Confession: Our Weakness Is. . .
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
October 19, 2014
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
Isaiah 59: 9-15
Hebrews 4: 12-16
Let
us pray, for a welcome mind and a loving heart
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For
your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
12 For the
word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to
the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the
thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And before him no
creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom
we have to do.
14 Since then
we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son
of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we have not a high
priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every
respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us
then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help in time of need.[1]
So back in
April when I had the first was considering the idea of using the Order of
Worship as a way to preach about the status of the church as part of my idea
for a prolonged Stewardship Sermon Series, I was drawn first to this Sunday the
most. In many ways the Prayer of Confession is a special part of the service,
one unique, one that has a really important Theological place. When you
consider the patterns and rhythms of our Order of Worship, there is real
significance to laying ourselves, our lives, our weaknesses, our shortcomings,
in short our Sin on the table first. When we confess our sin weakly, and weekly,
we symbolically and ritualistically are laying our lives, all of it, every
piece, wrinkles and all, at the feet of God, holding nothing back, we put it
all out there, so that we can be wholly present for the rest of it. There
should be no part of us that we are ashamed to bring with us, for we have
stated who we are, imperfect, broken, and real, and then we are proclaimed
forgiven, proclaimed to be children of God, not because of this ritual, but
because of Christ. We are not washed clean every week, but instead we testify
to the idea that our brokenness does not separate us, does not single us out,
does not render us outsiders, but instead brings us together, for our
brokenness we all share, and our forgiveness we all share. . . and it is nice
to be reminded of it. It is centering, much like the Call to Worship reminds us
of the hugely perfect and awesome nature of God, the Confession at once admits
our bond of brokenness and our bond of forgiveness, acknowledging how truly
great it is that Christ has redeemed us.
I was
excited about this part, not only because it is such a great and important part
of our worship service, but because I think that the act of confession, the act
of laying it all out there, being honest about where we fall short is such an
important part of what it means to live in community. How much of our trouble,
the trouble of any group, of any work place, any collection of people stems
from lack of communication, that people hold back because deep down we are all
insecure, and we all fear being truly honest because there is risk. . . what
will people think? Am I the only one? How can I let someone know my weakness?
How can I ever be respected? How can I ever be of use? We get so worried about
our weakness that we let it rule over us, despite ourselves. But through
confession we can be made whole. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians. . . and I derived
my sermon title from this verse. 2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for
you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all
the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
It is one of those great glorious
ironies about Christianity, and it is one of the biggest things that mark a
distinction between the followers of Christ and the world, and that is that our
weakness is our strength. Our weakness is our strength, or it should be. For if
our strength is born in Christ our weakness is what forces us to cling to the
Rock, fully relying on Christ, laying it all on that sure foundation, that we
are strong not it what we can do on our own, but in what we can do in and
through Jesus Christ. So rather being ashamed and fearful about our weakness,
about our Sin, the fact that we are lost, we wear it like a badge of honor.
Strange isn't it. . . counter intuitive completely, right. We've been told
forever to be our best, to put our best foot forward, to strive in a
competitive game of status and hierarchy, but that it is in our weakness that
we are made strong, it is in turning the other cheek that we truly fight, and
to quote, St. Francis's famous prayer, "It is in dying that we are born to
eternal life."
It is a
common misreading of The Scarlet Letter to
look at the heroine Hester Prynne's punishment of having to wear the Letter A
for adultery in public humiliation, that the Puritans are horrible uncaring,
prudish, judgmental, hypocrites. . . they may be, but that Letter is not
symbolic of the town's condemnation, but as a badge of honor, the beginning of
Hester's redemption. The other symbol, as is shown in the Prayer of Preparation
is the child that was the natural sign of her "Sin," for her
pregnancy was what gave her secret away first. That child, "Pearl" is
the symbol of her redemption, she is the glorious example of what God does with
Sin. He doesn't take it away from us, he doesn't take away the punishment, the
shame, the fear, the worry, and the doubt, instead he makes a wonderful miracle,
a life giving purpose, just like he does with Cain, marking him to be
untouched, and Jacob, forever to have a limp. . . the letter and the child
become not a mark of shame, but one of God's undying grace, forgiveness, and
favor. Hester is the heroine of the novel, the tragic figure is the Rev.
