Prayers of the People, Confession, Proclamation of Forgiveness

When I was a kid, whenever you went to a doctors office or the dentist, in the waiting room there would be a stack of magazines for people to read while they wait. And without fail, one of those magazines was always a book of stereograms. Do you remember those? Stereograms are these images that look like just a chaotic mess of colors and shapes, but if you stared at them long enough or at just the right angle, a hidden 3-D image would magically appear before your eyes. There were all kinds of strategies to see this hidden image: relax your eyes, stare into space, move the image back and forth, etc. But sometimes, no matter how much you stared at the page, it was really, really hard to see the image.

As a church, we’re taking time to focus on each movement of our liturgical service. We’re looking for where these liturgical acts are found in the Scriptures, and we’re considering their purpose. How is the liturgy shaped? And how does the liturgy shape us?

Now this week we’re doing something a little different. Up to this point we have largely focused on a single part of our service: the sermon, the creed, the prayer of purity. Well, today, for the sake of time, we’re taking a look not one, but three movements. These occur one after another. After the sermon and the creed, we engage in the Prayers of the People, the Confession, and the Proclamation of Forgiveness.

Why have we grouped these movements together like this? Well, just like a stereogram, it can be hard to see how these three sections of our service all come together. How are they connected? What is the underlying picture that links these Prayers of the People, the Confession, and the Proclamation of Forgiveness? Well, they are all united by the theme of relationship. Week in and week out, these movements in our service communicate to us the beautiful truth of our relationship with God.

Let’s begin with the Prayers of the People.

Prayers of the People

In Acts 2, the Christian church is just beginning. Followers of Jesus, newly empowered by the Holy Spirit, are gathering together in each other’s homes, and Acts 2 tells us what they were up to in those home gatherings.

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

So from the very beginning, the church has focused on prayer. Who are we? We are a community that comes together to pray. Across the world and throughout the centuries, where Christians have gathered, they have joined voices to pray.

I was thinking about it this week, but my earliest memories of interacting with the Lord are all moments of prayer. When I think back on the birth of my faith, the infancy of my walk with Christ, there is prayer. And I can see that playing out in the lives of my children as well. Where does my son meet and interact with Jesus? It’s primarily when we pray together as a family.

From beginning to end, prayer is what we do.

Now, I know that the concept of prayer can spark in us all kinds of emotions. Some of us carry the wounds of what we would call unanswered prayers. Some of us are confused about prayer. How do we pray? What should we say? When should we pray? For how long? How many times? Prayer is one of those topics that is simple, but it’s not always easy.

But, this morning, I don’t want to zero in on the act of prayer. Rather, I want to take a step back and look at the whole forest, not the individual trees. Because no matter the form it takes, the act of prayer implies one stunning reality - and that is this: We believe that God hears us when we pray to him. And the reason that He hears us, is because He has chosen to have a relationship with us.

We frequently take for granted the fact that God has chosen to have a relationship with us. We take for granted that our God wants to be present and involved in our daily lives. How fortunate are we that the God of the Universe is truly with us in our lives?

Think about it like this. There are all kinds of powerful and influential people in our world - people with the power to change our lives by their blessing. Wealthy individuals like Jeff Bezos or political giants like the President or cultural heroes like actors or athletes. We can all think of people who have immense power and influence. But how would you even go about trying to talk to them? You couldn’t! They are inaccessible.

But we have something far greater than a CEO or politician or national icon, because we have the means to come before the presence of the One who made the heavens and the earth, and we can speak with him in ways that are intimate and real - all because he has chosen to have a relationship with us.

The Prayers of the People is exactly this. It is the practice of prayer. And as we gather each week to lift up our prayers to the Lord together, we are proclaiming that we are a people with access to the Father, and when we cry out to Him, he hears us.

But there’s another aspect to this liturgical movement that bares fleshing out. These prayers intentionally turn our collective focus outward. Out beyond these walls to the people out there, who need to be remembered by the Church, and brought before the Lord to receive his grace. So we pray for the leaders of the nations. We pray for other churches and ministers. We pray for the proper use of creation. We pray for our enemies, for the sick, the oppressed, the lonely. All of this and more is the focus of our prayers.

