confession

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Greetings!

I was thinking a lot about our practice of confession this week, as you might have guessed from the sermon. I shared a link in last week’s email to a powerful public confession from my friend the Rev. Tiffany Thomas, and the video above (which is a bit different) came up in my feed from the SALT Project’s on Facebook.

Why have I been thinking about confession? I think church is best when it is about telling the truth, avoiding convenient fictions, and confronting the lives that we live. It is best when we are vulnerable, open to both pain and deep reconciliation. And I’ve been thinking about confession, because that’s where we are most vulnerable, and where we are most able to confront the truths about ourselves and the world we are living in. It’s hard to lift up our deepest sorrows and greatest joys, and leave ourselves open to the attacks and snark of others. It’s scary. But Jesus came to free us from our fears. And confession is when we get to put them out in front of us, look at them, and take the power of shame away, so we can get on with the job of building God’s kingdom.

Blessings,
Nathan