Reclaiming Confession in Lent

What’s your reaction when you think about confession? Do you feel revulsion? Fear? Anxiety?

If so, you’re not alone. Last week, we talked about the Christian theology that made confession such a prominent part of Christian worship in the first place. But over the millennia, confession has become synonymous with guilt and shame. For some, it evokes an image of an angry, vindictive God, demanding guilt and self-denial in exchange for salvation.

Over the last few decades though, especially in mainline spaces, there’s been a move away from guilt and shame-filled theology. Researchers and cultural influencers like Brené Brown have led a shift toward more forgiving, loving understandings of ourselves and others. Liturgy that points to a judgmental Lord is disappearing in favor of more loving, mercy-filled depictions of the Divine.

If you ask me, this move is a good thing. So why do we need to be reclaiming confession?

Confession as Reconciliation, not Shame

I believe wholeheartedly that Christ came to take away our guilt and shame, not to increase it. Different theology disagrees on whether he did so through his life, death, or resurrection. But the result is the same. 

It makes sense, therefore, to move away from aspects of our traditional liturgy that heap shame onto “hopelessly sinful” believers.

Yet, as humans, we all have times when we don’t respond to God’s love, when we act out of fear, instead. (For the purposes of convenience, in this article, I’ll refer to those moments as “sin.” But feel free to substitute whatever term you prefer.)

These occasions can slowly tear us down, wearing on our relationships with God and those around us. Sometimes, they wreak havoc.

This is where confession comes in. In the Catholic and Episcopal churches, confession is often known as the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

Sure, we are confessing our sins. But that’s not the end goal. The end goal is to reconcile with God, with ourselves, and with those we have hurt. 

The “Sacrament of Reconciliation” emphasizes that we are not confessing in order to consign ourselves to the dark corner of shame. Rather, it’s about bringing our wounds into the light, where God can heal them. It’s actually about banishing shame, in order to enable reconciliation with God and others.

Maybe your church or denomination doesn’t celebrate confession as an individual sacrament. Maybe it’s instead meant to be done in worship, or in small groups.

It doesn’t really matter how we do it. The important thing is that we, as the Church, provide a space for that all-important process of confession and reconciliation.

What happens when we don’t confess?

When we take confession out of our churches, it doesn’t automatically end the shame or guilt people feel about their sins. Instead, removing confession implies that sinfulness either:

1. doesn’t happen
2. doesn’t need healing, or 
3. is something that should be kept secret and dealt with outside of church, through private prayer or secular therapists

I would argue strenuously that none of these assumptions is true. Obviously, we know that all of us sin, in ways big and small, on a regular basis. Nobody is perfect. As far as I know, no one is debating that.

So if we can all agree that sin happens, then we need to talk about healing. And healing isn’t something that we can just create by ourselves, much of the time. Especially when we are talking about larger patterns of destructive behavior—addiction, abusing others, etc.

Confession opens the door to that healing by bringing our pain into the light and seeking the help of God, through trusted members in our community. When we don’t confess, we let wounds fester. And often, we are more likely to make the same mistake next time.

But it is also crucial that that healing happens in religious contexts, not only in secular therapy or private prayer. 

In my last article, I mentioned that an interviewee wanted church to be a place where he could confess his worst sins, where he could confess adultery or drunkenness, abuse or addiction. Yet topics of that magnitude rarely see the light of day in average, mainline congregations. 

Shunning these prevalent issues implies that there is no room for deep brokenness in church. There may not be explicit shaming or guilt, but the very lack of discussion teaches that such matters should be kept secret or dealt with outside of church, if at all.

To Millennials in particular, this silence can reinforce the notion that church isn’t relevant. If you’re not speaking to the most important issues in their lives, they’re not going to come.

So . . . how can we be reclaiming confession?

Doesn’t this leave us between a rock and a hard place, then? If confessions traditionally have heaped guilt upon “unworthy sinners,” and no confession creates secrecy and shame by implication, how do we proceed?

This is part of the work of today’s Reformation:  figuring out how to be reclaiming confession in a healthy, shame-free way. We need to create patterns of confession that meet the spiritual needs of those around us.

To that end, here are a few key ideas for reclaiming confession in your community:

Reclaiming confession by healing old wounds

You personally may or may not have been wounded by previous expressions of confession. But very likely, some people in your congregation have been. 

I heard several stories from interviewees who had been seriously hurt by confession in their childhood churches. One had even been in a denomination and family that had tied physical abuse to the practice. 

While this extreme is probably rare, it’s important to detangle guilt, shame, and angry God theology from the practice of confessing the ways we wound and have been wounded. This can be done in a sermon, adult education class, or simply a little talk during announcements.

You know what best serves your congregation. But it’s important to assume that there will be some people, at least, who have a rocky history with the subject and need pastoral care before fully embracing a new form of confession.

Reclaiming confession by focusing on doing, not being

When confession focuses on our worthiness, it misses the mark by fixating on who we are, not on our actions or words. 

As believers in Jesus Christ, our worthiness is not on the table for negotiation. Death has lost its sting. Nothing can separate us from the love of God.  

Instead, confession must focus on our actions. What gets in the way of enacting love for ourselves, God, and our neighbors? Then, confession can help us trust that transparency is a powerful path to wholeness. 

To this end, craft or choose confession liturgy, either corporate or individual, that focuses on action, not being. In the absolution, emphasize reassurances of forgiveness and love.

Reclaiming confession with practical paths to healing

Roman Catholics traditionally assigned penance, time in prayer, to strengthen souls so that they wouldn’t commit the same sin twice.

Evangelicals often use small groups (Sandals Church in Southern California is a great example). If you confess to a megachurch pastor that you’re yelling at your child a lot, they probably have a support group for busy parents to read Scripture, pray, and give each other advice. 

If your marriage on the rocks, they may point you to a group for married couples, along with the phone numbers of trusted therapists in the area. And so on for a variety of other issues.

Maybe it makes sense to assign individuals a prayer practice. Maybe you want to give people lists of resources in your church and town. Perhaps, if you realize many people are struggling with the same issue, you want to preach about it.

But providing concrete resources shows your congregation that confession isn’t just going through liturgical motions. It’s a very serious path that combines spirituality and practicality to create real growth in relationships with God and the people around us.

In other words, make it clear that your version of confession is true reconciliation.