And this reminds us that the world is larger than our community. Through these prayers, we stand as a united community that is focused on that which is the singular focus of our Lord - which is the restoration of all creation. In this brief moment, we turn our gaze from our own individual struggles and issues, and we focus on that bigger picture to which Christ has called us.

In the Prayers of the People, we are reminded and we rejoice in the fact when we speak, our God listens and he acts for our benefit and for the benefit of all the world.

Now, the second movement we’re talking about today is the Confession, which follows right after the Prayers of the People.

Confession

The confession is such an important component to our worship that priests in the Anglican church are forbidden to skip it if they intend to celebrate Communion. There are actually quite a few elements of our liturgy that are not strictly necessary, but if we are going to take the bread and the cup, we must have a time of confession.

And this is why. What we are able to do in the time of confession is to declare without equivocation, that while we are in relationship with God, we have not earned nor do we deserve by virtue of our own merit, the status that we enjoy with Him. In the confession we are brought to our knees by our sin, both figuratively and literally; and we admit to God and to everyone else in the room, that we are unworthy of life with God. James 2:10 says:

10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

Redeemer, we are failures. It doesn’t matter how hard you have tried to live a good and moral life, you are a lawbreaker, and you do not deserve the relationship of love that God has offered you.

Tell me: where else in your week are you encouraged to acknowledge such a reality? Where else in your weekly routine are you encouraged to admit that your thoughts and words and actions have contributed to the ongoing breaking of the world? No, this sort of thing doesn’t happen anywhere else, because left to our own devices, we will always ignore the need to confess. Because it’s hard and it’s uncomfortable, and as self-reliant Americans, we want nothing more than to believe that when it comes to our relationship with God, we bring something to the table. But we don’t.

Paul tells us in Ephesians 2 that we were once dead in our trespasses and sins. Not injured. Not disabled. Not debilitated. Dead. And because our bent is to avoid thinking about our hopeless situation, we need a regular rhythm in our lives bringing us back there week after week, and inviting us to make a new start - what the Bible calls, repentance.

But there’s another angle to the confession that I really want you to see. You see, the confession is not only about us our sins. Because if we are willing to look beyond our shortcomings, what we see in the confession is the immeasurable holiness of our God.

When I was in High School, I led the praise band for our church’s youth group. I played guitar and I was the lead vocals. I would always tell people that when I was up there leading the music, I never felt closer to the Lord. There’s a unique kind of joy when you are exactly where you are supposed to be. Some of you know exactly what I am talking about. So when I went to UGA, naturally, I tried our for the band for the campus ministry. I thought the try out went Well. It was a difficult song, a little high, but I gave it my all. After the audition, I sat down and listened to some of the other guys auditions. And actually, the person who would wind up leading the band was the very next guy to try out. And the moment he opened his mouth, I felt two emotions simultaneously - one of them lasted for just a moment, but the other grew and grew as the song went on. The first emotion I felt was embarrassment and shame - because this guy’s skill and technique were on a whole different level than mine. To be quite frank, I was a joke next to this guy. And to think that I stood a chance? To think that I had it in me to make the band? To lead the band? I felt a huge weight of shame at how deluded I was.

But that emotion lasted just a couple of seconds, because it was quickly overshadowed by another emotion, and this one grew and grew and grew as I listened to him sing. And that emotion was awe. I was in awe of his voice. I was in awe of his guitar skills. He was so, so, so talented; and when you’re in the presence of something with that kind of skill, it’s just fun to listen to them do their thing. It was beautiful. It was passionate and it made my heart glad to hear him sing. I was no longer focusing on my failure, I was captivated by his voice.

This is the angle I want you to see in our time of confession. It’s an opportunity to be reminded of our pitiful state, of course, but more than that, it is an invitation to gaze on the unimaginable holiness of our God. It is my prayer that at the confession, our hearts sing the song of Moses who sang:

11 “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness,

awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?

I want you to see that in the confession, we are invited not only to repent, but to worship. This is not a time to despair in our sinfulness, but rather, to marvel in our God’s perfect holiness.

Proclamation of Forgiveness