"The Art of Confession" 
Nurturing the little voice inside us.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Text: Luke 18:9-14
One day recently I visited my doctor because I wasn't feeling well, and I thought I better find out if it was anything more serious than a cold or the flu. He assured me that it wasn't, and told me to rest a little bit and to drink liquids, and to take care of myself. After those reassuring words, I was about to leave his office when he stopped me in my tracks. He said, “Andrew, before you leave, I have something that I think you will find most helpful. I know I have.”
Expecting him to reach out and provide me with a little sustenance or maybe something to help me along the way, I was surprised when he went to his computer. He started to download a file, and then he printed it off and he handed it to me. Now, you must realize that my doctor is a very devout Christian. He works at a missionary health institute. Thus, when my doctor hands me something, I tend to take it quite seriously. In this particular case though, it was to my utter surprise, and I must admit, horror when I first saw it, a page-and-a-half-long prayer of confession. When I saw it, I thought, “Does he know something that I don't? Am I sick because of something that I have done wrong? Does he really know what is deep within the recesses of my heart?”
I tucked it away into my jacket, and paranoia was followed by shame, followed by guilt I had no idea what it was in this prayer, or that it was going to trigger something within me. I got into the car and I opened it up. It turned out to be a section from what is known as the Southwell Litany. I began to read this prayer of confession, and not being one who takes those things overly seriously, I was actually quite amazed at how, as I went through this prayer, it began to touch me and ignite within me feelings and thoughts that I must admit, I hadn't thought or articulated in a very long time - if ever. I thought it was one of the finest prayers that I have ever read in my life.
Assured that there was nothing in it that had anything to do with colds and flu and why we get them, I relaxed and realized my doctor was just giving me something to help me in my daily life. At the beginning of this prayer of confession, though, there is an astounding comment. It states that prayers of confession can do four things. First of all, they can show us how God sees us. Secondly, they can show us how others see us. Thirdly, they show us how we can see others. Most especially, they ignite within us the sense of how we can see ourselves. With that in mind, I started to look at this prayer with greater depth. What do I learn about myself? What do I learn about others? What do I learn about God in an act of confession?
As I went through it, I realized that very often in our Reformer tradition, we do not use set prayers to prompt us. We do not have a prayer book, we do not have a litany or a set liturgy on which we can rely for our prayer lives. We pray extemporaneous prayers, prayers from the heart to God, and so we should. They are fine and they are right, but I realize that one of the problems we often have without prayer to prompt us is that, for example, our prayers of confession to God can become repetitions of things that we probably already confessed before.
In other words, we tend to keep going over the same things day after day, month after month, and year after year. We confess things over and over again, because we are just in the habit of confessing them. When we have nothing else to prompt us, we keep repeating the same old prayers, but avoid confessing things that perhaps we ought to confess, simply because we never think of them, or because they never touch our minds and our imagination.
Therefore, it seems to me that there is a place for prayers that prompt us. Now, we do this on most Sunday mornings with prayers of confession and assurance of pardon. We have prayers articulated here in the church. Some of you even take prayers home, with The Upper Room and other devotional books. These are all wonderful, but I think what my doctor was trying to convey was that there comes a time when we need to deepen, to enrich, to ripen our prayers of confession.
This Sunday, and in three Sundays' time, I want to look at a few stanzas from the Southwell Litany, because it reminds us of the importance of confession in our lives. I base all of this on Scripture.
This morning's passage from Luke's Gospel gives an account of prayer according to Jesus. The first story is the story of the widow, who feels that she is not being treated justly, and keeps going back to a judge time and time again. It is the importance, in other words, of persistent prayer. The other story we have is one of the most popular and best known, where Jesus addresses people who we are told by Luke thought they were more righteous than they were: people who in their piety actually despised others.
In the second story, Jesus brings two characters together that anyone in Jerusalem at that time would have known very well. The first is a Pharisee, who is a respected religious leader. The second is a tax collector, who was at the bottom of the social ladder. These two characters represent two totally different attitudes towards confession and sin and repentance. Jesus contrasts them. For example, look at their general demeanor; look at their deportment. The Pharisee stands up, and looks upwards to God when he prays. He is proud; he is not ashamed of himself; he is bold in the presence of God. The tax collector, we are told, casts his eyes downwards out of shame; he can't even look up symbolically because of his sin. Both of these characters are not in favour of sin, and that is good.
What is interesting is that the Pharisee does not seem to find any sin within himself. On the contrary, he lists all the things that he doesn't do. I thank God that I am not like everybody else. I am not an adulterer; I am not a thief; I am not a liar; I am someone who really doesn't have to confess in the same way as this other character over here.
Meanwhile, the tax collector is saying to God, “Have mercy on me, for I am a sinner.”
