“Forgive
us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
(a section from The Lord’s Prayer)
Forgive us…as
we
forgive…
I
realized that I’ve spent most of my Lenten devotionals focusing on the
individual aspect of Confession without mentioning its corporate and communal
nature. At Union Grove, we might add Confession to our weekly liturgy, but no
matter the church season, we always say together The Lord’s Prayer. This means each and every week, we as a church
community have been proclaiming the corporate nature of Confession each time we
speak out together, “Forgive us our trespasses”
Corporate confession challenges us to see beyond our individualistic Western worldview. This corporate confession models to an individualistic Western world a countercultural confession that does not seek out a scapegoat or frantically points fingers of blame, but instead, takes a deep breath of courage and sets off on the painful and courageous journey of communal guilt, grief, and lament as we face the sins and failures we have committed as a corporate body of Christ in the world. Both what we have done and left undone in our community and world. And even more challenging we are culpable, and therefore required to confess, all the ways we as the church are beneficiaries and enforcers of unjust systems within our world.
What are the things we are
confessing as a community? What would it
look like to occupy this vulnerable space of Confession as a community?
~ Heidi Johnson
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