Most holy and
merciful God,
we confess to you and to one another,
and before the whole company of heaven,
that we have sinned by our fault,
by our own fault,
by our own most grievous fault,
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
we confess to you and to one another,
and before the whole company of heaven,
that we have sinned by our fault,
by our own fault,
by our own most grievous fault,
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
ALMIGHTY God, our
Maker and Redeemer, we poor sinners confess unto Thee, that we are by nature
sinful and unclean, and that we have sinned against Thee, by thought, word, and
deed.
Wherefore we flee
for refuge to Thine infinite mercy, seeking and imploring Thy grace, for the
sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may
not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did
not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through him.
For by grace you
have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift
of God-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he
has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand to be our way of life.
Words which have
been at the heart of our confessions.
And words of love
and forgiveness.
This is the
spiritual journey on which we have embarked.
And apart from
this, there is no true spirituality, no genuine human experience, and no knowledge
of the depth of God’s grace.
We often live
with an illusion.
That illusion is
of our own righteousness.
We defend
ourselves as good, often afraid to admit otherwise, ashamed, perhaps, of the
person we truly are.
As I was growing
up, one of the most troubling phrases of all, spoken during our confession of
sin, contained the words: “our secret
thoughts and desires which I do not fully understand, but which are fully known
unto thee.”
If you had known
me at that time, you would have seen a young boy whose behavior was generally
commendable, at least my outward actions.
But these words
troubled me for I knew that what was going on within me, did not match what
appeared to others.
We are our own
worst judges.
We judge our
insides by other’s outsides.
And we recoil at
what we see.
One response to
our own self judgment is to deny what we see, and to seek to craft an image of
ourselves that is more presentable to the world.
Underlying this
quest to create a public image of ourselves is a question. “Would you love me, if you truly knew me?”
And the fear is
that you wouldn’t.
Secret thoughts
and desires. . .
What if people
knew?
We shudder at the
thought.
“our secret
thoughts and desires which I do not fully understand, but which are fully
known unto thee.”
God knows, and that
is what is frightening.
God knows.
Paul writes in 1
Corinthians:
For now we see in
a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part;
then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
A friend of mine
in college once related an image of the final judgment. It began with an understanding that we live
much of our lives as though in a deep fog, hidden from one another. And then on the judgment day, the fog lifts,
and everything is exposed in the bright light.
We stand naked
before God. That is the scary thing.
We cannot hide
behind a fig leaf.
We cannot hide at
all.
Our human
response to this transparency is twofold, shame and guilt. We are ashamed of who we are, and feel guilty
for what we’ve done.
There are moments
in life when we are exposed for who we truly are. These moments when others are given a glimpse
of who we really are can be frightening, but not nearly as much as when we look
into the mirror and see ourselves.
Sometimes, we
simply don’t like what we see.
We’d like to run
from the mirror.
I had that
experience when I hit rock bottom as an alcoholic. When I woke up in the morning after my last
night of drinking, the first thing I did was to reach for my glasses.
They were a
mangled mess, evidence of the fall I had taken the night before.
I rushed to the
mirror in the bathroom, and discovered my face was not much better, with scabs
on my eye and ear from where I had injured myself.
And then I began
to remember what had transpired.
I wanted to flee.
I consented to
going to the hospital that day, and entering the treatment program there, in
part because I simply wanted to flee and hide.
I literally did not want to show my face in Sandpoint, and being
hospitalized in Coeur d’Alene was one way to avoid that.
I was running
from the image in the mirror.
But even though
we’d like to run, there is another option:
Wherefore we flee for refuge to Thine
infinite mercy, seeking and imploring Thy grace, for the sake of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
The grace and
mercy of God.
Divine intimacy.
To be fully
known, and fully loved.
To be entirely
exposed, and entirely forgiven.
Most of us
understand physical intimacy more than we do spiritual intimacy.
A gentle touch, a
hug, or a kiss. And for many of us, the
close intimacy of a spouse, who knows our own body better than we do ourselves.
Physical intimacy
we understand.
God knows not
only what we have done, and left undone, but the secrets thoughts and desires
of our hearts.
And he loves and
forgives us.
That is intimacy.
We need not hide,
because there is nothing left to hide.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the
world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through
him.”
Two of the most
grace filled experiences I have had, and there have been many, are going to
A.A. and engaging in years of therapy with a psychologist.
In A.A. the first
thing we learn is that we are not alone.
As ashamed as we maybe, we quickly discover that others have had the
same experiences, and that in spite of those experiences, there is hope.
And as I turned
over every stone in my life, or at least the greater share of them, seeking out
the skeletons in my closet with the counselors I have seen, one of the
discoveries of that process is to realize that these things that had caused
such deep shame and guilt were simply a common part of the human experience.
There is grace in
the word “we”.
we confess
to you and to one another,
and before the whole company of heaven,
that we have sinned by our fault,
by our own fault,
by our own most grievous fault,
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
and before the whole company of heaven,
that we have sinned by our fault,
by our own fault,
by our own most grievous fault,
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
We are not
alone.
And in the
abundant mercy of God, “God so loved the world that he gave his only
Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have
eternal life.
We are not alone
in our sinfulness, nor in the forgiveness God offers to us.
There is no sin
you have ever committed, that is not common to many others.
And the
forgiveness God offers to you, freely, as a gift, is the same forgiveness he
offers to all.
Intimacy.
To be fully known
by God, yet even more fully loved.
Can we grasp
that?
This intimacy is
almost too much for us to understand and embrace.
Polite discretion
is more our way of living. There are
things you do not know about me, and quite frankly, things you do not want
to know about me. “TMI” is the rule
of the day. “Too Much Information”.
The unwritten
rule of polite society is that discretion ought to be practiced. Those “secret thoughts and desires that I do
not fully understand” are best kept to myself.
That is one of
the reasons we will never experience the type of intimacy God envisions for us
with each other. We simply don’t want to
know each other that well. It’s too much
work.
And perhaps we
fear that the other does not have the capacity for grace and mercy that God
does.
If my wife knew
my secret thoughts and desires would she still love me? Is she that gracious and merciful?
What about my
children?
Or you?
I don’t know the
answer to those questions.
But what God
assures us is that he will still love us.
In fact, it is
precisely because he knew us fully, that he sent his Son to save us.
Intimacy. To be fully known, and more fully loved.
That is
grace. And it is a gift of God for you.
Amen
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