Then the Pharisee goes even further. In his attitude towards God, he justifies himself. He does it very boldly: he says “I fast twice as much as is expected, and I tithe one-tenth of all my possessions, which is even more than the Mosaic laws say.” He gives a tenth of everything he has to God. Well, on the surface, this particular Pharisee seems like a very capable, honest and religious person. He is, but the problem with this Pharisee is that he exalts himself, and in so doing, puts down everyone else who is around him. He uses the fact that he abides by the law as a club with which to punish and put down others.
Jesus then concludes this parable. He introduces a concept called “justification.” He says, “Which one of these is justified before God?” In other words, which one of these is truly right in the eyes of God?
The apostle Paul, writing later in the Book of Romans, picked up on this very same theme of Jesus in Chapter 4. He said, “When a man works [and by that he means when someone tries to fulfill the law to please God], his wages [what he receives] are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.” In others words, he is supposed to be doing those things. However, to the man who does not work in that sense, who does not rely on his own efforts, but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.
We are not put in a right relationship with God by virtue of our sense of our righteousness, but rather, we are put right in our relationship with God through faith in what God does. That is why the Pharisee in this story is not the luminary; he is not the one who sees the truth. On the contrary, he sees only his righteousness. It is the tax collector who says, “Have mercy on me, oh God!” It is he who, in the eyes of God, is justified.
Our act of confession must be sincere. It can't be just a recounting before God of all the things that we have done to please God. Rather, it should be an honest statement of who we are with others before God in the light of Christ. This then brings up the question: “What should you and I do in terms of confession?”
Well, I think we need to do a few things. Most of all, we need to realize that confession sets the boundaries of our lives. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that as human beings we are born free. Within that freedom God has given us, there are constraints; God places limits on us. These are the limits of the law. God places those limits around his creation for the very security and safety of that creation. For example, when the law says, “Thou shalt not kill,” here is a limit. The freedom is that we can, and should live a life without fear of being killed by somebody else.
We should not steal. We have a limit placed around us in order that our property might be secure. The law is a boundary set around human beings in order that they can live freely. The Old Testament, in particular, is the story of God creating those boundaries, those limits within which humanity should live, not because God is a pernicious God who wants to keep us constrained, but because God wants us to live in freedom, and has given the law in order that we might be free human beings with one another.
It reminds me of the time I went to a cottage a couple of summers ago, up just north of Kingston. Next door to the cottage there was a very noisy dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback. If you know Rhodesian Ridgebacks, you know they are gorgeous dogs, but they are strong-willed creatures. This particular Ridgeback was called Bert. I was given very clear instructions: Don't get too close to Bert, don't go on Bert's property, and don't tease Bert. Fair enough! If that's the only boundary on my being at this cottage, I am going to have a good time. I'll ignore Bert.
So, I went and sat one evening on the deck, and I heard Bert growling. He saw me, and he ran towards me. Then, he stopped dead in his tracks, and his eyes opened wide as saucers, and so I thought, “Okay! I see what they mean about Bert.” This happened three nights in a row. Bert ran towards me and stopped in exactly the same place, right on the edge of his property. So on the fourth night, I thought, “Let's go and see how Bert is doing.” I went to the edge of my host's yard, and I said, “Hi, Bert! I understand that you are from Rhodesia, from Zimbabwe. I know your home very well!”
Bert ran towards me, eyes wide open, snarling and spitting, and stopped dead in exactly the same place. I thought, “This is magnificent! This dog is scared of me. This is fabulous!” So, I went back inside and said, “That dog is terrified of me, really terrified of me!”
My host said, “No, he is not terrified of you, you silly man! They have an invisible electric fence around the property, and by teasing Bert, you are causing him pain. Do you realize that? It is because he wears one of these collars that works with the electric fence, and whenever he gets right up to the fence, he gets a shock in his leg or his shoulder to tell him to stop. That is why Bert always stops in exactly the same place!”
Apparently, if a dog goes outside of that kind of fence, they cannot get back in again, but that's another story! That one is really scary! In other words, don't mess with Bert again.
I think life is like that electric fence in some ways. Bert's owners erected that electric fence not because they don't love Bert - they love Bert - but they know that if Bert gets outside of that domain, he can find himself in trouble.
Well, our prayers of confession are like that boundary. God sets them there in order that we might know the limits of our freedom, for our own protection. And not only for our own protection, but also for the protection of others. Our prayers of confession should be undertaken in such a way that they become an integral part of our lives to remind ourselves daily of where those boundaries are.
For example, in this prayer that I mentioned, the Southwell Litany, there are a couple of beautiful stanzas:
From dullness of conscience, from feeble sense of duty
from thoughtless disregard of the consequences to others,
from a low idea of the obligations of our calling,
and from all half-heartedness in our service:
Save us and help us, O Lord!From self-conceit, vanity and boasting,
from delight in supposed success and superiority;
Raise us to the modesty and the humility
of a true sense and taste and reality;
And from all the harms and hindrances
of offensive manners and self-assertion:
Save us and help us, O Lord!
