Out Loud Confession and Peace

(James 5:16) Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

So, assuming that you take God’s commands seriously; that you don’t regard them as elective or optional; then here’s a question for you: When is the last time that you, in obedience to God’s clear command through James, the brother of Jesus, confessed your sins out loud to a brother or sister in Christ?

Now in case you’re having a hard time coming up with a recent date, let me remind you of something. If you were here with us last Sunday (or any recent Sunday at King’s Cross Church) then, following my reading of scripture and prayer of confession (which, in theory you were adding your silent amens to as I prayed) then you prayed out loud, in the hearing of those around you a time-tested prayer of confession wherein you admitted to both sins of omission (ways that you failed to do what God commands) and commission (ways that you did what God said not to do.) In short, just as God requires, you “confessed your sins to one another.”

And this is right and good. But, as with everything in our weekly liturgy, this verbal confession of sin ought not be a “one and done” “check-the-box” rote activity, but rather a template or springboard for daily admissions of sin and heartfelt appeals for forgiveness as we bump and scrape our way through communal life at home, at work and at school.

And one more thing: Simply believing the freeness of God’s grace and His ever-willingness to forgive our sins for Jesus’ sake is one of the hardest things that we Christians are called to do. Sadly, it’s much easier to catalog the frequency, ingratitude and severity of our sin and fret that we’ve sinned our way past God’s ability or willingness to forgive us. And that is why I declare to you each week, as an ordained minister of God’s Word, the Lord’s supreme delight to pardon and cleanse you for Jesus’ sake.

But one thing more needs to be done each week. And it needs to be done by you, Christian. In preparation for the Lord’s Supper, you need to grab your brother or sister by the arm, look them in the eye, and say “The peace of the Lord be with you” and mean it. “Peace be with you” is what the newly risen Jesus said to his disciples who were huddled in fear, dreading what Jesus would say to them after their craven denial and cowardly desertion of their sinless Savior. Jesus’ assurance of favor is exactly what your struggling, doubt-ridden brothers and sisters need to hear. So tell them, speak the Lord’s peace to them, praying as you do for God to fill the week ahead of you with many similar declarations of divine grace, mercy and forgiveness.

GH