Keeping Confession

What do you hear when you read the word, CONFESSION?



Do you hear Jon and Kate and Eight and laying it all out there for the tabloids?



Do you hear Dr. Phil, admonishing a husband who does not compliment his wife, or a wife who does not tell the truth to her husband?



Do you hear tell-all novel, tell all memoir -- Confessions of a Shopaholic, Confessions of a Teen-Age Drama Queen, Confessions of a Superhero, Confessions of a Manhattan Nanny? -- that is supposed to reveal the inside dirt, inside secrets of a life different than your own?



Do you see a priest in a confessional booth, and a sinner pouring her heart out to him?



Do you hear Usher (Usher - Wikipedia)singing in the background -- These are my confessions? Usher is a modern-day crooner -- a cross between Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson, and his song about confession is about a boy coming clean with a girlfriend, telling her all the secrets of his past to set the record straight, that she might not be shocked when she learns his secrets? Here confession is airing out the laundry.

Do you imagine one of the many myriad of websites where you can post your confessions secretly? Most of them are pretty torrid and, quite frankly, sensational to the point they are difficult to believe. Thus, I won't link you to any here. Many of them are pretty tame, though, ranging from: "I hate my job and I don't work very hard" to "I have a crush on my best friend's boyfriend." You get the idea. Confession here is a chance to get off the chest a guilty pleasure ("I eat at Burger King at least every other day and when my mom asks me about it I always lie") or a small peccadillo ("I took the last donut and when my wife asked me where it was I blamed it on our daughter").

I wonder, do you think of St. Augustine's Confessions (Augustine's Confessions) - his landmark work written 1600 years ago which is both an admission of his faults as a fallen man and his statement of faith in Christ as a redeemed sheep of Jesus' fold? It is a tough book to broach, but worth the read because it places the two concurrent understandings of confession side by side.

Understanding one: confession is admission of wrong, guilt, or involvement. If you like shows like the Closer this is the point of the drama itself -- to make a confession happen. This is the understanding that our culture has hyper-developed.

Understanding two: a confession is an expression of belief, beliefs which can and should be affirmed and shared. Think creeds. The Greek word was omologia -- the "words we hold in common" or the "faith we profess."

If we, as Christian people, believe, as a confession of faith that Jesus forgives sins then the whole point of confession is to confess the former in trust of the latter -- offer our sins to Christ (understanding 1 of Confession) in order that we might be made whole (understanding 2 of Confession). They are not mutually exclusive. They are interdependent, if you will.

Trouble is, when I survey the landscape, I see too many cultural messages that want to divorce the two.

The culture around us seems to be saying, "It is ethically right to admit guilt and confess shame, but to confess faith is an intellectual embarrassment." It is as though the human heart knows that from time to time it must be cleaned (see Psalm 51) but we have no idea which "detergent" to use.

If you are reading this today and feel trapped in shame, my suspicion is that your spiritual claustrophobia has less to do with your willingness or unwillingness to confess the wrong than it does with incomplete understandings about why you are confessing in the first place.

C.S. Lewis once wrote about a "great divorce" between God and humanity. One of the divisions I see, and I think many suffer for it, is a divorce between admission and belief, between confession and profession, between confession of sin and confession of faith. They are not mutually exclusive and they were, as far as I can tell, never intended to be.

May God grant you strength as you keep your confessions.

Thoughts on the Responsibility for Proclamation and the Call to Share

Driving in the car last week, my almost 8 year old asked me, "Daddy, do you think people who hate God are sent to hell?"

"No, not at all," I answered. And then, as I am also the pastor at the church my son attends, I asked, "But where did you hear that? I don't think you ever heard that from me."

He also didn't tell me where he heard it, but I have a guess. In our relatively small town he is known as my son. This means that people ask him God questions, rightly or wrongly, from time to time. Most of the kids here go to church and there is more than one flavor of really tough fundamentalism around here. Sundays in Eastern NC have a fundamental tune on the air. The air is thick with warnings of death, damnation, and calls to repent. Don't get me wrong -- this is not a "we are good, they are bad" statement. I have several fundamentalist friends, and they are among the most faithful and decent people I know. When I write "tough fundamentalists" I simply refer to those who preach judgment more than grace, and whose sermons are more about the devil than they are about Jesus. From listening on the radio, and watching on cable access, we have our fair share of these kinds of folk.