That is what prayer should be. It should be a reminder of our pride. It should be a statement that we know the boundaries. You see, the problem of the Pharisee in the story is that he has set his own boundaries, and he was comfortable with them. He tithed, he fasted, and he thought he was better than everybody else. By setting his own boundary (to use another analogy that Jesus uses) he did not see the log in his own eye; he only saw the speck. He had become so consumed with his own self-righteousness that he had lost sight of the boundaries; that is why he felt free to condemn others.
A confession not only establishes the boundaries, it also motivates our consciences.
All of us are born with a conscience, every one of us. From the moment we are created there is a conscience within us. Consciences can either be informed, or they can be dulled. They can be nurtured, or they can be suppressed. If we tell ourselves certain things are right when they are wrong, we have a tendency to immunize our conscience, not to make it acute, not to make it sensitive. Likewise, if we inform our conscience with prayer and with worship and with the right reading of Scripture, then we have an informed conscience. All of us have one. It is a matter of what we do with it.
Sometimes, though, I think we honestly would like to shut off that conscience, that little voice. A number of years ago, Marial, my wife, had a car with one of these voice systems. Every time something happened, this male voice would come on: “Your windshield washer is low,” or “A door is ajar.” Marial, I think, liked this voice in her car. She called it “My Little Man,” in fact. I was jealous, I really was! This Little Man went everywhere with her, and he had the most mellifluous voice: “Your door is ajar;” “Your trunk is open.”
“How could I ever match that voice?” I thought. “No way!” I think she used to open and close the door just to hear him! Anyway, I hated this little guy in the car. Nevertheless, I lived with him for three years. Just before we traded in the car, I happened to be talking to a Chrysler engineer, and I told him about this man's voice. He said, “You don't realize you can switch him off?”
I said, “You are telling me now after three years that I can switch him off!”
He said, “Sure you can. Just unplug one wire, and he's gone!”
I thought, “Wow! Had someone told me this three years ago, I would have had a much happier life. If only I could have got rid of My Little Man!”
Sometimes our consciences are like that. We would just love to pull the plug, pull a little wire, and not hear that voice anymore. Wouldn't that be nice?
However, I remember something that had happened over those three years. Once the brake fluid in the car was low, and the little man's voice came on: “Your brake fluid is low.” We went and topped it up. As it turned out, it was so low, there was hardly anything left. Had we not heeded his warning, we could have been seriously injured. When you unplug the wire of the little voice, when you take out the sound of your conscience, it is dangerous, very, very dangerous, because you might not only hurt yourself, you might hurt others as well.
That is one of the reasons why prayers of confession are important not only for us, but also for others. One of the stanzas in the litany goes as follows:
From strife, partisanship and division,
from magnifying our certainties to condemn all differences,
from building systems to exclude all challenges,
and from all arrogance in our dealings with others,
Save us and help us, O Lord.Give us true knowledge of others,
in their differences from us
and in their likeness to us
that we may deal with their real selves,
measuring their feelings by our own,
but patiently considering their varied lives and thoughts and circumstances.And in all our dealings with them,
from false judgments of our own,
from misplaced trust and distrust,
from misplaced giving and refusing,
from misplaced praise and blame:
Save us and help us, O Lord.
Isn't that kind of prayer that we all really need to pray this Lent, Sometimes our hearts can become so hard, our consciences so dull, our boundaries so collapsible, that we are not following God's will in our lives. In the movie Dead Man Walking, there is a very touching moment at the end, where the convicted murderer and Sister Helen come together. It is a wonderful story of redemption. Matthew Poncelet had murdered a young man and a young woman, and he had denied it ever since, but in meeting Sister Helen, he changed, and there is this wonderful moment at the end of the movie, when she asks him, “Do you take responsibility for their deaths?”
Poncelet responds, “Yes, ma'am. When the lights dim at night, I kneel down by my bunk and pray for those kids. I have never done that before.”
Sister Helen comforts Poncelet by saying, “There is a place of sorrow that only God can touch. You did a terrible thing, but now you have dignity. No one can take that away from you. You are a son of God, Matthew Poncelet”
Sobbing deeply, he says, “Nobody ever called me a son of God before. Oh, they called me a son-of-you-know-what many times, but never a son of God. I just hope that my death can give peace and some relief to those parents.”
Sister Helen says, “Maybe the best thing you can do for the Percys and the Delacroixs and their families is wish for their peace.”
Then, Poncelet replies: “I never had no real love in my life. I never loved myself. I never loved a woman. I never loved anybody. It would about figure I had to die to find love, but thank you for loving me.”
Here is the point: It was the love of Sister Helen that caused this man to repent, and in repenting, to find himself, and acknowledge what he had done to others. It is always the love of Christ my friends, that reminds us of who we are. It reminds us of how we see others. It reminds us of who we are in the presence of God. And by praying like the tax collector did, and saying, “God have mercy on me, a sinner,” all of a sudden the boundaries, all of a sudden the conscience, all of a sudden the love of God are reignited within us. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.