Every Wednesday three or four of us gather around the Camera to go through an ancient rite; Confessional Prayers. It was a Covid reach. We clearly started it as a cool, old way of comforting our parishoners in a not so cool, yet very old human experience with pain that takes all our breaths away.
I doubt we’ve ever had more than a dozen tune in live yet it remains my single greatest joy of any week, reading the same words in the same order in a low tech environment. Why?
Perhaps it’s because the very ritual itself has allowed we who facilitate to relax, settle in, laugh, poke fun, even argue and feel raw anger as we come to a space that is pregnant with hunger for God life but as relaxed as old friends drinking beer at a pub. K, bad illustration, but you got the point.
I was in a Naz pastors debate about Same Sex orientation and behavioral choices when one of my colleagues threw in a kinda theological explosive grenade by saying he was uncomfortable with Naz lay and clergy who describe themselves as sinners and yet Christian. There it is, that good to go, got this Jesus thing down.
Several of us pushed back, but what caught my attention was just how de-humanizing such an observation is. If I’ve learned one thing in my my six decades of following Jesus it is this. God isn’t concerned with counting my sins or keeping track of how I’m doing in the righteous look. Yet God cares deeply about the tenor and purity of my life; of my growing up in love and for loves sake. In fact my becoming human is so critical and the cultural and marketing and institutional expectations so often de-humanizing that the Trinity of God felt compelled to become human in order to save us all from becoming caricatures of ourselves instead of the real thing. Jesus life and passion is both an affirmation of what being human is all about and a pain filled reminder of what it costs to approach the simply human story.
So radical is the Biblical narrative beginning with prohibitions and moving ever toward love initiated persuasion that it finally dawned on me that in the strictest sense, Christ never died for my sin, but for me. It’s not my sins that are forgiven but me, the sinner who is forgiven. The whole sanctifying nature of repentance is that I die to the underlying hold of human vulnerability to become increasingly in love with Jesus and his heart.
So, weather it be old or new hymns or raw or new theological constructs I need a confessional just to keep my heart open and receptive. Let us pray:
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of David, have mercy on me a sinner.”
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of Mary, have mercy on me a sinner.”
Terry :) Blessings!
This weeks Wednesday Noon Prayer: https://www.facebook.com/westseattlenaz/videos/600329224619766/
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