Confession and Forgiveness

Confession and Forgiveness

At the time of the Reformation, the Wittenberg Reformers which included Martin Luther and his younger lay colleague Philip Melanchthon were determined to reform the Church. It was not their desire to start a new Church, and certainly not begin a series of splits in the Church which would lead ultimately to numerous Protestant denominations. Since they sought reform and not division, many of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church they sought to retain in the congregations which sought to be part of their evangelical (Gospel centered) reform movement. In Luther’s Small and Large Catechism Luther talks about Confession and Forgiveness. Further, Luther referred to absolution as a “sacrament” in a short appendix to the Small Catechism, in its first Wittenberg Edition (1529). In “The Apology of the Augsburg Confession,” Melanchthon in his response to the Pope and his Cardinals in Rome speaks of Confession and Absolution as a Sacrament along with the Sacrament of the Altar and Baptism.

Lent for the Baptized has thus become a time to reflect upon our own Baptism into Christ, of our own rebirth by water and the Word, of our own death and burial in a watery tomb with Christ, and our resurrection to new baptismal living as Christ’s disciples. Part of our own Lenten reflection and contemplation of the disciplines of Lent like catechumens is to consider the disciplines of fasting, prayer, almsgiving and works of love. It is also a time when we consider our own need to confess and hear God’s Word of forgiveness. As Luther insisted Confession is not a matter of compulsion. That would be to make it law. Confession and Absolution he argued instead was gospel, since we are offered through this Sacrament the unburdening of our consciences and as we receive the assurance of God’s forgiveness.

 

Most Sundays we prepare ourselves for worship with a form of Confession and forgiveness called the Brief Order of Confession and forgiveness. In this form of Confession we are invited to make known our sins we have committed and those things we have failed to do in our silent confession before God. Then as your Pastor, I assure you that as an ordained minister in Christ’s Church God forgives you of your sins. During Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday, February 18, we begin a journey in which the entire forty days, plus Sundays, is a time of penitence and self-examination. Lent originally was instituted as a final period for those who were preparing for Baptism in Rome and the surrounding Roman lands in most of Italy. In that region in the first four to five centuries, Baptism was held at the Vigil of Easter in the darkness of the pre-Easter dawn. This was the third watch of the night, when in fact our Lord arose from the tomb. It would be the next morning when the gospels tell us that certain women going to the tomb, found the sepulcher empty. Lent, was modeled on the forty days of fasting, when our Lord was tempted in the wilderness as well as the days Noah and his family were in the Ark protected by God from the flood. It reminds us of the forty years the children of Israel wondered in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land.

Lent became a period for catechumens (i.e. those in this final period of baptismal preparation) to intensify their struggle against the sins of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Catechumens were examined, and reminded of into what a radical change this washing in the waters of life was calling them to through the Holy Spirit. They were reminded of fasting, prayer, almsgiving and works of love. They often were invited to learn the Apostles’ Creed which they would confess at their Baptism. They often received the mark of the cross traced on their foreheads, over their eyes, their lips, their ears, their, hands, their heart and their feet. This “signing of the senses” was a part of the exorcism as they prepared at the Vigil of Easter to renounce the devil, the forces of evil and all of his works and pomps. The liturgies which were used in this Lent, a word which means spring (from which we get lengthen in English) refers actually to the lengthening of the days in the northern hemisphere. This spring or Lent is a season of the Church year rich with symbol and full of dramatic liturgies. The ancient liturgical texts which we can still see evidenced in these first five centuries still inform our present practice.

Since the entire season of Lent is penitential and contemplative from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday, we will dispense during Lent with the form of Confession known as the Brief Order, The form known as the Brief Order is modeled on the pattern of confession said by the priests in private during the Middle Ages before saying Mass. I instead offer the form of Confession known as Individual or Private Confession and Forgiveness. A third form of Confession as I mentioned above is Corporate Confession and forgiveness. It is a joint Confession before God as we often have on Sunday morning, but the absolution comes with a more personal sign. The sign is that of handlaying. Handling has a long history in the Church. It was used for healing, for the dying and as a blessing. It was used for ordination and commissioning. Handlaying is used at Baptism and Confirmation or the Affirmation of Baptism. Handlaying is also used in both Individual Confession and Forgiveness with a Pastor in Confidence and in the Order for Corporate Confession and Forgiveness on Maundy Thursday. The handlaying in Corporate as well as Individual Confession and forgiveness along with the words of assurance of God’s forgiveness is the sign and the word associated with which led Luther to consider Confession and Absolution a Sacrament of the Church. It is the means of Grace. Yet these two latter forms of Confession and Absolution are not law. Instead they are truly gospel, for the promise of God and through the laying on of my hands is the assurance of God’s forgiveness. Sardis has had a history under Pastor Anna of receiving these two forms of Confession and Forgiveness. They have also been a part of Lutheran worship materials back to the Reformation. I will offer the form of Individual Confession on weekday afternoons and the Corporate form as part of the Maundy Thursday Liturgy.

