I was a
little shocked when one Sunday during Lent my priest stood up and
announced that the clergy would be hearing confessions throughout the Lenten
season. But my shock gave way to intrigue as the idea rolled around in my mind over the
coming weeks. Imagine saying all those things you've being carrying around for
years to one other human being, and then being absolved and set free. At the
very least, it was worth trying as an ethnographic experiment.
Eight years
later, I find myself kneeling before my confessor in a hospital chapel for what
has become my bi-annual practice. It occurs to me that I have less time to
collect sin between Advent and Lent (three months) than between Lent and Advent
(nine months!), so this shouldn’t take very long. I reach into my coat pocket
and draw out a crinkled piece of paper with my list.
As I
trudged through a snowy field on my way to the chapel this afternoon, I
wondered why I keep coming to the confessional long after the intrigue of the
thing has faded. Not a common Anglican practice, even my confessor seems to
find my diligence a little odd. My mind skips back to another confession not
long ago. It had been a long and difficult year, and by the time I arrived at
Lent’s doorstep I was holding more than I could carry. My confessor at that
time, Andrew, had recently preached about clay. He spoke of our difficulty
in allowing ourselves and others to be clay. We try to
pretend we’re made of tougher stuff and we expect others to do the same, but
God created us to be clay and called it good. Clay, Andrew told the crowd at
our early morning worship service, is mouldable. With warm and gentle hands, it
can by softened and sculpted and changed. Clay is what we are called to be.
I went to
Andrew for confession later that Lent to lay down all those things I was
carrying which prevented me from being soft, mouldable clay. Anything causing-
or being caused by- guilt, fear, anxiety or shame, I brought and named before
Andrew and God that day. I named things I had done, but should not have; and things I
had not done, but should have. I brought him my “sins,” those one-time events I
was individually responsible for, and my “Sin,” that greater societal
brokenness of which I am apart. And when I finished naming those things out
loud, Andrew asked if I also forgave those who had hurt me. And then he told me
that through Jesus I was absolved of all sins and all Sin and was restored to
wholeness.
When
those words have been said over me, I can no longer carry those things around with me
anymore- like an old backpack slowly collecting stuff as it becomes heavier and
heavier- because all that was preventing me from becoming soft clay has been given
away. I am not free to take any of it back. One time, the priest took my list
and set it on fire, preventing me from even looking at it again. Sometimes, as
I walk away, I am tempted to revisit the things I’ve left behind. To turn them
over in my hands just one more time, making sure I haven’t missed anything. But
I can’t. They are gone.
I’ve often
heard Protestants say that confession can be made to God, and that’s enough.
But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes there’s something about bringing those hard
parts of our clay-selves and naming them before another one made from clay.
Naming all of our fear and brokenness and sin out loud tends to release the
power those things hold over us. Accountability has been a Christian discipline
for centuries, and this is one way of doing that in a safe and structured
environment.
And I do love structure. But the formal practice of confession isn’t for
everyone. I know one priest that makes a point of having lay people as confessors,
thereby stating his conviction that all baptised people are called to the ministry
of reconciliation. Still other people are able to name things before God, in the
silence of their hearts, and then walk away.
The word “repentance”
means turns turning around and walking in the other direction. The liturgy of reconciliation
enables me to focus more on the turning around part than the
dropping-off-the-heavy-backpack part. I informed Andrew one time, “But it
seems too easy!” and he just smiled and responded gently, “It was never meant to be hard.”
But
sometimes it is hard. I have met
people in the winter years of their lives who’ve carried around deep secrets
for decades, wrought with shame and unable to forgive themselves. Jesus reminds
us, “Come to me! All you who are weary and burdened- and I will give you rest.”
Jesus takes all of that heaviness with him to the cross tonight and tomorrow so
that we need not carry it into our own winter years. Jesus takes those things
into the battle with death so that life can reign in our lives. Death and sin
and brokenness no longer have the final say.
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