Job 14:16-17 For then you would not number my steps, you would not keep watch over my sin; my transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover over my iniquity.
When I was in middle school, my friend’s grandmother took a hiatus from attending worship because her Episcopal church had stopped saying the confession before Holy Eucharist. “If I can’t confess my sins before I eat the Lord’s Supper, I may as well not take communion. And if I can’t take communion, I may as well not go,” she explained. I remember being baffled at the time—the confession was one of the more difficult parts of the service to me. I figured she was just a really opinionated Episcopalian when it came to the liturgy.
I attend a church now that doesn’t say the confession either. And it drives me crazy. Without the confession, I feel like I cannot claim the space within my own privilege to speak about Jesus’ radical message. The most central charism to my life of faith is humility. How can we speak of the blessings of Jesus’ liberating love if we first do not confess our complicity in systems of violence?
MOVING FORWARD: Spend some time reading and praying over the confession we say during Eucharist. You can find it in The Book of Common Prayer.
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