Dimmesdale, her partner in crime, unknown, hiding, imploding in secret, a
secret shame which slowly destroys him. The hidden sin is the cancer, whereas
the acknowledge badge of need, of weakness, of sin, is the beginning of God's
work and glory in our lives. Hawthorne so brilliantly shows, though, our human
tendancy to run away from this glory, in our shame. Hester doesn't always see
Pearl as a gift from heaven, and she doesn't see how she has been blessed. She wallows
in her guilt, though surrounded by God's favor, and at one point she tries to
remove the A, and in great literary symbolism, Pearl can't see her mother
without it. It is as if her redemption is based upon her acknowledgment of her
Sin, her wearing of it in public, and we hate to wear it don't we. It's there
from the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, though Adam and Eve share the Sin,
and know that God already knows, when he comes the hide, and they cover their
nakedness. . . and then they play that blame game. It is a tendency. We have a
real problem with standing naked before the world and before God, but that is
what confession is about.
So this
morning I'm going to talk not about our strengths as a church, but about our
weaknesses, and I'm going to do my best to leave them out there, to not cover
them up, to not couch them in excuses, to not render them benign with
explanation, to not balance them off in a sandwich of positives, like we are
told to do when we write progress reports at school, but instead just to let
them hang out, just to let them be, and
to just nail them to the cross, and place them at the foot of God, and then at
the end we will acknowledge them, and we will thank God that we are forgiven. So
while I do this, confessing my own weaknesses alongside the weaknesses we share
collectively as a church, I want you to think of your own, and if I start to
explain or give excuse, trying to mitigate, I'm want to remember Pearl, and
remember that fig leaf, and try to fight off that all too human self
preservation temptation.
The
weaknesses that I'm going to talk about all have to do with our work here at
church, not necessarily out in the world, but things where we fall short here. There
is a great joke, that isn't in good enough taste to tell from such a sacred
pulpit as this, but the punch line is, "Damn Brother, I don't believe I
would have told that. . ." It is not for that type of discomfort that I
speak, but for honesty. The conversations that we are going to have over the
next five weeks, will be much better in the clear air of honesty. Wouldn't a
little honesty go a long way in our world, even if it was painful in the short
term.
Let me start with me. I have been your
minister now for three years now, can't believe it, and I have learned some
things about myself in that time. I have learned that I have some strengths as
a minister. . . well Pearl. . . but have many more weaknesses. And probably the
biggest one, that stands out more than any other is that deep down I am still
the shy kid who fears new and uncomfortable situations, and I hate the
telephone. I do, when I need to call someone, I am still the 7th grader, on the
upstairs phone, breathing hard, and staring at the crinkled up paper with Amy's
phone number on it. "Who is going to answer? Will I recognize their voice?
What if I do, should I say their name? Should I ask if she is there? What if
she answers the phone? What if her dad does? What if her brother does and I
think it's her dad?" Add twenty some years to that and the same questions
come around. . . ok I'm calling, but I'm calling for so and so, what if her
husband answers the phone, sure I'd want to talk to him to, but I'm not calling
for him, I'm calling for her, how long do I talk to him, . . . whew answering
machine. . . I start mumbling, wait what, did that make any sense?" Silly
I know, juvenile, I know, but absolutely true. And it is the same thing for a
visit. . . would they want me to come over? Would I if I were them? How often?