Now, I believe in repentance and the need to be honest about sin, but I think that pastoral or church ministry that abuses the fear of hell or the fear of inadequacy before God is dangerous to the last. The church of Christ cannot be a church of followers who employ fear to motivate. How can we make the people fearful of the judgment of God when in nearly every occasion (from the angels who announce Christ's birth to the scene where Jesus calms the storm) his message to us is "Do not be afraid"? Why do so many churches offer helpings of fear when Jesus seems to go the opposite direction?


This reminded me of a piece I wrote week before last for our church's newsletter. It is about the responsibility of proclaiming a good word well, without giving the temptation to abuse that privilege more than its due. Here is what I wrote (you HMPC members may recognize it)....


All this week I am preparing to go and speak to High Schoolers from all across our Presbytery at Camp Don Lee in Arapahoe, NC. It is a daunting task. To try and hold the attention of 100 or 150 high school students for 3 or 4 hours over two days…well….

It strikes me though that the message I am hoping to bring them will be compelling on its on merits, and through this merit we just might grab their ears, touch their hearts, and plant a few rows of transformative growth. That does not mean it is easy – it means it is worthwhile, it means it is worth the work. There is nothing more exciting or more humbling as a pastor than the thought that words we say and rows we plant might live for a time beyond us, dwelling in the souls and minds of those we share them with, used by the Spirit or the soul to help the hearer become a doer, the boy become a man, and the girl a woman. I suspect teachers and professors feel this dual mantle – exciting work, humbling enterprise – just as we do.

This of course, means that we had better get it right. Nothing serves the fiefdom of sin more efficiently than a lie propagated as truth or a preacher who takes theological advantage over his or her hearer’s inexperience. Imagine the shame of exploiting the spiritually vulnerable? It makes me shudder. With the zeal and the opportunity comes the mantle of responsibility. Suffice it to say that I feel a tinge of that pressure, I am aware of that mantle, each Sunday in the pulpit and each time I assume the lectern. “Please God help me get at something right, and let me do no damage in the process.”

October and November are the months we talk about a calling, a claim, in our lives to share. At your church, we talk about sharing with the church, in order that we might get it right – we might maintain a ministry, a mission, a history, and a future in the year to come. What we are hoping to “get right” is a proclamation in hopeful and joyful love that nothing can snuff out God’s light. Isaiah, the prophet, is resolute in this claim and we want to take our worship and our words and align them with Isaiah.

Will we talk about money in that process? Yes. It is necessity. But I am reminded of words that my good friend Haywood Holderness, a retired Pastor in Durham, has often shared with me. “Our job is help people do what their hearts are telling them they are supposed to do anyway – share.”

Light rises, according to Isaiah (Isaiah 58), when allow our capacity to share today to overcome our fears and anxieties about what may come tomorrow. We don’t give to get. We give to say that we trust the light more than we fear the gloom.

This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I will be addressing the Youth about all the changes in our world, and how the changes can engender hope or fear. God calls us to hope. We sometimes choose fear and our task is to align our lives with God. How does God do this? God does this through call, covenant, community, commitment, and continuity. None of these is possible without a commitment to sharing. Dare we not store up the light for ourselves alone and forget the mantle of call, the proclamation of community, or the freedom and light which only comes from sharing.

Jesus as King

"It's good to be the king."

Readers of this blog born before 1990 just may remember Mel Brooks' brutally funny portrayal of King Louis XIV in his movie "History of the World, Part I." Brooks' king is rich with gold, servants, women, and wine. He is lazy, cozy, dripping with lace. He is irresponsible - moving from feast to feast, party to party, girl to girl. He is also a fool and he doesn't know it, but the joke will be on him by the end of the film. Comedic irony might best describe him - everyone is laughing at and not with and the preposition makes all the difference.

Often kings are anything but comic. They are tragic.

I have just about decided that King Lear ought to be required reading or viewing (perhaps I should say experiencing?). The tragedy of succession has him. Which daughter to pass it all onto?

