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2. Still I Rise

Confession, Absolution and Reconciliation

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Formed by the word, they are to call their hearers to repentance and to declare in Christ’s name the absolution and forgiveness of their sins. (Ordination of Priests: The Declarations)

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Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your merciful love;

according to your great compassion,

blot out my transgressions.

Wash me completely from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

(Psalm 51.3–4)

Broken

We’re probably very aware that in spite of the call we have, the desire we embrace and our will to accomplish much, we fail; something St Paul knew only too well:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7.16–20)

Doubtless we’re also only too conscious of the brokenness of our world, which is clearly not as God created it to be, and part of our task is to help with that ministry of reconciliation and restoration to help undo the work of the evil one (Matt. 13.19). But neither, of course, are we as God created us to be. We’re broken people, broken priests who need to take the log out of our own eye before we try to take the splinter out of the eye of another.

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RANSOMED, HEALED, RESTORED, FORGIVEN

Christ’s sufferings

The more we realize God’s love for us, a love even to death, the clearer we see ourselves and the sharper become the shadows cast by our sin. So as part of our developing relationship with God, the priest, like any other Christian, needs to prayerfully consider how Jesus came to earth for me; how he suffered for me and died for me. Julian of Norwich, the great fourteenth-century mystic, was given a wonderful insight into this in the ninth revelation she received and wrote of in her book, Revelations of Divine Love.1 This concerned the joy God has in suffering and dying for us, and that if he could have done more he would have. She realized God’s love is the foundation of our life in Christ and that that love enfolds, embraces and completely surrounds us and will never be taken from us. For God is all that is good, she writes,2 and in God’s compassionate gaze we can own the truth of our own being – warts and all. That’s the starting point of this book.

Held in Love’s embrace

Many hope that by embracing a new life, a life given to God, the wounds and sins they carry – whether their own or the sin done to them, the painful memories of hurt and abuse, which can be locked away in a deep recess of the heart for so long – will, somehow, disappear. They hope that they can escape from their burden.

But we know differently. As someone who carried such a burden and struggled for so long with ‘disordered desires’, I realize we can never escape our past. But the past can, with tender care, prayer, mercy, love and, when necessary, confession, be redeemed. The past makes us who we are, but a redeemed past makes us who we are in Christ. I still remember the wonder with which I read words given me when I was beginning my life as a Franciscan:

Oh, the comfort

the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person;

having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,

but pouring them all right out, just as they are,

chaff and grain together;

certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,

keep what is worth keeping,

and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.3

So it is that the priest is called to exercise not only a ministry of compassion and mercy but one of forgiveness and absolution. The Rite of Ordination does not mention that, in accompanying others, our own wounds and brokenness will be revealed. Nonetheless, it’s clear that as we go on, we’ll discover our need of healing and wholeness, masked though that might be. For this reason, those of us who have a pastoral care for others need to consider how Confession plays a part in our lives.

The greatest Love

I’ve long known that I am a sinner. Like John Newton, the eighteenth-century Anglican priest and founder of the evangelical Clapham Sect, I’ve experienced shame and confusion and realize my need for the ‘amazing grace’ of forgiveness.4 The first glimmers of my own vocation when I was 17 were accompanied by a great desire to be washed clean of my sin (Ps. 51.4). I’d been baptized and was considering confirmation when I became aware, quite suddenly, of the way sin lodged in me (and for me that concerned ‘sins of the flesh’ because, in those days, even being gay was regarded as sinful). I longed for a way to be rid of that burden. I’d just begun my working life in the City of London in an office located across the road from a Wren church and, in my new-found keenness, decided one lunchtime to look inside. Maybe pray. But I was confused; incense, statues and the Book of Common Prayer seemed odd bedfellows. But there was a sense of Presence and Mystery that drew me back. One of the things that caused me to return – for I had seen nothing like it before, except in Roman Catholic churches, which I sometimes scurried into – was the life-sized Crucifix opposite the entrance. As I stood before it, I was instantly and surprisingly struck by the sense that he died for me. ‘Such love’, it said to me, such love.

Next to the crucifix I noticed what appeared to be a large cupboard with a seat in the centre and curtains on either side which I later discovered was a Confessional. Eventually, I entered it to make my First Confession. Kneeling before a priest and off-loading all my sins (under the ‘seal’ of confidentiality) was a remarkable experience, an ‘unloading’, a shedding of the burden of my sins of thought, word and deed. I knew there must be a penance and that I was not absolved from the consequences of any misbehaviour. Quite the contrary.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church

to absolve all who truly repent and believe in him,

of his great mercy forgive you your offences;

and by his authority committed to me,

I absolve you + from all your sins,

in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Penitence means that I own my sin, promise with God’s help not to sin again, accept my guilt, express contrition and desire to repent. Confessing one’s sins is not about having it all swept under the carpet; it’s about being honest to another and, as a consequence, to oneself.