How long? It's pretty amazing what I can do to convince myself that the time
isn't right, and that oh well I can just do it next week, and then months go
by, and then it is worse now than it would have been. Childish right, yeah, but
there you go, it's out there. . . and it has created some issues. I've dropped
the ball when I shouldn't. It has led to some miscommunications and challenged
relationships. It really has. I know it, and some of those I'll never get the
chance to repair, because sometimes it really is too late, death has a way of being
final doesn't it.
But that
leads me to my next thing. . . and I'll own this as part of me too, and a
weakness that I have, but many of you share it, and that is that we are all too
nice, and so we fear conflict, or maybe we don't fear it, but we sure avoid it
whenever we can. And it leads to division and problems because we aren't honest
and up front with each other. We don't own our opinions, and we don't fight
battles, and we go along to get along a lot, and rather than confronting issues
head on and actually working to fix them, we do the go around route. We talk to
this person, and they talk this person, and we agree to each other's faces, but
then later we change our mind, and then when we are found to have been silently
right, then we say things, like, "Well I never really wanted to do that
anyway." It happens. We all do. I do too, and it hurts us. Conflict is
scary because sometimes it seems that there is always a winner and a loser, and
that just doesn't work for us, we don't want anyone to feel bad, we don't want
ourselves to feel bad, and so we put it off, and hope that the winds will die
down, but it usually doesn't. Just like the phone call I didn't make, it only
gets harder down the line.
Now the
little fearful voice in my head is screaming out, man are you opening up a can
of worms. Really do you want people to be more honest, to be more blunt, to be
more frank? Do you want more friction? Are you just inviting hard feelings?
We're a small church, can we weather a storm like that? Can we get through
divisiveness? Any divisiveness will destroy us. You are right it will, but you
never resolve conflict by avoiding it, just like I never make phone calls I
don't make. We all have fears, and our fears may be real and warranted, or they
may just be the silly juvenile voice of insecurity that sometimes has too much
voice, but we all have them. . . and a little faith goes a long way, and not
just faith in ourselves, but faith in each other. Oooh Pearl there I go, just
let it lie. . .
but before
I do, I just want to share one last story. We've been struggling through a
tough football season. And we've gotten to a point where we've made decisions
as coaches and players that we can't get back this season. We can't undo some
of what we've done, and it all revolves around faith. Us as coaches having
faith in the players. . . . and for us it was stuff like, "Well can they
handle it? Can they handle us being tough on them? Where is the balance? Are
they going to quit? We can't expect too much of them can we?" Well we
didn't and so now we don't get much. . . lack of faith. And the players, they
lack the faith in themselves, the confidence, and from their lack of faith in
themselves they also doubt each other. And it is too late now really to undo
some of that because there just isn't enough time left. Isn't that it, there
just isn't enough time is there. There never is. That's the difference with
God. God is infinite, there is always more time. . . there is always more, the
end is our illusion. . . and since there is always more time, there is no such
thing as too late, yesterday would have been ideal, but today will have to do.
Today will have to do. . .
Now when
we do our unison prayer of confession and we have things that we share that are
very human, and sometimes connected very much to the teaching of the sermon. .
. well the teaching of the sermon is next week, and it will be filled (I hope-
Pete don't build this up too much what if you can't deliver, you're right I
can't deliver, but Jesus will, so go ahead) with hope, with vision, with
possibilities, with forgiveness, and love. . . but right now, as we do every
week, I want us to silently think about how we each fit into this picture,
where do we fall short, what could we do better, bear your soul, naked and
without excuse before God, for his love is steadfast and his ways are sure. . .
I began this with a reading from Hebrews. . . it went:
14 Since then
we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son
of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we have not a high
priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every
respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us
then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help in time of need.[2]
Let us in our weakness go before
God. . . .
Silence
Who is in a position to condemn?
Only Christ, and Christ died for us, bearing our Sin, Christ rose for us,
showing us the possibilities of what forgiveness can do, and Christ reigns in
power over us, what more shall we fear, know you are forgiven and be at peace.
Amen.
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