Midweek Lent, 2024 ☩ Love One Another ☩ Week 2: Confess Your Sins to One Another
Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Texts: James 5:13-18, Luke 18:10-14
God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Jewish sage Hillel the Elder was once challenged to explain the whole Torah – but to do it so simply that he would do it in the amount of time that he could balance on one foot. And his famous response was: “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn.” (You couldn’t tell but I did that one foot!)
In much the same way, a good amount of the New Testament, especially the Epistles, can be summed up in three words: Love One Another.
The rest is commentary. And today we hear some rather challenging “commentary” on loving one another from the Epistle of James: confess your sins to one another.
Now, I think it is clear from the passage that James isn’t really talking about confessing your sin to someone you have wronged, though it is important and very challenging to come face to face with someone you have hurt, to confess and to ask forgiveness, to make amends and repair the relationship. That is a vitally important practice and also something we are commanded to do in scripture.
But that doesn’t seem to be what this passage is about. The instruction to “confess your sins to one another,” doesn’t come in the context of repairing a specific relationship. It comes in the context of care for the entire community. Particularly caring for those that might be absent from the community.
“Are any among you suffering?” James asks. “Are any among you sick?” Who are the vulnerable among you?
Who is isolated from the community?
Sickness can be terribly isolating – I think all of us remember that from the pandemic well enough. But even when a complete lockdown and medical quarantine isn’t necessary, sickness still keeps you away from family and friends, from work or school or church, from the life-giving connections with other people. Suffering, too; sometimes that is the worst part of suffering, being unable to share it. Maybe because you don’t want to be a burden, or maybe because you resent the people that don’t suffer or who don’t understand your suffering. Suffering, like sickness, is isolating.
And so is sin. Lying, stealing, injuring, exploiting, envying, hating, hoarding–every way we are hurting one another, depriving one another, ignoring one another, and severing our connections with one another–it isolates us. And even if you aren’t the person I’m directly hurting, if you catch me lying to someone else, will you trust me? If I hate a different kind of person, but not you, will you want me around? Breaking one relationship is pretty much bound to break another. Until all that’s left is isolation.
James sees the dangers of isolation, whether it’s caused by suffering, sickness, or sin.
And his remedy to address the isolation of the vulnerable is to lean even more into radical vulnerability. To recreate community by inviting others into our weaknesses. If you are sick, James says, call the elders so they can pray over you and anoint you. If you are struggling with a sin, confess it to someone else and let others pray for you. And it struck me that this advice is not actually so much about how to love one another, but how to allow yourself to be loved. Shine a spotlight on your weaknesses and invite others to love you through them.
And, I’ll have to admit, that sounds terrifying.
It sounds about a million times easier to pray for someone else than to be prayed for. To visit the sick, rather than be visited. To be the one loving rather than to be the one opening myself up to be loved by speaking up. The Psalmist wrote that “While I held my tongue, my bones withered away,” but speaking of my sins and my weaknesses and my failings–exposing my wounds and everything I am least proud of–that doesn’t seem very good for my bones either! The cure is worse than the disease.
And it can be. I’ve heard horror stories of spiritually abusive spaces and traumatizing practices in the name of encouraging people to “confess their sins to one another.” I’m not asking you to relive your traumas or just dump them on other people. There is wisdom and discernment involved in seeking the right kind of care in the right kind of structure – like a support group or a prayer partner. I want to name that.
And another way I think we can often go wrong is by leaving out the crucial part of the puzzle: it’s not a one-sided thing. Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another. Each and every one to another.
Because radical vulnerability – that only works with radical mutuality.
I confess to you. You confess to me. We confess to one another. We hold one another.
What really stands out to me in the parable that Jesus tells in Luke is that these two men, the Pharisee and the tax collector, is that they are both standing in the Temple by themselves. They aren’t praying in community. They aren’t praying for one another. They are both isolated. The Pharisee is isolated by the sin of his pride: “Thank God I’m not like those people.” And the tax collector by his guilt: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”
And the last verse (as it is usually translated), leaves them in opposition: “I tell you, this man [that is, the tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other…” They are still apart, still isolated.
But the commentator Amy-Jill Levine offers a different reading. She focuses on one of the prepositions “para” – from which we get our English word “parallel.” She writes: “That pesky Greek preposition para…can mean ‘rather than;’ it can also mean ‘because of’…or ‘set side by side’. Its primary connotation is not one of antagonism (‘rather’) but one of juxtaposition (‘next to’).”
And I find a glimmer of hope hidden in that little word. What if they went down to their homes side by side? What if we imagine the end of that parable instead treated with James’ remedy of radical vulnerability and mutuality?
The Pharisee, admitting his struggles to the tax collector, confessing how hard it was to keep company with people who just don’t really seem to be trying to live very good lives.
The tax collector, praying for the Pharisee, and confessing in turn his pretty severe violations of the community – how he was collaborating with and benefiting from the systemic oppression of the Roman occupiers and exploiting his neighbors.
And back to the Pharisee, responding in love, praying for the person he most despised.
What if they had walked home in parallel, arm in arm, no longer isolated? And what if that is precisely what Jesus had in mind? What the God who loves and cares for each and every one of us, who made us for each other, wants for us?
That’s the flourishing and abundant life possible in the Spirit, when we love and we let ourselves be loved.
The confession in itself isn’t the remedy, prayer alone isn’t the remedy: it’s the access to divine life in community. That can heal us.
But it’s a hard thing I’m asking today. It takes an incredible amount of bravery! Especially to be the first one to step into radical vulnerability. I certainly don’t want to go first. I don’t want to tell you about my weaknesses. I don’t want to tell you about where I am struggling. I don’t want to tell you my failures.
This is as much as I can confess: that my fear of being vulnerable is what makes me vulnerable and keeps me isolated.
And now that I’ve confessed that it’s not up to you to fix it. Confessing to one another is not about getting or giving advice or validation or sympathy – though those things might be helpful. But the real point is that when we confess to one another, when we practice radical vulnerability and radical mutuality, we insist to one another that we are all part of this community. And we refuse to let suffering or sickness or sin pull anyone away into isolation. So that we can walk home side by side.
No one has to go first if we all go together.
Love one another, beloved. And be vulnerable enough to let yourself be loved. The rest is commentary.
In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
