Liturgy Series Part I: Confession and Forgiveness

Christ icon that I made for a class project
using magazine pages, 2011

The Confession is one of the most bewildering parts of the liturgy and probably feels really uncomfortable to members of our worshipping communities that have not been a part of a congregation before.  That, and the fact that culturally, we do not spend much time talking about our human failings.  We would rather attempt to cover them up and polish up our image and do everything possible to get ahead.

 The minister leading the confession usually leads with some sort of introduction such as,

"Let us confess our sin in the presence of God and of one another..."

As a child, and even into young adulthood, I was attempting to list all of my sins in that short bit of silence.  I was frustrated by the fact that not only did I not have enough time to confess all my sins that I remembered (in my operating definition of the time, sins were all the bad things I did), I was tortured by the fact that I could not remember all of the things that I did wrong.  And reciting as corporate confession, such as that in setting one of the the Evangelical Lutheran Worship/ELW, our main worship book,

"Most merciful God, we confess that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.  We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone.  We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.  For the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.  Forgive us, renew us, and lead, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen" 

sounded hollow at times.  These were not MY PERSONAL sins.  I was (and am) more likely to be jealous and mean to my sisters and impatient and controlling.  I found that I was frantically trying to confess all my sins as I remembered them and hoping to atone for them.

Martin Luther experienced these same frustrations and this is part of what led him to do much of his writings.  What makes Lutheran theology different is our understanding of sin.

This is probably going to come as a shock...

But sin is not something you do. It is a state in which you reside.  If we understand sin to be something we do, the reverse side is that we think there is something that we can do to save ourselves from that.  And that is simply not true.   Martin Luther refers to this as "incurvatus se" or the turning in upon the self.  What we testify to when we participate in the community confession is that we are utterly dependent on Christ.  We cannot save ourselves from sin, death, and all evil.


My friend Kae, who is the lead pastor at Mercy Seat (ELCA), describes confession in this way,

"Confession is me acknowledging that if Adam and Eve hadn't eaten that apple, I would have.  Confession is me acknowledging if those people who called for Jesus' death on Good Friday had not done so, I would have been the one shouting 'Crucify Him!'"  

Confession is painful because it gets at the very core of who we are.  But confession is not just confessing our sins.  The other component is just as important.  Forgiveness.

Confession and Absolution is proclamation of the Word.  We confess that we are dependent on Christ, but in the absolution (a fancy word for forgiveness) that is proclaimed for personally as Christ is "for you."  It is to say, Christ died for your sins for now and all time. You are forgiven. You are loved.  You belong.

The presiding minister (or any member of the priesthood of all believers, since we are all filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to forgive sins) says something along these lines,

"God who is rich in mercy, loved us even when we were dead in sin, and made us alive together with Christ.  By grace you have been saved.  In the name of Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven.  Almighty God strengthen you with power through the Holy Spirit, that Christ may live in your hearts through faith.  Amen."

And that is it.  It is done.  There is nothing left for us to do because it has already been done for us.  To that, I say, "Thanks be to God!"  We do not need to list all of our sins, because they are known and already forgiven.  God does not need us to enumerate them and to do penance for them.

Now, private confession and absolution for specific things that weigh on the heart is a rite in the Lutheran Church and I believe deeply in this for the burdened conscience.  But this is solely a matter of pastoral care, not a prerequisite for being "right with God."

It has already been done.  Amen.

Part II: Kyrie

Liturgy Series: Introduction

A. Hanson, Haarlem, Netherlands

One of the things about which I am most passionate is liturgy.  So I am going to embark on a blog series about the different parts of the liturgy and what this means and why it matters.  There are four basic parts of the liturgy, Gathering, Word, Meal, and Sending. I am going to break these down into the subheadings that appear in our worship bulletins.

I have quite a few friends and people that are close to me who are new to Lutheranism or church in general, and liturgy is one of the most intimidating things to them.  To them, liturgy is something that everyone else seems to know and it demarcates the difference between who is "in" and who is "out."  And this is the exact opposite of what Liturgy should be.  I can only speak to my tradition, the ELCA, so I cannot speak for what liturgy looks like or means for other traditions.

