Corporate Confession

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Most merciful God,

We confess that we have sinned against you

In thought, word, and deed,

By what we have done,

And by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you with our whole heart;

We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

Have mercy on us and forgive us;

That we may delight in your will

And walk in your ways,

To the glory of your name.

Amen

(Prayers of Confession, Assurance, and Pardon. The United Methodist Hymnal #890)

Often when we speak these radical and countercultural words proclaiming corporate confession, we still internalize these words as individualistic confession. In light of our liturgy of corporate confession, an understanding of original sin, insofar as it is defined as the sin, error, and shortcomings that we inherit as a community is crucial.  How does, for example, the American church seem to make the same errors over and over again?

I have been asking that question daily since I started attending Duke Divinity School. Part of our curriculum as seminary students is to process and respond to the horrors and atrocities that stain the church’s history in America. Plausibly, part of the endless cycle of repeated sins, a type of disturbing resurrection, is rooted with the American church’s individualistic confessional imagination. A church that only responds to the symptoms of sins will never have to face or deal with the communal sinful heart that creates the symptoms in the world.

The absence in imagination for corporate confession reveals the church’s cultural captivity to American triumphalism and exceptionalism.  There is no tolerance in the spiritual discipline of Confession for a posture of communal or individualistic triumphalism and exceptionalism.  Both of these are postures that must be confessed, rejected, and relinquished if we truly want to follow Jesus.

 

~ Heidi Johnson