Free grace is worth everything you have - a last sermon in the Moore College Chapel, for now

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it”

                                                          Matthew 13:45-6

What is the most valuable thing that you own?

At first it sounds like a relatively simple question, and it perhaps wouldn’t be hard to think of the answer in terms of some simple possession or perhaps an investment. It may be that you have in fact answered one of those insurance questionnaires in which you are asked to put a number of dollars next to each of your possessions, just in case they are destroyed in fire or tempest, or in case they are seized by a thief; and so you actually specifically know which is the most valuable item on your list.

Is it your car perhaps? Or some real estate – that investment property? Or a piece of jewelry you’ve inherited?

Our most valuable possession is our holiday house down the South Coast of NSW. And it is curious how much time and money you have to spend to protect the value of your most valuable possession; and indeed how much of your heart gets invested in it. Being on the South Coast, the house sits on top of what is in effect an enormous termite mound. And it is made of wood – all of it, except the nails, pipes and window frames. So I recently spent money getting the thing inspected for termites and other pests. It was with great fear and anxiety that I read the report – which was basically all clear I am happy to say. For now. At night I could swear I could hear the terrible chewing jaws of the monstrous termites eating away at my treasure – and that’s from my bed in Newtown.

But the idea that value is to be measured in monetary terms is very one-dimensional and neglects the personal and human dimension of our attachments. What we value most are the things that are beyond value; or the things that are not worth anything in and of themselves but have become invested with a particular significance. They are better described as ‘precious’. Recently, my parents moved out of a large family home to a somewhat smaller residence. This meant trawling through all the strange things that they had kept, like my stamp collection and my primary school assignments. Now, these things have no dollar value at all. But they were of value to me. In fact, for me, some of these things were irreplaceable and incredibly precious. No doubt my descendants will throw them out in time.

More than that: when I think of preciousness I think of, not the things I like, but the people I love: my wife, my children. When someone in grief says ‘I would give anything to have back the one I have lost’, it is not too hard to get the impact of what they are saying. When a court tries to compensate a person for, say, the loss of their spouse in an accident, we get something of the absurdity of even trying to put a price on the loss.

In his parable of the pearl, Jesus wants to us to think very deeply about what is precious to us. Imagine a merchant. His business is perhaps the sale of fine jewels and luxury goods.

And he’s in search of fine jewels. Why? Because he is a merchant. He’s a businessman, looking to make a profit. Perhaps we should think of him traveling as far as the Red Sea – a location we know pearls were found in the 1^st Century – in search of his goods.

And make no mistake, he is after the most precious jewel of the ancient world. This was at least the opinion of the Roman author Pliny, writing in the 1^st Century. The historian Suetonius wrote that the Roman general Vitellius, emperor for 8 months in 69 AD, financed an entire military campaign by selling just one of his mother's pearl earrings. Cleopatra is said to have dissolved one of her pearl earrings in a glass of wine and drank it, just so she could win a bet with Mark Anthony that she could consume the wealth of an entire country in a single meal. Recounting the story (and no doubt exaggerating a bit, who doesn’t?) Pliny estimated the value of the pair of pearls at 60 million sesterces. It is impossible to say exactly what that means in today’s money, but that an ordinary soldier would have been 1000 sesterces per annum puts it in perspective. It is a phenomenal sum.

So this merchant is after the kind of goods that might make him a very tidy profit, if he plays it right. That’s his business.

But then he makes a surprising discovery: a single pearl of very great value. And, finding this one pearl of very great value, he does something rather odd: he goes out and sells all he has to buy it..

It’s a slightly strange moment, because we are led to think of him as a businessman, and it is unusual for a wise businessman to confine his portfolio to a single product. It is an inherently risky strategy from a commercial point of view, because he has concentrated his entire wealth on this one object. He has made no contingency plan. It is not as though he has found a bargain, either: Jesus doesn’t tell the story as if he has found the pearl at the back of some antique shop somewhere in Alexandria going for a few pieces of silver. This pearl is of great price, and it costs the merchant everything he has.

You can imagine him returning to his family after his business trip and trying to explain to his wife why the family home and its contents is up for sale.

What has enticed him?

It is the pearl.

This single fine pearl has hooked him. There’s something almost obsessive about his behaviour - as if he has not simply found a way to make a fortune, but has fallen in love with the jewel. It has become the thing he must simply possess, even if it destroys him as a businessman and makes his family life extremely difficult.