With the scepter of power comes the mantle of responsibility - to country, family, and perhaps even God. Odysseus is often the loneliest sailor of the bunch.

Think being the King is easy? Ask Saul or Solomon. How about Hezekiah or Esther (the Queen)? Want to read real tragedy? Just read study the story of David and Absalom.

The old adage has usually been: "with great power comes great responsibility" (this is credited to Franklin Roosevelt in a speech near the end of his life during WWII; and to Stan Lee, the creator of Spiderman; and also to Jesus at Luke 12:48 - at least a paraphrase of it).

I might say that with great power comes great obligation, great ambiguity, and great pressure to perform and achieve. This is particularly true when one yields power with a conscientious conscience and a compassionate heart.

One of my favorite portrayals is Helen Mirren in the movie, The Queen. Playing the reigning Queen Elizabeth around the time of Diana's death, Mrs. Mirren captures perfectly the ambiguities of duty, country, faith, power, and obligation. Following Diana Spencer's demise the Queen soon realizes that to say nothing is not an option; the country is reeling from the auto accident which has killed its favorite daughter. She also is painfully aware that to say too much is to over inflate what she perceives as the impending martyrdom of a former daughter-in-law who abandoned two sons and forewent duty itself. What is the queenly thing to do?

Or how about Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth I and Elizabeth The Golden Age - more daring movies. Surrender the nation to the Roman Church and to Spain, or attack the armada in a near doomsday move? Do nothing and be destroyed or set sail and watch the country die at sea? There is no reward but to risk -- and nothing is guaranteed. So she is ultimately stuck - duty demands to protect the people but she cannot guarantee their protection. So she risks it all and the English Navy -- thanks in part to fortune -- wins the Battle of Gravelines. History smiles upon Elizabeth, but not without many terrible tolls and costs.

Maybe it is not that great to be the king (the queen) after all?

The past two weeks we have looked at our church here in Tarboro at the three-fold office of Jesus as proposed by John Calvin. It is a way to mark Calvin's 500th birthday and a way to think about our Christology -- to share what we believe and think about the person and Lordship of Jesus Christ. Calvin's idea, and it was fairly unique to Calvin, was that Jesus is for us our prophet, our priest, and our king.

What do we mean when we say Jesus is king? Do we ever say Jesus is king? King of what?

Just consider the hymnody - the words of so many of our songs about Jesus (and this list is completely inadequate):

• "Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the new born king!"


• "Joy to the world, the Lord is come - let earth receive her king!"


• "Rejoice the Lord is King, your Lord and King adore! Rejoice, give thanks and sing, and triumph ever more!"


• "Come Christians join to sing, Alleluia, Amen! Loud praise to Christ our King! Alleluia, Amen!"


• "All glory, laud, and honor, to thee Redeemer King!"


• "Born thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a king. Born to reign in us forever, now thy gracious kingdom bring."


• "Shout to the Lord, all the earth let us sing! Power and majesty, praise to the King! Mountains bow down and the sea shall roar at the sound of your name!"

On and on. The idea of a king has been rejected by Americans for over 230 years - and yet we give kingship praise to Jesus, many of us, on Sunday morning.

I am reluctant to say much more or to go on much farther on this line of reasoning, but suffice it to say for now, only these things:

If we are to be Christians, at all, then Jesus is our Lord. He is a King of faith, a King of glory, a King of grace and we ought to respect, honor and adore him for this Kingship.

But, we had better recognize that Jesus is not an ordinary king -- ordinary kings hoard land and wealth, preserve their lives, protect their own interest, and sometimes think of their peoples. History is replete with them.

Jesus seems the opposite -- his is our King, yet he gives everything away while hoarding nothing. He offers his life as sacrifice, preserving not a single breath. He puts nearly every one's interests in front of his own. He always thinks of us.

It is as though in becoming the counter-intuitive king Jesus is able to transcend all other previous kings and be called, as Handel so beautifully penned it, king of kings, Lord of Lords (which Handel borrowed from Revelation 11 and 19).

