Confiteor
Ash
Wednesday (Year ABC)
26 February 2020; 12 noon and 7 p.m. Spoken Mass
26 February 2020; 12 noon and 7 p.m. Spoken Mass
With
Imposition of Ashes
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland,
Oregon
The
Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of
flesh. Amen.
Lent is a time of admitting to
ourselves and to God the truth about ourselves.
The word “confession” does not mean “say you’re sorry.” It means to acknowledge or publicly admit
something: that’s why a public
declaration of faith is called a confession, like the Westminster “Confession
of Faith” or St. Augustine’s great autobiographic book in the form of a prayer,
“Confessions.” The 1662 Book of Common
Prayer is very clear that “Confession” is an acknowledgement or admitting of
the truth about ourselves.
“Almighty God, Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, maker of all things, judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail
our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously
have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy Divine Majesty,
provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly
repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them
is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us,
Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ's
sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve
and please thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of thy Name;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
When it says the burden of our sins
is intolerable, that is in the old sense of the word: it means they cannot be borne or
carried. This confession, which remains
in Rite I in our current Prayer Book, might strike us as a bit harsh and overly
dramatic in its penitential tone, but its essence is one of admitting the truth. And we must not forget the fact that we fall
short of what God intended when he made us.
1 John says:
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; 7 but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10)
In all of this, we must remember the
truth expressed in the collect for Ash Wednesday: God hates nothing God has made and forgives
the sins of all who are penitent, that is, who turn back.
The English word confession comes
from the Latin Confiteor, meaning acknowledge as true. It comes from the prefix con (with) and
fateor “allow or admit. The point is
that we allow or acknowledge the truth together with someone, whether God, our
community, or simply another person.
We often miss the point when we talk
about Lent as a season of “repentance,” “penitence,” and “confession of our sins.” We think of these terms simply as violating
God’s laws or commands, and turning aside.
But sin as a concept is far broader than this legalistic view. Most modern theologians define sin either teleologically or relationally: something that
turns us aside from what God intends when he creates us, or anything that
separates us from God or others. God
loves us regardless, and so it is more a question of talking about things that in our own hearts and minds separate us
from the love of God.
Danish theologian Soren Kirkegaard
said “Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God . . . Faith is: that
the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in
God.” Confession and repentance are
processes that help us know who our real selves are, and make us more and more
hopeful and welcoming of that truth.
Lent is a time to intentionally
reconnect, both with what God intended when God made us, and with God
himself. We are told that to do this,
we must be humble. The Latin word for
humble, humilis, is related to the noun for the ground, humus. In the story of creation, the man and woman
are called human because they are made from the soil, the humus: “Unto dust
thou shalt return.” So being humble
means getting down to earth, close to our origin the dirt, sending down roots
and getting grounded.
For a holy Lenten fast, let us not
rend our garments, but our heart: open
it to Jesus, and use these forty days to wander through our secret rooms at our
leisure, seeking grounding.
Accepting who we are, admitting or
acknowledging the truth about ourselves, is the key in this grounding, in this
getting close to earth, in this humility.
We are God’s creatures, whom he declared “very good” when he made
us. But we have turned aside from the
beauty he saw in us when he declared us “Very good!”
If we open our hearts to Jesus, he
will heal us. He will give us strength,
and the inner peace needed for the journey.
He will indeed make us anew in his own image, and bring us to his glory
and joy.
Thanks be to God.
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