His behaviour suggests that the pearl is not simply a white rock, but a gem of extraordinary fascination and beauty. That’s the interesting thing about precious stones; they are valuable because of their rarity and because of their beauty. They have no particular function that makes them valuable, at least not primarily. They do not gain their worth because we can put them to use in the service of some industry; they do not help us to feed a city, or to guarantee our health, or to protect us from enemies. They don’t do anything.

They just are. They are simply compelling for their own sakes. Their value lies in the awe that they create. And in this case, the single great pearl is so compelling that it makes this merchant behave almost like a drug addict – with such singular focus that it makes ordinary life almost completely impossible. Desire for the pearl has completely taken over.

He reminds me of no-one as much as Gollum. His pearl is his ‘precious’. We would think of him as an unbalanced person - a man who has lost interest in everything except this one pretty thing. What would he do with the pearl once he obtained it? Would he keep it in his pocket, and just look at it when he was sitting on the train? Or would give it to his wife to wear, knowing that it could fall out of a clasp or off a chain and be lost forever?

This, says Jesus, is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Now, that should make us think carefully. Notice in the first place that Jesus didn’t say that the kingdom of heaven is like the pearl of great value, but that it is like the merchant seeking the pearl of great value, and his actions when he finds it. I don’t want to overstate the point: but it helps us to see that Jesus is directing our attention not simply to the pearl but to the response the pearl gets from the one who recognizes its beauty.

It isn’t the only reference to searching and seeking we can think of in Matthew’s gospel of course. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says ‘seek first the kingdom and its righteousness’. Indeed, a theme of the Sermon on the Mount is that the place where God rules in his justice and peace and righteousness is something that you have to long for. It is given to those who look for it – those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who ask, seek and knock. It is worth being obsessive about. If we only knew what it was, we’d give up anything and everything to be a part of it. Our whole understanding of the value and significance of things would be transformed if only we knew how singularly precious the kingdom of heaven is.

But the complication of the parable for me is this: God’s grace comes for free but it costs you everything you have.

How can this be?

Well we do need to recognize the limits of the analogy in the parable. The merchant purchases the pearl. It is expensive. A poor man would simply not have a chance in this story. He has been priced out of the kingdom of heaven.

But that’s not what Jesus is saying here. He is saying rather: the grace of God is free, but it is not cheap. Our mental habit is to think of those things that don’t cost us anything as not really worth having – as somewhat disposable. I know of instances where people have put a dollar value on an event they were putting in just to give the impression it was worth coming to – as a kind of mental trick.

The kingdom of heaven is not disposable or even recyclable. It is not made of plastic. It is, like the pearl, rare and beautiful. It is utterly compelling - to such a degree that if you grasp it the right way, it will take over your life. ‘When Christ calls a man’, said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ‘he bids him come and die’. And that’s right.

But this is not sad news, since the one who dies for the sake of Jesus and the gospel, the one who leaves behind all he has, the one who hates her mother and brother even – that one is blessed. That one has in the kingdom of heaven all that she has left behind, and more again.

Ah, we always want to think of it in terms of the economics though. We think: well, then, isn’t this actually selfish thinking? Isn’t seeking the treasure of the kingdom of heaven simply a displaced form of greed? Isn’t it just self-interest, the result of a sound calculation?

But the kingdom of heaven is not simply a transaction. Remember the disturbing obsessiveness of the merchant, that he loved the beautiful, singular pearl for its own sake, and not for its usefulness. It was not a means to some end for him. It was simply itself. So it is with the kingdom of heaven: to long for it, and to seek for it is not to wish yourself rich. It is to long for God himself; and to long to belong to the world where God’s peace, and justice, and righteousness are established everywhere; and to long for the world finally bear the fruit that even now is ripening. The kingdom of heaven is beautiful: and the significance of its beauty is that to long for it is not to calculate your own selfish ends, but to long to be part of its way of being. It is not to long to own it, but to long to owned by it.

The kingdom of heaven is valuable in just the way the people we love are precious to us. It is beyond economics. And it is like this because in it God shows us, not his accounting skills, but his costly love. Love is what makes this treasure priceless. Since God himself out of his great love gives himself to us freely in his Son, then it makes sense that in response to him we give him ourselves.

This parable asks us to remember that we here have a magnificent obsession. If we ‘get’ the kingdom of heaven, then we should not be surprised to find that what we value and how we count value are completely changed. We should be less surprised than we are at the baffled stares of our family and friends.

We should be happier to take risks with our worldly goods in light of our heavenly treasure. We should be less concerned than we are to be socially acceptable and – worst of all - nice.