This interplay - between the Jesus who is to be the king of kings and the servant who will offer his life in anything but a typically kingly fashion can be found at Matthew 21. In and around the story of Palm Sunday we find Jesus at his most kingly. On one hand welcomed like a conqueror, adored by the crowds. On the other, offering himself a willing sacrifice.

Do kings hoard or do they give? Do they keep or do they share? Judged in the light of Christ most kings, even with the benefit of history, look pale indeed.

Healthy Tensions / Healthy Questions

What healthy questions do you find yourself asking, from time to time or all the time? What healthy tensions do you live in?

My friend, James Goodlet, the Presbyterian Campus Minister at the University of Alabama writes a blog too. It can be found at Presbytide, and it is one of blogs that I follow from time to time. This week James writes about being a "church nerd." At its core his blog (published today)is about the healthy questions, the healthy tensions that exist between loving the church and being saddled with the stigma of church. His last two paragrahps are telling, and I am going to quote him directly. Writing about a conversation had with a student, where the student reports talking to friends who are "taking a break" from church, James writes:

The other thing that gets me is this whole “taking a break” thing. I know how it is. Heck, I lived it. I loved me some Bedside Baptist in college because Pastor Pillows almost always brought a good word. But what exactly are they taking a break from? Sunday mornings? Church altogether? Organized religion? I can tell you one thing… they ain’t taking a break from talking church or Bible or philosophy or religion. Those kinds of convos happen all of the time in the life of a student. So why can’t those kinds of discussions happen in campus ministry? And, if they did, would students show up? Or is the stigma of being associated with the Church too much to overcome?

See all the tensions in there; see all the questions in there? Pastors live with tension -- intellectual, theological, spiritual, psychological, pastoral -- all the time.

When should I speak, we wonder?

When should I act, we brood?

I know that she knows that she is dying, and I know that she knows that I know, but should I call today or wait one more day to see if she'll call me because I don't want her to be intimidated because if I call she'll finally know that I know and I am not sure that she thinks I am supposed to know how sick she really is? This is how we pastors sometimes think. Thought processes that are rife and ripe with real tensions.

Tension: how do I work to preserve the goodness of the church from the past, while equipping the church for the future?

Tension: if we don't paint the building then the building will become a bigger distraction than it already is and if we do paint it we will spend money we could spend on something else -- and perhaps the 'something else' is more righteous, faithful, or impactful than the paint we are spending the money on in the first place?

Tension: how do I tell that guy that his life is shambles because he loves hate more than he practices love?

Tension: if God can do anything, then why won't God do everything that we ask?

I hope this makes sense. Pastoral ministry is full of questions and tensions.

My best guess is that pastors are not alone in living this way. Most people live with a lot of questions and with a lot of intellectual, vocational, and spiritual tension. What I love about James's blog is that he is wise enough to know that the tension of the questions he is asking about his call, his students, and his church, has him. It is inescapable. It is not to be solved; it is to be lived through. And those are two very different things. Wouldn't life be a tragedy if we could just skip to the end? Indeed. Living through and in our tensions and questions might be the seed-root of the best forms of wisdom.

There is a verse from Proverbs that I don't often reference because it hits very close to home for some. It is Proverbs 20:21: An estate quickly acquired in the beginning will not be blessed in the end.

What happens when things come too easy? What happens when we get answers too quickly? What happens when the tension-free living, the laissez-faire existence we long for, is precisely what is given to us?

My friend Donovan gave me a Fred Craddock (you church nerds will know him) sermon on CD several weeks ago. Craddock points out that God punishes Solomon in a far greater way than almost anyone else -- God gave Solomon everything he ever wanted. "Imagine," Craddock says on the CD, "to gag on your favorite pie."

I don't want to gag. I want to enjoy. But savoring the sweet pie filling means dealing with the doughy tension of rolling out the crust, which is never easy and always messy and prone to tearing (at least in my kitchen).

Healthy questions, healthy tensions, might be the recipe for the succulent wisdom we all so desperately desire to feast upon.

Jesus as Priest

What do you think of when you think of when you think of the word priest?

1) A bicycle riding, slightly error-prone man in a clerical collar?

2) A mysterious man whispering prayers and incantations over a strange ceremony?

