace of Jesus Christ in these words.

And the Word of God finally and perhaps most surprisingly comes in the sermon itself, where the Holy Spirit is at work in these most human words to help us to hear and understand and believe and act in our lives and our world, where the words of mouths like mine are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit to become the Word of God in and for this day and age.

So in our worship, the sermon offers us the proclamation of God’s Word in and for this time and place. Sometimes it will include the call to repentance that Jonah so reluctantly yet effectively offered to the people of Nineveh, and occasionally it needs to go on a little longer than might be comfortable for all of us, as it did with Paul in Acts, though I certainly hope that no one gets hurt along the way! But what I think really and truly matters about the sermon in worship is that it is always only the beginning of our proclamation. We do not hear God’s Word and leave what we have learned within these walls. Instead, we go forth from our time of hearing and sharing in this place to live out this divine Word in our lives. We act differently as we encounter others along the way, joining in the work that God is already doing in our world to bring transformation, renewal, peace, hope, and love to reality. And we continue the proclamation of the Word begun here as we live in justice, peace, and reconciliation with all creation.

So as we hear God’s Word proclaimed here this week and every week, may the Holy Spirit send us out to live and proclaim it in our lives so that all the world might know the fullness of God’s glory in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Illuminating Illumination

July 26, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 19 and John 16:12-14
preached on July 26, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As you probably know, this summer we have been taking a journey through the worship service to explore how all its elements connect with one another and help us to offer our worship and praise with a little more understanding. Today, we turn to an easily-overlooked element of the service, the prayer for illumination, a very brief prayer that might last ten or twelve seconds each week just prior to our reading of scripture. You might miss this brief prayer if you blink twice or haven’t quite reassembled yourself from the passing of the peace, but this little prayer and pause before we turn to scripture is almost certainly one of the most important things that we do when we gather together.

Illumination is, after all, such a wonderful and varied word. In a different day and age, where light was more precious than in our own, I think earlier generations though more carefully about illumination and likely appreciated it a bit more for its gift of brightening the night. Nowadays, we still turn to this wonderful word illumination to describe how light shines into the darkened spaces of our lives and our world, a process still so desperately needed even in our world where light is so much easier to find at any time of day or night. Illumination is also used to describe manuscripts of the Middle Ages that opened the biblical text in new ways through incredible illustrations of the concepts, principles, and even simply the letters of the text. There is nothing quite like the beauty and wonder of a text lit up by illustrations like this—I cannot resist stopping in awe and wonder to gaze a bit whenever I encounter such books in a museum or library. Even the modern-day illuminated text of the St. John’s Bible that I will place out at refreshments today also shows the incredible glory of the text with a more modern illumination of these biblical words and stories. Alongside all this illumination, the clarification and new light that comes to us as these ancient words are illuminated and opened to us for our own time brings deep and wonderful insight into the meaning and application of words in our lives.

When we think of the prayer for illumination, all these different meanings come into play. In this prayer, we ask God to shine light into our lives and onto our reading of scripture so that we might connect these things for greater understanding as we seek to live in faithfulness. The importance of bringing illumination to the gift of reading and hearing scripture has deep roots in our Reformed tradition. The great theologian John Calvin put this so well:

Without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Word can do nothing. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.ii.33)

In other words, if we do not surround our reading of the Bible with prayer, if we do not recognize how God is involved in opening it and illuminating it, it will mean nothing more to us than any other book. And so as we approach the reading of scripture in worship, we pause to pray, recognizing that we need God’s light to shine on these words so that we can understand, asking the Holy Spirit to guide us in interpreting these ancient words for our lives and our world, seeking God’s help to show us the way through through all the questions and uncertainties that come up along the way so that we might live in the glow of this incredible light as it shines on scripture, our lives, and our world.

The prayer for illumination also reminds us of three very important things to remember as we read scripture. First, we believe that we read scripture best in community. This doesn’t mean that we only read scripture with other people—it simply reminds us that we read it better together, when our individual biases, blind spots, and preferences can be corrected and adjusted by the wisdom and insight of others. Reading scripture in community also reminds us that we necessarily and rightfully build our reading and interpretation on the tradition of the past. So when we surround our reading of scripture with prayer, we come together to ask God’s guidance upon this continuing process and work of the church and its faithful people as we read and think and understand and discern together.

In the prayer for illumination, we are also reminded of our human humility before God’s word. Our psalm today closes with this very prayer that is often quoted by many preachers as the opening of their sermons:

Let the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you, O Lord,
my rock and my redeemer.

