Good morning. I want to thank you for your many notes and emails and especially prayers! related to my training for and running the Portland Marathon last weekend. It was a very good experience, I’m really glad I did it, I’m really glad it’s over. The hardest parts were the last three miles, of course…and the halfway point. At my pace, almost exactly the time I hit the halfway point, I know that someone has just finished the race! I have taken a pledge, though, that I will use great restraint in not overusing running analogies in sermons.

Today we continue our fall series on “Spiritual Disciplines.” In the first week, we talked about the disciplines in general. We talked about a longing that many of us feel to go deeper with God. And we said that, instead of being things that only spiritual supermen and superwomen can do, instead of things we have to do, or should do out of guilt or anxiety…spiritual disciplines are things we routinely do in order to respond to God and cultivate our relationship with Him. To go deeper.

Two weeks ago Jeff talked about the discipline of prayer. Last week Tim talked about the discipline of reading scripture. Those are both ways of “building up” our faith. To take the “cultivating” analogy further, those are both ways of enriching the soil.

This morning we will talk about a different type of discipline, one that calls for stripping down and removal. It is equally needed. To return to the garden analogy, a good gardener enriches the soil, builds it up with compost or nutrients - but also needs to weed out things that will be detrimental to growth. So this morning we will talk about the discipline of Confession.

Reading: I John 1:5-10.

Next week, I’ll be driving down to Renton to visit a friend who is in jail. I already know what I’m going to find, because I’ve done it several times before in various places. I’ll go through a whole bunch of security, and eventually make my way to a large, open and bare room where I’ll sit in a sterile plastic chair.

When the time is right, my friend will be escorted and appear on the other side of a very thick plexiglass-type window. He’ll pick up a phone receiver on his side and I’ll pick one up on my side and we’ll talk.

The room I’m in will be noisy, crowded with a dozen other people doing the same thing. My friend and I will talk, phone to phone for a little while. I’ll see him through the slightly cloudy plexiglass. I’ll hear him through the tinny phone connection. It’s better than nothing, that’s for sure. But there is a thick solid plexiglass wall set squarely between us. It makes it hard to be togther. Now, we could pretend it’s not there, but we’d be fooling ourselves.

We can’t really even talk about the spiritual discipline we call “confession” without considering what there is for us to confess. Our sin. Now, that doesn’t seem like rocket science, but we are living in the midst of a culture which no longer wants to deal with sin. No longer will call things right or wrong. No longer wants to lable any behavior as damaging.

I don’t care if you want to talk about our racial attitudes or unfair systems, the rate at which we file lawsuits against one another, sexuality, pornography, pride, mistreatment of people…nobody wants to talk about sin out in the open. It’s seen as either too judgmental or too depressing. Yet remember the words of I John: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

So we sit with a big piece of plexiglass between ourselves and a friend, or between ourselves and God and we pretend it’s not there. The emperor has no clothes.

Eugene Peterson says “the great, great granddaddy of all sins is the denial of sin, the refusal to admit sin.” So if we’re all sitting here this morning thinking that the Church in general, or this community at Bethany in specific, is a gathering of saints who do not struggle with sin, we’re probably done talking. If on the other hand, you understand that we are a communion of sinners, you and me included, then let’s go a little further.

If there is such a thing as sin- thoughts, words, deeds, or their absence- then we might understand our need for forgiveness. And if we understand ourselves as people in need of forgiveness, then the cross of Christ just might make sense to us as the way God chose to bring that forgiveness to us.

And so before we really even get started here on the topic of confession, we have our sin, our need for forgiveness, God’s heart inclined to forgive us and brought to effect in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Maybe that is why Martin Luther said “Therefore when I admonish you to confession, I am admonishing you to be a Christian.” It’s a package deal. Goes with the territory. A Christian confesses. That is part of what we do. A Christian simply prays and tells God the truth, admits the wrong that has crept into life and caused damage.

So the question always comes up: Do we have to confess? How many times? In what form? For someone who wants to know more of God, to go deeper- it’s the wrong question.

Do we have to confess?