Liturgy as we know it is derived from a Jewish service of the Word as practiced by Jesus himself (Luke 4:14-21) and a meal that is the sharing of bread and wine in remembrance of Christ's death and resurrection (Matthew 26:26-29).  There are scripture readings included in the liturgy, including psalms.  Each component of the liturgy has a biblical basis, although there is no specific liturgy in the Bible, per se.  You can read more about these scriptural components of liturgy, on the ELCA site at this link, Biblical Roots of the Liturgy.

Music is not tangential to the liturgy, in fact, it serves a very important function of illuminating and pointing to the texts.  It functions as proclamation.  It provides a communal way of remembering and reinforcing our shared story.

There is a long and dramatic (and dry) history outlined in the Book of Concord about how liturgy came to be what it is and how it served to differentiate the Lutherans from the Catholics, etc, etc.  But that is not what matters to most of us (although my Lutheran Confessions professor would probably beg to differ).  So I am going to spare you that discussion.

Instead, we move to...

Part I: Confession and Forgiveness

Internship

I am embarking on a yearlong internship beginning on August 13, 2013.  I will spend an entire year with the good people of First Lutheran Church in St Peter, MN as I learn the ins and outs of being a pastor from my excellent supervisor and the church community.  This past friday I made an initial trip down to see my new home and to meet some of the members of my internship committee.  Below I have posted a few pictures of the house itself.  So far I have had the opportunity to meet six of the ten members of my internship committee, and I think it is going to be a fantastic year!

  I will write many more posts in the year to come, but right now, check out this amazing housing!

Front of house

Backyard

living room

sunroom/the place where I will write all my sermons!

kitchen/laundry room

dining room

bedroom

"What Young People Want In Church..."

...is something that I am not actually sure of.  But I am going to make an effort to identify some of these things.

I am in a preaching intensive class this week at Luther Seminary.  Yesterday one of my classmates (a woman in her late fifties) delivered a sermon in which she used powerpoint slides.  Her reasoning for doing this was that "Young people want this in a church and they are more likely to come to our church if we do multimedia sermons."  Ummm...no.

I felt compelled to speak out on behalf of young people.  The three of us in my lab but also young people everywhere.  By no means do I have all the answers and this is just a starting point.  But I do have some unique qualifications to speak to this:
-I am a young person (I'll be 30 in a month)
-I have spent a lot of time in non-traditional congregations over the last few years
-I am training to become a pastor
-I have a call to speak change into the church

So here are some of my thoughts about this.  Please chime in as you feel so moved.

1. Young people want innovative things in church.
Now, this is going to seem to stand in direct opposition to what I said above, but bear with me.  Far too often faith communities latch onto the word "innovative" and think it means media in worship services, contemporary bands, and so on and so forth.  This is wrong.  This was maybe innovative 20-30 years ago.  Maybe not even then.  When I say innovative, I mean different from ordinary life.  I have a smart phone and a laptop that are with me constantly.  I am constantly connected and surrounded by a multimedia, multi-sensory experience.  In the church that I attend, I want something different.  We actually want to be fully present and have an experience of the divine.  We are not looking for entertainment.  Which leads me to my next point...

2. Young people want church to be part of the world
Congregations have gotten into a nasty habit of trying to appeal to young people, or furthermore any new people, by trying to make their churches as much like the "outside world" as possible.  This rests on at least two problematic assumptions.  First, that the church is separate from the world and, second, that we want to be isolated from it.  This is not true.  Just because your congregation has a coffee cart in the narthex, doesn't make me think you are cool and certainty doesn't make me want to come attend worship.  We want churches that are in touch with their neighborhoods and our country and our world.  This is not limited to once-yearly Habitat for Humanity builds or mission trips (that is another post entirely) to Mexico once every couple years or collecting food for the food pantry.  No, young people want their congregations to share life with their communities.  The good, the bad, and the ugly, which leads to...

