Individual Confession & Forgiveness

Calling All Sinners! (yes, that includes you)

As the ELW (that’s our hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship) says,
Washed in water and marked with the cross, the baptized children of God are united with Christ and, through him, with other believers who together form a living community of faith. Although we are set free to live in love and faithfulness, we continue to turn away from God and from one another. Confessing our sin involves a continuing return to our baptism where our sinful self is drowned and dies; in the gift of forgiveness God raises us up again and again to new life in Jesus Christ.

Individual Confession and Forgiveness is a ministry of the church through which a person may confess sin and receive the assurance of God’s forgiveness. There is a confidential nature to this order, in keeping with the discipline and practice of the Lutheran church.

Do you HAVE to come for Individual Confession and Forgiveness? No. But at different times in your life, you might find it a great comfort and blessing to do so.

While we practice Corporate Confession and Forgiveness during worship most Sundays, and confess our sins to God all together in general (and specifically during the time of silence), sometimes an individual’s particular life circumstances, and yes, sinful action or inaction, make more personal, individual confession desirable. It can be easy to gloss over the “hard stuff” on Sunday morning, or to think that the words of forgiveness “don’t apply to me.” Just about every pastor I know has had the experience of someone saying, “Oh pastor, if you REALLY knew me, you wouldn’t say that God loves and forgives me.”

If that could be YOU, then maybe the time is right for Individual Confession and Forgiveness. Pastor Grant and I are offering three opportunities for Individual Confession and Forgiveness during Holy Week: Tuesday, March 31, 5:00-7:00pm; Wednesday, April 1, 7:00-9:00am and Thursday, April 2, 11:00am-1:00pm. We will meet with individuals in the sanctuary. When you arrive, if the sanctuary doors are open, come on in. If they are closed, please wait.

In The Large Catechism, Martin Luther wrote, “Note, then, as I have often said, that confession consists of two parts. The first is our work and act, when I lament my sin and desire comfort and restoration for my soul. The second is a work that God does, when he absolves me of my sins through the Word placed on the lips of another person. This is the surpassingly grand and noble thing that makes confession so wonderful and comforting.”

Sometimes we each need to hear the words of God’s mercy and forgiveness spoken directly to us. It is our privilege to proclaim them to you.

If you do not wish to make personal confession, but would like to come and pray with a pastor, or have one of us pray for you, that is just fine, too.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8-9

Therefore confess your sins to one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. James 5:16

Friday Morning Small Group: The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Every other Friday morning, I meet with a small group of folks (all women, currently, but there's no reason it must stay that way) at Clark's Fork, here in Bozeman. Most of us order some kind of breakfast, and I think everyone has coffee or tea. We tend not to arrive all at once - a 7:00am start time means we trickle in.

While we gather, we check in on each other's lives, and sometimes jump start conversation of the chapter or two we've read for the morning's discussion. More often than not, once everyone is there we turn to "highs and lows" before we dig in to formal discussion of the text: we go around the table and each person shares a high point and low point of her life since we last met. And I've noticed a change in our lows over recent months: while they are still sometimes quite personal, it's no longer an anomaly for someone's lows to consist largely of what she's heard on the news - natural disasters, political machinations, wars and the violence of extremist groups, racially motivated hatred. It's all a lot.  Maybe even too much, sometimes.

Our tendency to be "plugged in" most of the time probably doesn't help. This morning one of my friends said that she didn't listen to the radio on her way to small group, so that she wouldn't start the day depressed by the news. And I wonder if a general sense of powerlessness, and of not understanding those who think about and experience life so differently from how we do, contributes, too.

In order to learn from someone with a radically different life experience and history, and to have some likely tough conversations about race and faith (and their interweaving in American history), the Friday morning small group is going to read The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone. YOU are invited to join the conversation. The first conversation, on the introduction and first chapter, will be Friday, April 10th, at 7:00am at Clark's Fork.

Want to learn more? Here's James Cone on Bill Moyers Journal in 2007, a CNN blog post about the theologian and author, and a 2008 NPR "Fresh Air" interview with him. Here, also, is a link to the ELCA Social Statement Freed in Christ: Race, Ethnicity and Culture.

Why Lilies for Easter?

Yes, it's still Lent, but Holy Week begins in just over a week, and then it's Easter. Easter is THE season for Christians. It begins at sundown on Holy Saturday, and continues for 50 days. Celebration of the resurrection of Christ calls for the brightest and best we have to offer – in music, in hospitality, in all the ways we have to share the joy of new, everlasting resurrection life. Flowers have long been part the celebration.

The white Easter lily has served for centuries as a symbol of Easter. The springing forth of brilliant white beauty from a seemingly dead mass (the bulb) and the symbolic purity of its color have come to represent resurrection. Before Easter lilies bloom fully, the flowers look like trumpets, ready to proclaim the good news. Sometimes Easter lilies have been called the “white-robed apostles of hope.”  Tradition/legend has it that lilies were found growing in the Garden of Gethsemane after Christ’s agony; that beautiful white lilies sprung up where drops of Christ’s sweat or tears fell to the ground in his final hours of sorrow and deep distress. Today, congregations continue this tradition at Easter by banking their altars and surrounding their crosses with masses of Easter lilies, to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the hope of eternal life.

Many congregations also use a variety of other springtime flowers, which convey the same message of new life. Here at CtK, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other types of lilies and foliage are employed in celebration of the day and season of Easter. If it brings you joy to do so, please consider contributing to the Easter flower fund, in thanksgiving, honor, or memory of someone meaningful to you. You can find a "Spring Flowers" form on the table in the narthex (entryway). Fill it out, attach $10/flower, and place it in the offering plate during worship, or return it to the church office, by March 29th.

Thanks!

Let them deny themselves and take up their cross...

They say that preachers preach the sermons they need to hear. And some Sundays that seems more true than others, at least for me. This past Sunday was one of those. I've continued to think about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, and to deny my selfish, self-seeking, self-justifying self. And it's that last one (self-justifying) that gets me most often. What about you?