May 14, 2008

roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the fifth

Tony and I agreed that what God wants us to do is sit the bench in humility and turn the other cheek like Gandhi, like Jesus. We decided that the correct place to share our faith was from a place of humility and love, not from a desire for power.
- Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (p. 116)

This past Sunday our study group met and it seems that all of us were deeply touched by the chapter on confession. It seems that Miller and his friends set up a confession booth at a college festival. Students would come and the Christians who hosted the booth would confess their sins and the Church's sins to the students who came in. I wish we would have explored this more...and if there was any sense that we could do something similar somehow. What would it look like for our congregation to apologize for the sins of the Church...even the ones we have worked so hard to distance ourselves from. Such an act is in part a claim of ownership of things like the Crusades and African slavery in the US...not to mention the genocide of the native Americans and various other things some of us have done in the name of God. There's a long list.

The wisdom in the passage I have quoted touches on this somewhat. There must be a stated intention of humility and love. This is not to clean the slate so that we can be influential...or powerful, to use Miller's word. It's not to increase the number of people on the roles. It is simply the act of confession, plain and simple. Such an act is to humble ourselves before God.

I suggested that this is also the purpose of having a confession in the liturgy. We don't usually do this. I bring one in during Lent and sometimes in Advent. But that's about all. Corporate confession is a rare thing in Baptist life. Though, I wish it were not. It can be an opportunity to do exactly what Miller is talking about...or at least it can lay the ground work for such a profound confession.

Posted by tripp at May 14, 2008 06:00 AM
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