3) A devil-battling exorcist who journeys into realms and places dark and evil?

4) A power-crazed, truth concealing bishop who conspires to hide the centuries-old conspiracy?

5) A pedophile (I don't even like to type that word as it is unfair and unsettling)?

For better or worse, most of us who do not associate with priests all that often have our understanding of them influenced by outside forces. In the case of the incomplete listing I've offered above: 1) Mitford/Jan Karon; 2) Folklore and fairytales; 3) The Exocist or the movie about Emily Rose; 4) The DaVinci Code / Dan Brown; 5) the headlines of the past few years.

I think it safe to say that none of these depictions I have offered describes very well any of the priests I know. Just like pastors, priests are often misunderstood and maligned. Just like pastors they are given far too much credit and far too much blame - sometimes simultaneously.

The priests I know, Anglican/Episcopal and Roman Catholic, are courageous, intellectual, funny, and ardent servants of our Lord. None of them are like the punchlines (e.g. "A rabbit, a duck, and priest walk into a bar....") of the jokes which dog them. None of them are like the anti-heroic, overly religious, zealots of Southern Gothic novels; nor are they much like the tragic depiction of Graham Greene. Nearly all are humble. And nearly all want to serve their function on behalf of God -- seeing ceremony, worship, and liturgy done well; being a voice of mediating grace on behalf of those seeking solace, forgiven-ness, and love.

This week in my sermon I'll be focusing in on John 17. If you have never read this, stop reading my blog, don't worry about my sermon and go read it. It is Jesus, I would argue, at his most priestly. Here Jesus mediates between people and God. Here Jesus asks intercession on behalf of the world. Here Jesus begins the process of offering himself in the stead of so many others. Here Jesus prays for the world and for his fledgling church -- just as a priest would and does.

The sermon on Sunday takes a second look at John Calvin's concept of the three-fold office of Jesus. Jesus as prophet (I preached on this last Sunday), Jesus as priest, and Jesus as king.

When one considers that in Calvin's church there were four officers -- doctors, pastors, elders, and deacons, and none of them called priest, this may make the above nomenclature (prophet, priest, king) seem a little odd. The question is, then why does Calvin do it -- use the term priest? Why use the term priest in describing the "what" that Jesus does for us, the people loved by God and saved by grace?

I think that most of us misunderstand priests -- us meaning English speaking, Protestant, North Americans. Most of us don't know that many. Yet the word priest appears in the New Revised Standard Version of our Bible 576 times. And it very well may be true (though I have no idea how we would prove it) that the majority of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world still go to church and mass to learn from someone in the priestly office, to receive the sacrament from he or she, their priest, and to hear the words of grace proclaimed by someone they call "Father" or maybe even "Mother."

Maybe this is a good time to educate ourselves, move pass the punchlines, properly evaluate the headlines, and get beyond the fiction about the priests in our world and in our communities. Maybe as we look to understanding the priestly office of Jesus we might understand those in our lives who mediate grace, who guard over ceremony and orthodoxy, and who stand for the faith when so many others are sitting down. In my mind, this tricolon of roles defines the role of the priest as well as any. In my mind this understanding makes the priestly role a role worthy of aspiration.

Satisfied or Sanctified?

Those of you who read the Pastor’s Notebook in your Messenger (the newsletter of Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church) each month know that I like to revisit what I penned last year – 12 months ago – and see if there is any wisdom or verse to carry over from year to year. Last October I wrote a little about Ron Sider’s book Churches That Make A Difference. I concluded my piece with the following: “And so I wonder as October comes, how has our church made a difference in your life? And, have you told anyone about it? Shared with them in order that they might see what the Spirit is doing?”

This week I once again came across Frederick Buechener’s little book, Wishful Thinking. On page 104 he writes that once God’s mercy transforms us, though the process might be slow, “the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person.” Presbyterians understand this process, this growth, as sanctification. It is our discovery that God loves us even in our frailty and that God is calling us to live lives which are anything but idle.