For the Individual form, I will put a sheet on the outside of the door to my study which goes into the back of the worship space. I ask that if you would like to come for a time for private confession with me during the week day late afternoons, you merely put an “X” on the line next to the time. Please do not sign your name. Your time for confession is a private matter which I want to honor by being present. Anything you share in that Private Confession is in confidence and I am bound to that confidence by my ordination vows. My charge in ordination was that I provide God’s people with absolution and that I have Christ’s authority to forgive sins. If there is not an “X” next to the time on the sheet, I will not plan to be there.

What is Individual Confession and Forgiveness?

In our daily living there are those things, which we do or have said or even things that we have left undone that can burden our hearts.  We know that we have erred and sinned and as St. Paul said, we have “fallen short of the glory of God.” Sometimes these concerns can trouble us and leave us with a broken and void place in our hearts. In such cases we may feel it difficult to hear the public absolution for these sins in the Confession and Absolution in our worship. In such cases we may need to share these matters with someone who will hear us, but also keep the matter confidential.  In short what we need is a confessor.

Individual Confession and Forgiveness in private with an ordained person, who is bound by his or her ordination vows to keep such confidences is an appropriate place to take these concerns.  An ordained pastor can hear these concerns and speak the words of God’s forgiveness by the authority granted him or her by Christ alone.   

Being Lutheran we have tended to think that Individual Confession was something that we no longer needed to do. We have sometimes thought that the Reformation did away with the “confessional” and that our private prayers offered to God for forgiveness are sufficient.           

What do the Lutheran Confessions Say about Individual (Private) Confession and Forgiveness?

Small Catechism

How People are to be taught to confess

Which sins is a person to confess?

Before God one is to acknowledge the guilt for all sins, even those of which we are not aware, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer. However, before the pastor we are to confess only those sins of which we have knowledge and which trouble us.

  

From: XI. Of the Augsburg Confession (German Translation)

It is taught among us that private absolution should be retained and not allowed to fall into disuse. However, in confession it is not necessary to enumerate all trespasses and sins, for this is impossible. Ps. 19:12, “Who can discern his errors?”

From: The Augsuburg Confession XI. Confession (Latin Translation)

Our churches teach that private absolution should be retained in the churches. However, in confession an enumeration of all sins is not necessary, for this is not possible according to the Psalm, "Who can discern his errors?" (Ps. 19:12).

From:  The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XII Penitence  

Confession and Satisfaction

Good men can easily judge the great importance of preserving the true teaching about contrition and faith, the two parts of penitence we have discussed above. We have therefore concentrated on the explanation of these doctrines and thus far have written nothing about confession and satisfaction. For we also keep confession, especially because of absolution, which is the Word of God that the power of the keys proclaims to individuals by divine authority. It would therefore be wicked to remove private absolution from the church. And those who despise private absolution understand neither the forgiveness of sins nor the power of the keys. As for the enumeration of sins in confession, we have said earlier that we do not believe that it is necessary by divine right. When someone objects that a judge must hear a case before pronouncing sentence that is irrelevant because the ministry of absolution is in the area of blessing or grace, not of judgment or law. The ministers of the church therefore have the command to forgive sins; they do not have the command to investigate secret sins. In addition, they absolve us of those which we do not remember; therefore absolution, which is the voice of the Gospel forgiving sins and consoling consciences, does not need an investigation.

 

But How Do I Do This?  I’ve never done this before.

Individual Confession and Forgiveness is easy. I as your Pastor can lead you through it in privacy, and you may feel free to unburden those things which trouble you, with the confidence that what you say may be held in confidence, but more importantly that you may hear the words with the laying on of hands that your sins are forgiven.