3. Young people want church to be a place where they can be real
Coming of age as a young adult right now is a lonely and terrifying proposition.  We are disproportionately unemployed.  We are the first generation who are "worse off" than our parents.  We are drowning in debt.  We are putting off getting married and having children and owning homes.  We will likely never realize the American dream as it has been known in the past.  We are being bombarded with demands to "hold it together" and maintain a certain image because networking is important and we "never know what contact will help us get a job".  There are very few places where we can be truly who we are.  Where we can share our pain and disappointments and joys and fears. Church can be that place.  But most of all, we want to be heard in all of who we are, which brings me to...

4. Young people are tired of having assumptions made about them
"Young people" are often seen as a commodity.  And furthermore, seen as THE commodity that will save the church.  A church is seen as thriving if it has young adults and we sometimes feel only like numbers and a bullet point in the strategic plan.  We are talked about and around and all sorts of people have ideas about what we want and what we need, most of which is wrong.  There is a pretty easy way forward.  People could ASK us what is important to us, which leads to...


5. Young people want to feel valued in the church

We want to have opportunities to serve and learn in faith communities.  But it is not as simple as keeping the existing structure of volunteer positions and leadership structure and plugging in young adults.  How about getting to know us and identifying and nurturing our gifts?  This is an entirely opposite approach than currently exists and it is scary.  If you want us to lead, you might have to step out of the way to make room for us. Which leads me to...

6. Young people aren't interested in maintaining the status quo in church

The Derek Penwell article, What if the kids don't want our church?, has been floating around for awhile  and I have even written about it on this blog before.  This is painful but I am just going to say it, we don't really want your church.  This is not a value judgment.  It just is.  The Baby Boomer generation is perhaps the first in American history that has had such a wide swath of products and experiences targeted especially towards them.  They received this well.  And this huge and gifted generation has assumed that everyone else wants the same thing that they do.  We do not.  We want the same opportunities that you all have received to re-imagine and re-shape what church can be.  Which opens the discussion of...


7. Young people value authenticity
Authenticity gets thrown around as a marketing tool, particularly in churches.  Young adults have a finely tuned ability to smell inauthenticity and nothing is more pathetic than a carefully crafted facade of being "authentic."  We want congregations to recognize their own gifts and identity and live into that. Not every congregation can stand for everything and not every congregation is going to be able to be a place where young adults find a church home.  But that is okay, because we need to leave room for the Holy Spirit to do what she will and form and reform our congregations and our leaders which leads me to my final points...

8. We are open to where the Spirit is leading us and we want our churches to recognize that
Those of us who are a part of faith communities are incredibly faithful.  Our religious practices look different.  We want to discuss theology in bars with our friends.  We want to experience worship, not just attend it.  We want to sing hymns loudly and badly in pubs with our congregations.  When we start becoming engaged in congregations, it might look different than our parents and grandparents, but it is no less valid.  

9. Those of us who sense a call to serve want to be raised up as clergy in the church
We are young.  We are faithful.  We are LGBTQ.  We have tattoos.  We sometimes swear.  We have made mistakes.  We will continue to do so.  We are no different from you, yet we are so different from you. We need to be mentored by you, but we also need for you to allow us to fly and to be moved by the Holy Spirit.  

10. We want to hear when we need to step back and let a new generation lead
We won't be young forever.  Even though we are often the youngest in congregations, we will continue to age.  And if our church communities are doing what they hope we will, we won't be the youngest.  And we need to learn when to get out of the way for something new to happen as well.  At that point, we will need you to help us know how to gracefully step aside.  

This is not an exhaustive list and I would love to have this conversation continue

Grandma Amy

Amy and Grandma Amy

It's been four long years today since the world lost someone so beautiful.  Grandma Amy's favorite thing to tell her grandchildren (All 13 of us!  Plus three great-grandchildren at the time, now eight!) was that she was proud of us.  I know that she is still watching all of us and is still proud.  She was such a light in the world and we are all better for having her in our lives.  Grandma Amy inspired me to follow my dreams and to travel the world and to love big in the midst of all of it.  I hope I am half as fantastic as her someday.