We cannot say that we have the last word on the interpretation of scripture or that God will not continue to illumine it in new ways. Even the leader of the Pilgrims, John Robinson, told them just before they set sail to what would become Massachusetts that “he was very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word.” (John Robinson’s Farewell Sermon) Offering a prayer for illumination helps us to set aside our confidence in our own abilities and focus our attention on God so that we might receive the gifts that God can offer us as we hear the word.

And finally, in the prayer for illumination, we are reminded that the Holy Spirit must be among us whenever we read and hear scripture. Jesus gave us the initial direction for this when he told his disciples in our reading this morning,

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

We embody this even more in the confessions of our church. The 16th-century Scots Confession states, “The interpretation of Scripture, we confess… pertains to the Spirit of God by whom the Scriptures were written.” (Chapter XVIII, 3.18) Then, in the 17th century the Westminster Confession added, “Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority [of Scripture] is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” (Chapter 1, 6.005) And as we will confess in worship later today from the Confession of 1967, “God’s word is spoken to the church today where the Scriptures are faithfully preached and attentively read in dependence on the illumination of the Holy Spirit and with readiness to receive their truth and direction.” (I.C.2, 9.30) All the best rational, logical, and critical tools that we might use to read, translate, and interpret scripture amount to nothing if they are not surrounded by the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit, and so we pray that the Spirit might guide us and direct us and enable us rightly to hear and believe and obey.

For such a simple prayer that takes up only mere seconds of worship, the prayer for illumination is an incredibly important expression of what we believe about God and scripture and our humanity. Even in this day and age when light is so easy to get for so many of us, when we have so many tools of translation, interpretation, and understanding available to us, when we can be confident of so much based on our human knowledge, we need the illumination of God in our reading of scripture more than ever. One of my favorite prayers for illumination sums all of this up pretty well, I think:

God of light,
by the power of your Word,
shine on us far enough ahead
that we may move into the future
that you have prepared for all of us. (Cam Murchison, inspired by a sermon by Fred Craddock)

One of my seminary professors who composed this prayer described to me how it emerged for him out of a wonderful image from a sermon by the preacher Fred Craddock, who recalled driving along a winding mountain road on a pitch dark night, only able to see as far ahead as the headlights could light. But Craddock observed that we don’t have to see everything to make the journey—we simply must see just enough to make the path ahead plain, and amazingly, we can make the whole trip that way. And so when we offer the prayer for illumination we ask God not to open the full meaning of every scripture to us but instead to give us enough light to see enough for this little bit of the journey as we trust that that light will keep shining on us all along the way.

So may the Holy Spirit light the path before us by the gift of God’s holy word, that it might show us enough of the road ahead to live in faith, hope, and love and offer our praise and worship with deeper confidence and hope each and every day until God’s glory is known in its fullness in every place. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Peace Enough to Share

July 19, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 85 and Luke 24:28-43
preached on July 19, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It’s hard to believe that ten years ago I was in my final interviews and negotiations to become your pastor—I’m actually pretty sure that exactly ten years ago today we met with the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry—and it is maybe even harder to believe that I remember anything at all about that whirlwind experience! Still, I recall very clearly talking with the pastor nominating committee about worship—what was important to you, what you might be open to doing differently, and especially what was distinctive in worship here.

One thing that the committee talked about at length was the passing of the peace. They told me with great enthusiasm about who it involved everyone greeting everyone else with the warmth of God’s love and how the service would just not be the same without it. Over ten years, I have discovered that the committee was very much correct: the passing of the peace is a very important part of our worship here. Still, I must break some difficult news to you, and after ten years I hope you are able to hear it with the honesty and love that I intend: passing the peace is a very important part of worship for a lot of small churches, not just this one!

We do something right here in making the passing of the peace an important part of the service. As you know so well, this is not just a perfunctory greeting—it is the embodiment of God’s love and peace and hope that we are privileged to share with one another. This time of greeting one another is not about saying hello to the people we haven’t seen since last Sunday but rather about extending God’s welcome to all who join us for worship. This time of sharing peace assures us of God’s peace with each one of us in a way that opens us to live out that peace in and with our world.

All these things are embodied in our scripture readings today that give us a deeper perspective of God’s peace and so inform this practice of our worship. Each text brings a different perspective on what this peace is and how it spreads in the world, but both make it very clear that the peace that we share in this weekly ritual comes from God.

First, Psalm 85 describes how God’s peace is offered to us in words so that it can be lived out. Amid the brokenness and pain of our world, with the memory of past salvation and reconciliation close at hand, the psalmist describes how God’s people await a word of peace that will show God’s salvation and glory for the whole earth. But this peace is not just some wonderful and hopeful concept, offered only in beautiful flowing words. This peace actually gets lived out as “steadfast love and faithfulness… meet” and “righteousness and peace… kiss each other.”

