Today’s author is Prince of Peace member Carol Swanson.
Again I share the theological reflections of Marjorie Suchocki from her chapter “Prayers of Corporate Confession,” In God’s Presence:
“But while we are often quite aware of individual sins, we are often oblivious to corporate sins. This is not so surprising since such sins can be so woven into the ‘way things are’ that we assume they represent the way things ought to be.” (p 79)
“But as participants in society we are formed by the structures and values of society, be they for good or for ill—and usually they are a mixture of both. We imbibe these structures and values into our lives, perpetuating them for the next generation. We are Adam; we are Eve. We are responsible. And within the heart of our Christian faith there exists a resource of first resort that can cut through our isolation, our fragmentation, our powerlessness. That resource is corporate prayers of confession in the church.
“… A Christianity that is cut off from its acknowledgment of its own participation in sin and need of forgiveness is like a plant cut off from its roots, and it will wither. Without the Church’s confession of sin, God’s most powerful force for social renewal is left immobilized, locked away in a spiral of individualism that addresses only individual problems and ignores the social dimensions of all personal sins. In our penchant for individualism, we privatize the Christ as well as sin.” (p 81)
“Thus the church is called to confess not only its faith, but also its participation in the social sins of each age. Through its corporate confession comes the power to be united with the resurrection power of God. In place of the isolation, fragmentation, and powerlessness of complicity in social evils, there is union with ourselves, one another, and God. This union becomes a new resource for the continuous work of transforming the structures of sin into structures of communal well-being.
“The final point is that corporate confession, like personal confession, reinforces this need for the continuing process of confession, forgiveness, and transformation. The church does not offer its corporate prayer of confession one Sunday, and then assume the issue is over and done with. The tentacles of sin require more than that. In a sense, alcoholism gives the best illustration: a recovering alcoholic is a recovering alcoholic….We are recovering sinners—always ‘standing in the need of prayer.’ We live continuously from the forgiveness of sins—and therefore we live continuously from the confession of sins.” (pp 88-89)
“It is the peculiarity of Christian faith that we dare to name powers of destruction precisely because we are convinced that there is a greater power for transformation, Through corporate confession we ourselves are graciously empowered to dare to enter into the resurrection power of God, becoming for the world around us a community that mediates redemption in the midst of the problem of sin.” (p 89)
Let us pray together the words of hymn ELW 603:
God, when human bonds are broken and we lack the love or skill
to restore the hope of healing, give us grace and make us still.
Through that stillness, with your Spirit come into our world of stress,
for the sake of Christ forgiving all the failures we confess.
You in us are bruised and broken: hear us as we seek release
from the pain of earlier living; set us free and grant us peace.
Send us, God of new beginnings, humbly hopeful into life.
Use us as a means of blessing: make us stronger, give us faith.
Give us faith to be more faithful, give us hope to be more true,
give us love to go on learning: God, encourage and renew!