No. Only if we want to cultivate a relationship with God.

Do we have to confess?

No. Only if we’d like to be set free.

There’s a sad story in the news this week about Marion Jones, one of America’s greatest female athletes. After years of vehemently denying her rumored use of steroids, this week she publicly admitted to using exactly those things. And lying to cover it up. She turned in a number of Olympic medals she had won and may face a number of other penalties. It’s a sad story.

As I thought about her, I wondered if she had been experiencing what David so accurately portrays in Psalm 32 that Keith read earlier: “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as with the fever-heat of summer.” I wondered what Marion Jones had experienced in these last 5-6 years, year after year denying the very thing she knew she was doing. Watching silently as other colleagues in her profession were found out and penalized, yet still she kept it inside. It eats away at you.

Do we have to confess?

No. Confession is an offer of help. It’s a gift, actually.

When I graduated from seminary, I was 38 years old. I was hired as an Associate Pastor in a little church in Minneapolis. My senior pastor was in his sixties, a sweet man. My first or second week on the job, I was in Ken’s office talking about something fairly serious and confidential going on in someone’s life in the community, and he pulled out a file to refer to some notes while we talked.

Then he was called out of the room for a moment. I was left there alone, and the file was sitting on his desk about 3 feet away from me. Without even thinking, I stood up to stretch, and noticed the file sitting there. I walked over, opened Ken’s file and glanced through it. Then I shut it, and sat back down in my chair. I was pretty shocked at myself. It wasn’t that it was some big deal that, that I had seen something that I was somehow going to use. It’s just that it so clearly wasn’t mine to look at. I’d never done something quite like that before. And it was so easy. Luckily Ken would never know. Right?

When Ken came back in, we resumed the conversation. Or at least he did. I couldn’t focus. I saw Ken’s lips moving but I wasn’t hearing the words. There was this other voice in my head saying “You need to tell him.” No I don’t. “You need to tell him.” But he would never, ever know and it doesn’t matter anyway. “You need to tell him.”

I’ve only been working here 2 weeks, I want Ken to trust me! “You need to tell him.” And I did have to tell him. Otherwise I would waste away. I stopped the conversation. And I painfully recounted what I had done and that I was so ashamed of myself. I cried. Ken prayed. He spoke a word of forgiveness. And he never brought it up again. Never. And trusted me completely.

Do we have to confess?

Dietrick Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor executed by the Nazis in World War II wrote a marvelous little book on living in the Christian community called Life Together. The book only has five chapters, and one of them is on Confession. And in it, Bonhoeffer asks this question: Is it a Law, that a Christian must confess? And he says no. “Confession is not a law, it is an offer of divine help for sinners.”

Do we have to confess?

No. It’s an offer of help. It clears the decks, and let’s us get back to knowing God better.

What I’ve just described is one kind of confession, confession to a brother or sister we have harmed or offended.

There are three other kinds of confession I want to at least mention.

Sometimes we need to confess individually to God. Personally, simply, honestly. Telling God the truth. Keeping the relationship clear, not allowing things to come between us. Read the Psalms. In many ways they reflect David’s relationship with God. There is joyous celebrating, there is somber worship, there are lots of complaints, there’s some anger, some depression, and periodically, there is confession. David says “God, I blew it.”

If we are to confess our sins to God, we will need to regularly examine our life.

• What has crept in?
• What was our motive for something we did, where did we try to act like someone we’re not?

There are any number of techniques for doing these “examinations,” but they all take one thing: time. The one thing all of us say we have none of, but if we don’t make time to reflect and confess we just keep stacking layers of plexiglass on top of each other.

It’s also hard to confess the whole story. Relatively easy to confess part of what is needed, but we always want to fudge. There’s always an asterisk. “Lord, I confess the anger I directed at Curt (even though he probably deserved it).” “God, forgive me for putting myself forward like that (though it was pretty cool…).” “Lord, if I did this…”

We need to confess the whole truth.