This strange and wonderful imagery of peace had to stand out in the world of its first hearers. As contentious and fractured as our world so often seems to be, ancient Israel was touched even more regularly by war. I suspect that peace was far more often a dream than a reality in that day and age, for Israel stood at the crossroads of world culture and commerce and was always under attack by some outside culture or empire. So to hear a proclamation of peace like this had to be quite startling.

If that wasn’t enough, the meaning of the word used for peace here, shalom, went far beyond a description of the absence of conflict. This shalom points to not just the absence of conflict but also the presence of wholeness, completeness, and safety—the deeper elements of peace that come from God and are offered to us to share. Shalom is a transformative way of life that makes the world a different place, emerging from the ashes of human conflict to bring hope, stepping out of changed relationships so that we can live differently, in harmony with one another and all creation. And so each week we are invited to share this peace, not just a peace of greeting one another in the usual way at the usual time but a transformative peace that breaks down the barriers that divide us and demonstrates how we can live and share God’s peace in the world.

One of the best examples of sharing God’s peace in this way is on display in our New testament reading for today from the gospel according to Luke. This story of Easter evening presents us with a situation filled with fear and excitement as Jesus appeared to his disciples on the night of his resurrection. Jesus had been revealed to several of them earlier in the day, including to two of them who had walked with him on the road and not recognized him until they sat down to share a meal. But when he showed up as all eleven of the disciples were gathering on that Easter Sunday evening, they were “startled and terrified.” They didn’t quite know what to do—they “thought they were seeing a ghost” because they just had not figured out how their beloved teacher who had been executed and buried just three days earlier was now alive again. So Jesus’ first words to them set the stage for our sharing each Sunday: “Peace be with you.” These were not magical words to automatically fix everything, for Luke reports that “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering,” but in sharing this peace, Jesus invited them to take comfort in the gift of his presence so that they might share it with others.

The peace Jesus shared with his disciples continues to be shared in these days. When we pass the peace each Sunday, we bear this kind of wholeness and new life into our lives and our world. In worship, we pass the peace following the confession and pardon so that we can celebrate the ways our forgiveness enables us to walk in newness of life. But when we pass the peace in worship, it is not so much about receiving something to bring us comfort for our own lives but rather about sharing this confidence of new life so that we can live in new and different relationship with one another and the world. What good is God’s peace, after all, if it does not transform how we live with one another? Why is this peace worth passing and sharing if we do not try to make it real with others and our world? How can we expect to be reconciled with God if we do not find reconciliation with one another?

Our world needs this kind of peace now more than ever. We have not had to look far in our news this week to see the need for changed relationships of wholeness and peace to take hold. When months of diplomacy resulted in a new agreement with Iran around limits on nuclear and conventional weapons and an end to extensive sanctions, some people said that continued conflict and even potential war was preferable to a pathway towards peace. When the nation of Greece found themselves in the midst of deep economic depression and went to their neighbors and partners in the European Union for assistance, some people labeled Greeks as lazy and incompetent, demanding deeper suffering and continued austerity without any real help to open up new possibilities for wholeness and redevelopment. And when a young Muslim shot and killed five people at two military recruiting stations in Chattanooga, some people immediately labeled him a terrorist, even in the absence of conclusive evidence for such, and Franklin Graham, a minister and son of the beloved evangelist Billy Graham, even called for an end to all Muslim immigration to the United States, continuing a history of xenophobia and racism against our faithful Muslim friends just as their holy month of Ramadan came to an end.

Amid all these seeds and sprouts and full-grown conflicts, God calls us to live out the peace that we pass and share each Sunday in our worship. The psalmist calls us to listen for the peace that God speaks to us so that we might be a part of what is sure and certain to be ahead:

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

And Jesus calls us to set aside our fears and live in reconciliation and peace with one another, recognizing how his resurrection brings new life into being here and now for all the world. If this peace is good enough to share among one another, then it is good enough to share with all the world. It is good enough to inspire us to live in a new way with those who are different from us. And it is good enough to offer to the world as even a glimpse of God’s steadfast love, faithfulness, and righteousness in our actions and beyond.

So may God continue to inspire our worship as we share the peace with one another and give us strength to share that peace with all the world so that we might stand as a witness to new life and hope in our broken and fearful world until all things are made new in the peace and joy of Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Confession Is Good for the Soul?

July 12, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 53:4-12; Psalm 51; Romans 5:6-11
preached on July 12, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

An old Scottish proverb says that confession is good for the soul, and there’s a lot of truth to that statement. There’s nothing quite like clearing your head of something that is bothering you. There’s a real gift in letting go of those burdens that unknowingly weigh us down. And there’s something wonderful about seeking God’s pardon so that we can be made new and whole again.

