SHOULD BELIEVERS CHURCHES TAKE UP LITURGICAL CONFESSION OF SIN?

Marlin Jeschke

Confession of sin has been a standard fixture in the liturgy of many churches for centuries. You may remember the old cadences of the Anglican or Methodist traditions, where the congregation recited, "We have broken your holy law. We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us."

The absolution used to be intoned in words such as those from John’s Epistle, "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Today churches may have updated the language, but confession is still in the liturgy of most mainline churches. Because of the age and ubiquity of this tradition, it may sound like sacrilege to question it, but I believe it does call for examination.

To begin with, I wonder why there’s always a confession of sin but not a commendation for the opposite—obedience to God’s law. In just about any Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Mennonite, or other church, the average member obeys many more of God’s laws in any given week than he or she breaks. If so, it would be more appropriate to have a positive confession, something like, "We are grateful that, thanks to your grace, we have kept your holy law and that there are encouraging signs of healthy spiritual life within us."

Now I’m sure that many people would immediately say this smacks of self-righteousness. But why? A confession that we have obeyed God’s holy law is, as I have said, thanks to God’s grace at work within and among us. And to acknowledge that we have obeyed God’s holy law is as true a statement as to confess that we have broken it.

Perennial confession of sin without a commensurate recognition of the considerable extent to which we do not commit sin in our lives is psychologically unhealthy. As contemporary psychology would tell us, we must not only be honest about our failures and weaknesses but also give honest recognition to our self worth. Healthy personal and social ethical life is not possible without it.

Imagine a home in which at every supper Mom or Dad says, "Now children, let’s all confess what we did wrong today, and ask for forgiveness for it." Imagine that they did so without commending the children for the good things they did, or celebrating their many positive activities and achievements. What a downer!

We shouldn’t need a psychologist to tell us what’s wrong with a family in which, at the breakfast table, Dad can talk only about the free throw his daughter or son missed in last night’s game, and not about the 17 points she or he did make—or about that daughter or son’s good sportsmanship. (A missed free throw may not be a moral matter, but the principle of negativity is still there in Dad’s harping on it.) Sad to say, too many families do need a therapist to remind them moral behavior doesn’t happen without positive reinforcement.

But there’s another aspect to perennial confession that bothers me. It is the routine and general character of the confession that seems to give no attention to serious correction of those failures we do acknowledge.

Let me illustrate. Suppose patients came to a physician time after time for periodic checkups and confessed, "Doctor, we haven’t observed the rules of health. We still haven’t given up smoking, still have not overcome alcohol misuse, still not gotten adequate exercise, and still are overeating." Imagine that each time the physician said, "You’re forgiven."

We would think there was some serious irresponsibility here. Any self-respecting doctor would counsel such patients on how to join Alcoholics Anonymous, get into an exercise program, or start a healthy diet. It would be unconscionable to tell a patient not working at correcting such problems that she or he was simply forgiven.

Unfortunately most liturgical confession means little or nothing the following week in the lives of those who made such a confession. That is the feeling I get when I hear the weekly confession of sin in any church.

God knows confessions are needed on occasion—but for specific failures. If there has been an ethical lapse in the congregation, the entire congregation, not just some individual, may be prompted to confess the failure in life or ministry that led to such sin.

Yet that confession would, I hope, be accompanied by action, as the individual or congregation took specific steps to deal with failure much as physician and patient might take steps to deal with a health problem. Confession is real only if it is a step toward changing behavior, and that happens most effectively when it focuses on and names specific sins and is not just a general incantation.

It’s important here also to understand the true meaning of forgiveness in response to confession. Rightly seen, forgiveness is not perennial absolution. It is not just letting people off over and over, which is a mere toleration of continued sinning, immunizing people against amendment of life.

In contrast, forgiveness rightly understood is empowerment. Where there is authentic penitence and confession followed by an authentic word of forgiveness, it liberates people and enables genuinely changed behavior. A perennial general confession and absolution without concrete steps toward overcoming sin does not lead to spiritual health and life but anesthetizes us against it.

We need to be reminded of the origin of the practice of weekly liturgical confession. As Dom Gregory Dix points out in his ponderous tome, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945), the church of the first centuries had two services: One was a service for catechumens (converts taking instruction with a view to baptism), and the other was a service of the "faithful" (baptized believers). It was the first service for baptismal candidates that included confession of sin, and quite appropriately so, for they were turning from their past life, "renouncing the devil and all his works." They were also taught the Apostles’ Creed, which was the confession of faith they would make at their baptism.

When the service of the catechumens was over, the priest pronounced a "dismissal" of the catechumens, the word we still have behind the modern word "mass." Then followed the service for baptized believers, which included the Lord’s Supper.

For some reason the two services got merged into one service with the passing of time. Dismissal ceased to mean that the catechumens were dismissed. Instead it became the name of the merged service, which now included weekly confession of sin by baptized believers. With that, a distinction between the purposes of the two services seems to have been lost.

With the development of Constantinian Christianity, the distinction between believers and unbelievers seems to have gotten lost too. In the full-blown Constantinianism of the Byzantine Empire and medieval Europe, all were automatically Christian just by belonging to their society, but at the same time many people were not really Christian. The distinction we see in the New Testament, between those who have crossed over into the way of Christ and those who have not, was erased.

It is instructive to see how the apostle Paul writes to believers. In letter after letter he does not begin by calling for confession of sin. Paul begins instead by commending his converts for their walk, their good works, their obedience, the evidence of their following the way of Christ. True, he may follow this up with exhortation. But even in his letter to the Corinthians, in which Paul gets down to scolding and disciplining that congregation for their sins, he begins with commendation. That in itself should teach us what comes first.

We can see then how weekly confession of sin became part of the liturgy of European Catholicism, continued in European state churches, and has remained a practice also in mainline churches in America that are transplants of European state churches. What is disconcerting is the inclination of Anabaptist-Mennonite church worship leaders to become enamored with this liturgical practice. Maybe it says something about what we consciously (or unconsciously) feel our congregations have become: that we are now Constantinian too and not sure of the Christian status of our members.

If so, liturgical confession is not a cure for the challenge of perennial sin in the life of church members but actually perpetuates that problem. As we can see from the practice of weekly liturgical confession in the history of Constantinian Christianity, it does not achieve the sanctification of church members. It fosters the assumption of perennial failure; it fosters the idea of cheap grace; it doesn’t address specific failures and doesn’t help believers overcome them; and it fails to offer the kind of positive commendation for joyful obedience to Christ the Apostle Paul showed us how to use.

Confession of specific sin, accompanied by victory over such sin, is always in order in both individual and congregational life. But the weekly ritual of liturgical confession does not belong in the believers church tradition.

—Marlin Jeschke, Goshen, Indiana, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Goshen College, where he taught for 33 years.