Over the years I’ve discovered confessors who’ve accepted me with mercy and found, in the Confessional, a place where I rediscover God’s loving gaze piercing through all my conflicting desires. I continue to value and recognize my need to make a regular confession of my sin, often ‘small’ and of apparently little consequence. Nevertheless, I find that ‘still I rise’, as the black American poet Maya Angelou wrote in her poem of that name, and find it a real gift of grace and liberation, as well as believing it my duty as a Christian and as a priest to make my Confession.

Sadly in some churches the Confessional has now become the broom cupboard.

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THE SACRAMENT OF CONFESSION

‘All may; none must; some should’

We know that practice of ‘making your Confession’ fell out of general use after the Reformation, but some did continue to teach its value and necessity. John Overall, a post-Reformation Bishop of Norwich, wrote:

Venial sins that separate not from the grace of God need not so much to trouble a man’s conscience; if he hath committed any mortal sin, then we require Confession of it to a Priest, who may give him, upon his true contrition and repentance, the benefit of Absolution, which takes effect according to his disposition that is absolved.5

While Confession is not the same as therapy, there are similarities, not least in the matter of needing to admit what lies deepest in my heart to another who is bound by rules of confidentiality. Where it differs is that it’s not, primarily, about who the person is (that is the matter of spiritual direction); rather, it’s about the ability of the sacrament to release a person from the chains of sin. Sadly, that well-rehearsed Anglican dictum, ‘All may, none must, some should’, has diverted attention from the real means of personal conversion and grace offered by this sacrament, which has become yet another of the Church of England’s ‘best kept secrets’. Sometimes I want to say to the Church, ‘Wake up! You’ve a great gift to offer, something of practical value.’ But it needs her ministers to realize and teach the importance of this sacrament. Every priest is called to preach repentance, and I know some will say that people are invited to consider this at the beginning of each Eucharist, but is the General Confession and Absolution really an adequate response for those who need to repent?

Evangelicals and Confession

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about what he called ‘cheap grace’, which he described as preaching forgiveness without repentance and absolution without personal confession; grace without discipleship, the cross and Jesus Christ. Yet some Christians are concerned about the notion of confessing to a priest, maintaining that only Christ has the power to absolve. Which is correct, the priest only declares the reconciliation that Christ obtained for us and entrusted to his disciples; it’s not the priest’s absolution, nor does any power they might have secure forgiveness and reconciliation. While it’s true that the sacrament must be celebrated by a priest, they’re only ‘necessary’ as officiant, not as the person with the power in and of themselves to forgive or absolve. That power is Christ’s and Christ’s alone.

In an article in the Daily Telegraph on 9 October 2013 Archbishop Welby wrote:

It is enormously powerful and hideously painful when (confession) is done properly … it’s really horrible when you go to see your confessor – I doubt you wake up in the morning and think, this is going to be a bunch of laughs. It’s really uncomfortable. But through it God releases forgiveness and absolution and a sense of cleansing.

And John Newton is reputed to have observed:

We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.

How true.

My chains fell off

The juxtaposition of the Crucifix and Confessional in that church in the City was not accidental, for in realizing the love that Jesus has for me, a sinner, my response was to fall at his feet and seek forgiveness. And as I heard the words of Absolution, I experienced in my heart and in my body that sense of elation which burdened Christian experienced in John Bunyan’s book The Pilgrim’s Progress when he comes to the ‘place of deliverance’ (the Cross) and the straps which had tied his great load of sin were cut from his back. I, like Christian, left that Confessional with a tremendous sense of joy, feeling that my life had been restored. Since then, that same sense of my ‘chains falling off’ accompanies the Absolution I receive. I will, I know, need to turn and turn again; to live a life of repentance as I seek to be open to the truth of who I am before God.

The prodigal returns

While there are many references in the Scriptures to the need for forgiveness and reconciliation, the most powerful image that has moved people to make their Confession is probably that of the return of the Prodigal, also called the Parable of the Loving Father. The one who ‘came to himself’, who decided to ‘rise’ from the filth of his life and return to his father, admit his mistakes and ask to be accepted home. The parable contains two telling phrases.