But when we gather for worship each week and offer a prayer of confession, is this really what is going through our minds? Are we really trying to clear our heads and get our souls in order, or is there something more going on here?

Our readings today suggest that there is more than just something good for the soul happening when we confess our sins together in worship. Confession and pardon not only open us to what we have done wrong—they show us how God changes us long before we even think of confessing our sins and assure us of the depth of God’s amazing grace each and every day.

The beautiful reflective words of Psalm 51 that we read responsively this morning are the most direct in their thinking about sin and pardon. These words are traditionally attributed to David, seemingly serving as his response after he is confronted with evidence of his adulterous affair with Bathsheba and David’s inexcusable actions to get her husband Uriah out of the picture by sending him to fight at the front of the Israelite army.

From this place, the psalm speaks directly to the depth of pain, hurt, and brokenness in all souls that comes when we are confronted with the reality of our sin. These words reveal the depth and breadth of our wrongdoing:

In my birth and my beginnings were the seeds of my distress.
In the womb, from my conception, my brokenness began.

These words expose how all our sinfulness is an affront against God’s holiness:

Against you, you alone, have I sinned.
I have done what is evil before your very eyes.

And these words express how deeply we need to be changed, sharing our continual cry:

Create a pure heart in me, O God;
put a new and right spirit within me.

This psalm, then, is quite likely one of the first recorded prayers of confession. It is no wonder that we use it each year on Ash Wednesday, when we reflect at length on the depth of our sinfulness and the pain that it causes God, our world, and ourselves. Building on the example of this psalm, our prayers of confession cover the full gamut of our sin—the things we have done that go against God’s intentions, the things we have left undone that God has called us to do, the ways that we have violated the image of God in others and ourselves, the harm that we have done to God’s creation, the myriad ways in which we have broken relationships and abused others, the pride that has driven us to think of ourselves as better than what we actually are, the self-deprecation that leads us to think less of ourselves than we actually are, and the brokenness that results from all the ways we rebel against God’s intentions for our lives and our world.

Confession opens us to the full reality of who we are so that we can live in the new and different and changed way that God intends for us and opens for us by the mercy and power and grace of Christ. Even with our sin laid bare in this way, we actually don’t start with our sinfulness when we consider it in worship—we begin instead with God’s grace. The wonderful Baptist preacher and southern writer Will Campbell put this about as well as anyone: “We’re no damn good, but God loves us anyway.” (Brother to a Dragonfly, p. 220)

The apostle Paul makes this abundantly clear in our reading from his letter to the Romans when he says,

While we still were sinners, Christ died for us.

God’s grace comes first—before our confession, before our knowledge of our sin, before even our sin itself. Paul goes on to assure us of this:

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.

So when we confess our sin in worship we begin not with the depth of our sin but the breadth of God’s love and grace. We do not have to offer our confession in order to receive this. God’s love and grace for us is not dependent upon the accuracy or even presence of our confession. And God’s mercy is sealed upon us even before we can understand it and make it our own. And so before we confess our sin, we are called to confession with words that reveal this depth of grace:

While we still were sinners, Christ died for us.

Our confession comes not from any fear but rather from deep hope—hope for restoration of brokenness, hope for changed selves, hope for a different way of life, hope for deep and real newness of life.

If the deep hope that inspires our confession weren’t enough, we receive more assurance in the words that proclaim God’s pardon. Since the earliest years of the church, we have associated the words of our reading from the prophet Isaiah with Jesus:

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases…
he was wounded for our transgressions [and] crushed for our iniquities.

These and so many other words give us confidence that God in Christ has transformed our sinfulness and made our brokenness whole. These words show us that God understands the causes and effects of sin better than anyone else ever could and seeks a new and different way that transforms us and our world. And these words assure us that God’s response to sin is not retribution or punishment but grace and mercy, enabling us to approach one another with those same gifts. So the assurance of pardon reminds us that even amid our brokenness, God loves us so much that we are freed to love others, that we can find a way to a new and different way of life, that we can embody God’s love and grace and mercy in our lives, our church, our community, and our world.

Confession is certainly good for the soul, but it is good for so much more, too. It helps us to understand and experience the depth of God’s amazing love in our lives all the more. It opens us to the ways that we can be changed by the gift of God’s mercy and so live in deeper and greater hope. It models a different way for us to respond to the pain and hurt and sorrow of our world so that we do not offer retribution or retaliation when we are wronged but instead seek the path of reconciliation. And confession shows us how God makes brokenness whole, how God brings grace out of pain and struggle, and how God changes hurt into new life.

So may we know the depth and breadth of God’s amazing love every time we confess our sin so that we can offer and share it with others each and every day as all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.