At other times we need to confess to God…but through another person. Why? Can’t I just go to God myself? Do I need someone else? Do I have to do this? No. It’s an offer of help. This is an intensely practical piece to confession. Sometimes, we need the concreteness, the responsiveness, of a human person, a Christian brother or sister, standing in front of us. Difficult? My goodness, yes. But what is it we are after? Making people think we’re something we’re not, or going deeper with God?

I have a friend who struggles with internet pornography. He periodically calls me and says “I blew it.” Confesses. Really difficult for him to do. A couple of things go on. One is that it releases the burden of secrecy that he has carried around. Sin has this way of carrying an amazing degree of power when it is buried within us. Speaking the word of confession shines a light into a dark place and breaks the power it held over us. Secondly, it helps us avoid sin in the future. Confession may not be fun, but it provides a deterrent. “I know if I do this, I’m going to have to call George and confess it. I think I’ll make a different choice.”

There’s some important groundrules to these confessions. If you feel the need to confess something in your life to a friend, let them know it’s serious. Don’t take it lightly. Be intentional and sit down with them to explain what you’re doing. Ask for them to hear you out.

If you are receiving confession from someone else- don’t cut them off. And don’t minimize what they’ve done. It’s not the time to say “Oh, that’s no big deal.” Nor usually is it a time to reciprocate: “now it’s my turn.” Once in awhile, but not usually. You are listening as with the Lord’s ears, and something important is going on. You need to listen, asking questions only to clarify. And I suspect it goes without saying that you need to hold such things in strictest confidence.

And finally, it is important to speak a word of forgiveness. I’ll say more about this in a minute.

Finally, we confess to God corporately, as a community. Every time we gather as a community at Bethany for worship we set aside some time for confession. Every time. Rhythm. Regularity. We don’t always do it well. Sometimes we whip through it too quickly. Sometimes it might feel that you have nothing to confess. Still we set aside time. Sometimes we pray a prayer of confession in unison. More often we have space to silently reflect and confess. But every time we worship there is space for confession. But it doesn’t end there. We don’t confess simply to get a psychological new start.

Every time we confess, someone speaks the word of forgiveness. In the bulletin, it’s called the Assurance of Pardon. In a group setting like this the worship leader like Keith might remind us of I John: “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We are forgiven.

In another setting, like a small group of mine, we sometimes confess to one another. And when someone confesses how they’ve blown it, it’s usually pretty quiet. I sometimes ask the group “What’s the word that we can speak to this brother?” And someone will speak the word: “In Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven.” Or “Because of Jesus Christ, you stand forgiven.”

It’s a critical, critical word. It’s not just that a human being says “it’s okay.” And it’s not that we are “generally” forgiven, because we don’t sin generally. We sin specifically. And the way that God chose to deal with sin was to destroy it through the cross of Christ. So we speak the word: “In Jesus Christ, you are set free.”

Do you want to go deeper with God? From your end, what can you do? Confess your sins. Remove the things that hinder you. When we confess, amazing things happen. Weeds are pulled out of good soil. Barriers are removed. No longer is there a thick plexiglass that stands between us and our brother/sister. Or between us and God.

Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing next week if, when I went to visit my friend at the Renton jail…he sat down across from me. And we could reach across the table, grab each others hands, talk, laugh, listen to one another, with all barriers removed? It is God’s intention for us. To be set free.

Do we have to confess?

No. It is a divine offer of help, for those who desire to go deeper with God.

Will you join me, then, this morning, in a time of confession?

Holy and merciful God,
in your presence we confess
our sinfulness, our shortcomings,
and our offenses against you.
You alone know how often we have sinned
in wandering from your ways,
in wasting your gifts,
in forgetting your love.
I ask, Lord, that even right now you might call to mind for us, things we need to confess to you, or people we need to talk to maybe even this very day.

Have mercy on us, O Lord,
for we are ashamed and sorry
for all we have done to displease you.
Forgive us our sins,
and help us to live in your light.

Assurance:

Hear the good news. It is really, really good!
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance,
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
He himself bore our sins
in his body on the cross
that we might be dead to sin,
and alive to all that is good.
I declare to you in the name of Jesus Christ,
you are forgiven. Thanks be to God.