Focus: Jesus makes the world right through confession and forgiveness.
Most merciful God,
we confess that 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.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.
Many of us have said those words weekly our entire lives. But what is really behind them?
Well, we know what was behind them today when King David was confronted by the prophet Nathan and confessed. We continue our story from last week of David’s taking of Bathsheba, Uriah the Hittite’s wife. A close reading of that story tallies up a whole list of sins: Neglect of his duties, lust, covetousness, lying, adultery, sexual exploitation, finally murder. And we could go on. David says simply, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
But wait a minute, David! What about everybody else? David certainly sinned against Bathsheba by having his way with her and killing her husband. He sinned against his family and several wives by cheating on them. He sinned against Uriah when he broke faith and had him killed. His cover-up scheme, having the other troops fall back and expose Uriah, had the byproduct of exposing his general Joab and Israel’s army to needless loss of life, to military and national disaster. He sinned against his subjects by putting his own needs ahead of the kingdom. Honestly, you and I might be tempted to turn back to David and say, “God is the least of your worries.”
But Nathan doesn’t do that. Notice he does not spare David entirely. Sin has consequences. Next week, we will hear of the troubles in David’s family and kingdom that come from his neglect of his vocations as king, husband, father. A king who does not keep justice cannot expect his house to escape the sword. But on the other hand, unlike Saul who sinned without confession, without repentance, David will live to see his kingdom pass on to his son Solomon. Confession of his sin against God is not the end, but it is the right beginning.
Why is that? Why does it matter? At St. John’s/in a few minutes, we will sing: “We give thee but thine own, whate’er the gift may be; all that we have is thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from thee.” David’s troubles begin when he tries to take what is not his. God has trusted David with so much: with a kingdom, with the land of Israel, most of all with his people.
How much do people mean to God? Look to the cross. God gave his own Son Jesus so that people, people as flawed and imperfect as David and all of us, could live. Bathsheba, Uriah, an unnamed child: these may have seemed like nameless pawns to David, but to God, each one was loved and precious. By his choices and actions, David betrayed the trust of so many. But more than anything, in his callous disregard for his fellow human beings, he betrayed the trust of God.
So how to make it right? Confession is David’s beginning. It may not seem like much, but I want to point out a couple big things that happen here.
First, Nathan in his ingenious parable: notice how he begins with a hypothetical third person, sort of a version of “asking for a friend…?” Nathan draws out David’s latent sense of morality. Even at his lowest, David can still tell right from wrong. He is still able to be outraged by human cruelty. Second, when Nathan drives the hammer home, “You are the man!” David does not have Nathan quietly removed or even “put away,” but takes a look in the mirror. Owning up to an offense, especially a really big one, most of all when you might get away with it otherwise, that takes moral courage.
This is where we fit in to this story. Why do we say confession and forgiveness every week? We sometimes think that confession is for bad people, for guilty people. That’s certainly the way it’s always portrayed in the movies with the stern Catholic priest. But the truth is confession is for all of us who want to do better. It is for all of us who want to be better than our worst moments. Confession allows us to name and deal with the big gap between our calling as Christians, the things and people God has trusted us to care for, and how we actually live. Confession is taking that kernel of morality, humanity, righteousness that is still in us even and especially when we are at our lowest, and trusting that God will make it grow and bear fruit.
In recent years, the sacrament of penance in Roman Catholicism has been renamed the sacrament of reconciliation. What’s in a new name? Well, before it was often thought that if you went to confession, said 20 Hail Marys, chipped in a little money to the church, you were good to go with God.
But the new word reconciliation is bigger than that. Reconciliation ties God back to his people and sends us back to them to set things right. When we confess, God forgives us, no questions asked. That’s the end of the matter. But that end is also a new beginning. In our lives and among those whom we have hurt, there is still a rift. Sin is always against God, but it’s also against those God loves, our neighbors. Once trust is broken, it rarely just restores itself. Part of confession is recommitting ourselves to the work of what our Jewish neighbors call “tikkun olam,” repairing the world. As Christians, we believe Christ is the one who will ultimately do this, but we are what Paul calls “ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-21),” called to take part in this work here and now.
Because whatever happened in the past, David still has a kingdom to rule. For our part, we still have lives to live, callings to answer, neighbors to love and care for. In our daily lives, God has trusted us with so much. Can we trust him every day to help us start anew? Amen.