And we should never forget that the proper complement to the free grace of God is to follow Christ with everything we have. It is striking to me that Jesus’ parables of grace aren’t simply about telling us that God freely forgives: they always point us to the fact that truly grasping free forgiveness means having an utterly altered life. We are not meant simply to be believers, but followers; or, better, being a believer means being a follower.

And that is the gospel you and I are called to preach. Have we got the nerve to preach it? Have we got the guts not simply to offer people a salve to their consciences, but to show them that no riches compare to the pearl of great price? Have we got the courage to call people not simply to tick a box but to a whole new way of life? Let us pray for God’s help.

You know me better than I know myself: Augustine and confession

The most famous maker of confessions of the Christian tradition was of course Augustine of Hippo, who wrote what is possible the first spiritual autobiography of all time. It would be impossible to say that it doesn’t contain passages where he self-justifies, or where he bends the truth to make himself appear better. But it does appear at least that nothing is held back. And, in any case, Augustine is well aware of the tendency of the human person to spin the truth, even subconsciously.

What saves his confession and sets it apart is his theology: it is his vision of the one to whom he confesses that makes his confession real. Here, as an example, is a passage from Book V:

Accept my confessions, O Lord. They are a sacrifice offered by my tongue, for yours was the hand that fashioned it and yours the spirit that moved it to acknowledge you. Heal all my bones and let them say Lord, there is none like you.

If a man confesses to you, he does not reveal his inmost thoughts to you as though you did not know them. For the heart may shut itself away, but it cannot hide from your sight. Man’s heart may be hard, but it cannot resist the touch of your hand. Whenever you will, your mercy or your punishment can make it relent, and just as none can hide away from the sun, none can escape your burning heat.

Augustine knows that he cannot even begin to face the Lord of all things without the grace that God gives him in the first place. It was God’s spirit who moved him to acknowledge God – without the movement of God towards him, Augustine cannot imagine himself moving towards God.

And: ‘If a man confesses to you, he does not reveal his inmost thoughts to you as though you did not know them’. This is crucial feature of the confessions of a Christian person. There is no point hiding from an all-seeing God. To tell your sins to a God who already knows them is not then an act of revelation to that God. You aren’t surprising him. As the Psalmist says:

Before a word is on my tongue

          you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before,

          and you lay your hand upon me.

So what does it mean to confess to such a Lord? It cannot ever be an act of self-justification. There cannot be such an act. It cannot be an explanation, or a diversion. It cannot be anything other than a completely open giving of oneself over to the mercy of God.

This is of course both deeply terrifying and deeply comforting to Augustine. God exposes everything that the self has in it by his burning heat. It is a complete exposure, a stripping away of all our pretenses.

But when you read the Confessions, you are struck by the tender love Augustine has found in God. He is not dismayed or terrified by knowing that he is known by God; the opposite is true. He is completely overwhelmed with relief and love at the thought that God knows him better than he knows himself.

And that’s the truth at the core of the Confessions: actually, it is God who knows us better than we even know ourselves. Whenever we try to tell the story of our own lives, we find that we simply cannot tell the whole truth. We are incapable of disentangling the web of our own motives and reasons. We have faulty memories, and minds incapable of really sorting it all out. Why did Augustine steal the pears? He cannot really say! He is unable to judge himself with truth. He even goes so far as to say: ‘…where were you when I looked for you? You were there before my eyes, but I had deserted even my own self. I could not find myself, much less find you.’

So he must cast himself on the mercy of God of the God who exposes him to himself. When he does so, he is amazed and relieved by what he finds there:

What return shall I make to the Lord for my ability to recall these things with no fear in my soul? I will love you, Lord, and thank you, and praise you name, because you have forgiven me such great sins and such wicked deeds….

A lesson in self-justification: Adolf Eichmann

The brutality of the Nazi programme to eliminate the Jews from Europe was not particularly new. What was ingenious about their evil was its efficiency. Genocide, as you know, is not an invention of the modern era. But doing it with train timetables is. The shuffling of a million pieces of paper in a thousand boring half-lit offices in the service of the final solution was in fact as savage as firing of bullets. If Zyklon B was to be used to exterminate the Jews, then Zyklon B needed to be ordered, manufactured and supplied; the whole process needed to be overseen. And these overseers and paper-shufflers were every bit as complicit in mass murder as those who actually killed people physically.
It was the young officer Adolf Eichmann’s particular role to be the overseer of the entire terrible process. He became known indeed as ‘The Specialist’ in the logistics of expatriation, the expropriation and the deportation of the Jewish people. Born in 1906, this unremarkable man had dropped out of high school without a diploma; but his rise through the ranks of the Nazi Party was rapid. He was a willing servant of their processes, and proved a very capable organizer and strategist.