I am hoping you’ll use this October, and this fall to engage in a process of introduction and reintroduction to our faith, our church, and our shared ministry. I am hoping you’ll invite a friend or a neighbor to come and see the new “face-lifted” sanctuary, see the changes on Trinity Trail, or to be a part of our Bible Studies. Fall rolls around, and events like Rally Day (September), World Communion Sunday (October), Stewardship, Fall Music, and the Church-Wide Talent Show (November) give us a chance to discern where we are, where God is, and what disciplines we might pursue to allow these two parties, us and God, to be drawn closer together.

I wonder – do we live satisfied, or do we live sanctified? The former always leaves us wanting for more; the pursuit of satisfaction is always only pursuit. The latter, living sanctified, leaves us wanting for nothing; sanctification is more about getting caught. It is when we are caught by God that church makes a difference and faith comes alive.



(This will appear in the October, Messenger. Readers in Tarboro get a peek at what will be printed next week and mailed to the church. I have edited it for content.)

The What of Christ -- Jesus as Prophet

You remember the rules of non-fiction right -- who, what, when, where, how. Those are the facts. Colonel Mustard murdered Professor Plum in the parlor with the candlestick. Add CSI -- and according to the temperature of the corpse, it happened about 10:30 PM last night.

The why, though, belongs equally to fiction and non-fiction. Why connotes motivation and inclination. The facts may be elementary, but as Watson knows, the motivations that rule the human heart are a stormy sea at best.

The best fiction in fact, delays the revelation of the "why's" of its characters as long as it can. Why is commentary on the human condition. Show me someone who is in love with why and I'll show you a poet, an artist, a theologian, a prophet, a story teller. The how, when, what, where guys and girls are engineers, and thank God for them! Why is more elusive, less predicable, more dramatic, and ever linked to relativity. To wit: a 24 inch candlestick in your living room and in Colonel Mustard's study are the same 24 inches. But in your living room the candlestick provides light, in Colonel Mustard's it strikes death. Why? Why is the realm of creativity and hypothesis, motivation and individual desire.

Strangely enough - why is also the domain of the pulpit. We spend, we preachers, inordinate amounts of time wondering about why God loves, why people sin, why we need grace? The why of Jesus is oddly, considering the complexity of why, known. Why is there a Jesus? Because God is love and because he fulfills God's plan. Additionally the Who is known: son of Mary, son of David, son of Man, son of God. So is the where: Palestine, Samaria, Judah, Israel, Sea of Galilee, and Jerusalem. The How is a bit more mysterious but might be understood thusly: birth = conventional; life = extraordinary; death = crucifixion; resurrection = creative and recreative power of God itself. The When is settled: the first century between the years of 4 AD and 38 AD roughly. The What of Jesus, though - well that may be a different matter.

That Jesus is the Savior, I confess. And I am glad for him.

But What does he do for us as the Savior? I said two weeks ago at our church that if Jesus' only work for us were to save us through his death, offer us grace and divine forgiveness, then he need never leave home and simply wait for the Romans to arrive. But that is not what happens. He teaches. He shares prophecy. He offers food. He heals. He challenges easy assumptions. He calls. He threatens the established orders. He shares -- oh my God the man shared! He gives. Why is he doing all of this? Because he loves.

But What is it -- What? -- that he wants us to take from this?

That is why I am preaching this Sunday. To get at the "what of Jesus" -- what do we make of him and what does he mean to us and make of us?

I will exploring Calvin's threefold office of Christ, which I think is Calvin's way of saying, beyond a simple confession that Jesus was the Son of God (which is more Who than What in my way of thinking), the What of Jesus that was and is.

What is Jesus? A short answer, and Calvin's rather unique answer is that Jesus is prophet, priest, and king.

Prophets share God's truth.

Priests mediate God's love.

Kings proclaim a kingdom.

Doesn't Jesus do all three?

Strange it may be, but most Christians, I think, agree on the who, how, where, when, and why of Jesus. It is the what that trips us up? Is Jesus judge or redeemer? Or maybe both? Is he victor or sacrifice, or maybe both? Is he prophet? Priest? King? Do you know your own understanding of the What of Jesus, the What of Christ? What do you make of him? Better yet, what has Jesus made of you?

I'll have another blog on Thursday or Friday this week. Until then.....

May grace abound in our lives.