The story of his flight to Argentina and his later capture by the Israeli secret service agency Mossad is well known. Amid great controversy, Eichmann was brought back to Israel to face trial - a country which had not existed when he committed his crimes. It was there that he began to construct his defence. Eichmann did not attempt to make a denial of the fact of his involvement in the transportation and exportation of millions of Jews. His strategy was on two fronts. On the one hand, his defence team argued against the right of the court to sit in judgment on him, since he had not committed his alleged crimes under their jurisdiction. The second strategy was the one that had been famously deployed in the Nuremburg trials in the 1940s: ‘I was just following orders’.

Both of these are clever strategies – though in the case of Eichmann it can never have seemed realistic to him that Israel would let him go. What was the right of this court to judge him, in a technical, legal sense? How was that established? And yet: the court was simply answering the call of a kind of natural justice. The blood of millions of human beings was crying out from the ground: there may have been a shaky legal ground for the trial, but not many people would admit to feeling that it wasn’t a good thing that such a person was being brought before a court, especially when there had been inaction from those who may well have been responsible. The right of a court to judge? Certainly, it is a question that needs to be asked; but there needs to be judgement.

But what of ‘I was just following orders’? Or, Befehl ist Befehl, ‘an order is an order’? A keen observer of the trail, the philosopher Hannah Arendt noted that in his written statements Eichmann seemed more concerned for his own career than anything else. He was not denying his involvement, at a very high level, in the system that led to the extermination of millions of people – how could he, since the evidence so plainly told against him? – nor was he particularly ashamed of his role in it. He simply claimed that he was doing what he had to. He was answering the call of the system in which he had to live; and he was doing what any of us might do in the same situation.

What was really chilling about this was not that Eichmann had horns on his head and forked tail, but that he didn’t. Arendt argued that he was astonishingly, boringly normal. His petty selfishness and his ambition made him capable of extraordinary evil; and then capable of justifying extraordinary evil to himself as an ordinary day at the office. He did not deny the truth of his own actions. He simply had no interest in widening his vision and taking in the human consequences of his actions. He shut himself off from empathy because it was too inefficient and ineffective. And, somewhere in the recesses of his conscience, he was able to shut down that sense of taking responsibility for one’s actions and say to himself: I am just part of the system, a cog in a machine. Who can blame me for that?

The Eichmann story has been told several times in books and films, and some might argue it is exhausted as a morality tale. But Eichmann still has a number of lessons for us. Eichmann shows us that you can confess the truth without owning the truth. Telling the story of your past actions truthfully is more than simply saying ‘I did it’. It is also giving a true explanation of your motives and your responsibilities in each case. ‘Just following orders’ is deeply disturbing, because it implies that a human being can somehow shut off responsibility in this way, and hand it over to someone else. It is a denial of human freedom – which in other instances we would love to uphold. We see this increasingly with the introduction of genetics and neuroscience into the mix to explain human behaviour. We are wrestling with the possibility, it seems, that our choices are not ever chosen by us. Of course, this will always be extremely one-sided, because we will be quick to take the credit for our achievements. We will still want praise for the things we do well, and we will accept the praises and the prizes, even if we decide that the things we do badly are not our fault.

The great mistake here is that we confuse explanation and context with causes. There may be a number of things that causes us to do what we do; and these causes are external to us. I may have been beaten as a child; I may come from a family of drunks; I may be part of a system that demands that I do what it says or it will punish me; but a true story of my life is not reducible to these forces acting upon me. We know this, at the very basic level, because we know that there are others who have the same circumstances in play (or very similar), and do not act similarly. That there are choices being made in the opposite direction to the ones I have made proves that my actions are not predestined by my genes or my upbringing or my culture.

There are orders, and they have a force upon us. They have the authority given to them by human institutions. They have the threat of punishment and the promise of reward, in earthly terms. But that is all. They do not penetrate beyond that. ‘Orders’ are temporal: they have their time and their place. But they too are subject to judgement, a judgement which Eichmann had a responsibility as a human being to foresee. Eichmann had no right to question the court’s authority and its jurisdiction, since he did not question the authority and jurisdiction of the orders that he himself had followed without question. If anyone was being arbitrary, it was he.

Eichmann failed to see the true context in which his actions might be judged, and by whom; but he also failed to see how far his actions reached. He was willfully blind to the knock-on effects of the things he organized. The inability to trace through the things that his actions caused made his denial more appalling. All he could see in front of him, day by day, was the paper he was signing, the meetings he was chairing, the world of briefcases and minutes and desks and lunches and train-rides home in the evening. His defence that he was merely a cog in the wheel was the wrong metaphor; he was in fact an engine turning a whole system of cogs and pulleys, not ever pulling a trigger or popping a Zyklon tablet in to a room, not ever hearing the screams of the dying, but nevertheless supplying the power that made those things possible.

We are not Eichmann’s of course. But like Eichmann we are prone to a failure of insight in to our own actions. It is a very human tendency to live with moral blinkers on; or to want to blame the system or the rules. This is why confession, when it comes, so often involves self-justifications. Explanation becomes justification; and responsibility simply disappears. This is where telling the truth becomes a screen for the deeper truth.

Prayer in Reformation Anglicanism II

The first of these homilies on prayer makes no distinction between the private prayer of the individual Christian and public prayers of the gathered community of faith. The second in the series, ‘An homily of the place and time of prayer’, is concerned with more obviously practical matters. The homilist commends the practice of keeping the Christian Sabbath, Sunday, aside for meeting together with God’s people and addresses our common prayers to him. Distractions of work and recreation ought to be put aside by the community on these occasions. Furthermore, there ought to be places constructed for prayer, so that people can gather there to do so. The true temples of God are in fact the bodies and minds of his people: there is no suggestion that a church building substitutes for this in any way. And yet, there is a good purpose in building meeting places for the people of God that encourage them in their reverent seeking after God.[1] Likewise: there is no place or time which is not fit for prayer. But setting aside a time and place for prayer is a particularly edifying practice to be greatly encouraged. 

The third homily is entitled ‘An homily wherein is declared that common prayer and sacraments ought to be ministered in a tough that is understanded of the hearers’. The title promises an exposition of a characteristic Reformation theme: that common worship ought to take place audibly and in the vernacular, and not in Latin. But there is a great deal more in this somewhat more lengthy sermon than the title gives us. The homilist takes up a definition of prayer which Augustine was thought to have authored: “Prayer is the devotion of the mind, that is to say, the returning to God through a godly and humble affection; which affection is a certain willing, and sweet inclining of the mind itself towards God”. 

There are, for the homily, three kinds of prayer – two being private with a third “common”. The first kind is that silent prayer which lifts up the mind to God, as exemplified by Hannah the mother of Samuel in I Sam 1. This is the sort of prayer that all Christians should be praying continually. The second sort of prayer is the private prayer that Jesus describes in Matthew 6, whereby the voice is used but used in private without great display of piety, since insincere posturing is so great a temptation for human beings. But there is a place for Public or Common prayer, since Scripture contains so many instances of it. And thus, for the preacher of this homily, there is no excuse for negligence in Common Prayer. In Common Prayer the people of God are united to call on him, which in itself is a demonstration of his power.

The practice of Common Prayer should, though, follow the principles for corporate worship already outlined in the writings of Cranmer and the other Reformers. That is: “Let all things be done to edifying”. It cannot be edifying for public prayers to be offered in a language that people simply do not understand. They cannot be edified if they do not comprehend what they are praying. This is as much a reason to forbid Latin as it is to be reticent about the public exercise of speaking in tongues. It is also a reason to commend careful instruction of the people in what they are praying so that when they say ‘Amen’ they know that to which they are assenting. Babbling a formula of words is of no spiritual value at all, and indeed is condemned most roundly in Scripture. If prayer is “a devotion of the mind which enforceth the heart to lift up itself to God” then the person who prays aloud without understanding what they are praying cannot be said to be praying at all. The congregation should be given a chance to prepare their hearts to pray, so that they are not simply mouthing that which is said without a readiness to agree with sincerity. 

As we have seen, the homilies are not offering a culturally different preference for a new style of praying, but are applying the theology of the Reformation to the Christian life as consistently and biblically as possible. To pray together is a significant reason that Christians gather. But they gather to pray to the God who has drawn them to himself in Christ, justifying them freely by his grace. They pray to God with no need for any other mediator than Christ himself, and as sinners but confident in Christ of meeting a gracious and merciful God in their hour of need.

And they are to pray in intelligible words – words that they understand. The prayer of the Christian as a creature of the word of God corresponds to that word by being something understood. There is no hint that prayer is a kind of mindless repetition of  a formula of talismanic sounds. Though there is a place for the inarticulate groanings of the inner being in private prayer, this is not tantamount to a form of mystical prayer. Public prayer must edify the congregation; they can only truly say ‘Amen’, and thus only truly pray, if they hear and understand what is prayed. 

III Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer

What then of prayer in the Book of Common Prayer? It is notable enough that it is called a ‘prayer’ book, and not by some other title – giving a hint as to what Cranmer and others thought that they were doing by preparing their liturgies. One feature that is prominent from the 1549 book onwards is the services for Morning and Evening Prayer designed as a replacement for the seven ‘offices of prayer’ that framed the monastic life. These were intended to be daily services of prayer accessible to any in the community who should be able to gather – a sign that, at least in principle, the routine of daily prayer was not the particular responsibility of a professionalized group but belonged to the laity as well. 

The Prayer Book was intended to be a school for prayer. Its prayers are crafted so as to be vivid in imagery and easily memorable. Take the line “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep”, from the general Confession, for example. The biblical and agricultural image is vivid and yet appropriate; it conveys exactly what is intended, with the language of Isaiah 53 in the not-to-distant background. The rhythm of the line (technically speaking “anapestic”) draws emphasis on the key words “strayed” “ways” and “sheep”. The language is quite concrete and direct. At its best, the Book of Common Prayer in its various editions achieved this didactic effect very well indeed. 

Furthermore, public prayer was designed to be truly congregational. It was certainly to be led by the Minister, but the congregation were invited to pray aloud, either alongside him or in response. The place of the choir was in effect being taken by the congregation, who were to find their voices now. Whether of course this is what happened in practice is doubtful. No doubt illiteracy and inattentiveness meant that the Minister would continue to read the service for the most part on his own. Nevertheless, there was in this form of service an intention to encourage participation by the congregation as a reflection of the more egalitarian theology of the Reformation. 

In public prayer, Christians were to pray as they were in private: by confessing their sins, by thanking God, by praising him and by bringing before him their common needs. As the exhortation before the general confession reads:

And although we ought at all times humbly to acknowledge our sins before God; yet ought we most chiefly so to do, when we assemble and meet together to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth His most worthy praise, to hear his most holy Word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul.

We shall consider each forms of prayer these briefly. From 1552 onwards, the striking thing about the daily services was the prominent place given to the general confession of sins. By 1662, both Morning and Evening Prayer would begin in this way. The practice of auricular confession and priestly absolution had been abolished because, it was argued, it placed a mediator other than Christ between the believer and God. But the gospel of justification by faith was not a declaration that the Christian had moved to a state of sinlessness. Indeed, the basis for the gathering of the Christian church was the shared need of fallen sinners. The act of general confession reminded the congregation of that common need, and indeed of their assurance of forgiveness. The confession takes place, indeed, in the light of the promises of the gospel. 

Confession begins with the reading out of Scriptures that both remind the congregation of their sins, and point to the promises of the merciful Father. The verses from 1 John 1:8-9 are typical of this theme:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us: but if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The exhortation that follows likewise aims to bring to the notice of the congregant the reality of ongoing sin in their lives and the promises of God in Christ. It enjoins the congregation to “accompany me with a pure heart and humble voice unto the throne of the heavenly grace”. The basis, that is to say, of the Christian confession of sin is not fear of punishment but humble expectation of grace. 

And thus follows the confession itself, which articulates a thoroughgoing doctrine of sin in the life of the believer. A number of metaphors are used: the straying sheep; the trespasser against the holy laws of God; and sin as sickness (“there is no health in us”). This last expression is a radical statement of the situation before God even of the baptized Christian. There is by nature nothing that simply commends the person to God. Not simply our actions, but the “devices and desires of our own hearts” are blameworthy. We have an orientation within that is badly askew. But the prayer turns around the plea for the Lord God to “have mercy upon us miserable offenders”, as he himself has promised in Christ Jesus. The final petition of the prayer is that the believer might live a “godly, righteous and sober life” – a striking recognition that the changed heart of the believer is the work of God. In the Service of Holy Communion, too, the congregational response to the reading of the Law is the same in structure: Lord, have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep this law. Keeping the law of God requires, in fallen human beings, a change of heart that can only be brought about by a work of God. Mercy precedes reform, and not the other way around. It is worth nothing, as well, that the declaration of absolution by the Priest is not conditional. There is no penitential requirement.

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[1] Church buildings, therefore, are not simply constructed according to practical needs, but to encourage reverence – not for themselves, but for the God to whom we pray.