One of the joys of being friends with bible scholars is the stuff they share with you to explore. Recently, my colleague Trevor Thompson, who is a New Testament scholar here at ACU, shared with me some of the work of another NT scholar, Troy Martin, who is a friend of Trevor's. One of Martin's areas of expertise is using ancient medical texts to illuminate NT passages, particularly passages that seem confusing to us. In various studies Martin makes the observation that some of these confusions stem from the fact that we don't share the same medical understandings of the NT writers and their audiences. When ancient medical terms or ideas are used we often miss the meaning.

A good example of this comes from 1 Corinthians 11.2-16.

This passage has caused a lot of head scratching. In this text Paul makes an argument about women needing a head covering during worship. But what is strange is that after making this argument Paul seems to undercut and contradict himself. Specifically, in vv. 5-6 Paul makes the argument that a woman should wear a covering to cover her hair during worship. Not doing so would be a "disgrace" (NIV).

So far so good. But a few verses later Paul makes an argument from nature that seems to contradict what he has just argued, that a woman's hair is a "disgrace" if uncovered. The perplexing text is v. 15:

...but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.

You can see the problem. In vv. 5-6 the woman's hair needs a covering to avoid disgrace. But in v. 15 a woman's hair is its own covering and her glory. What's the deal? Is a woman's exposed hair disgraceful or a glory? Does a woman need to cover her hair or is her hair its own covering?

This is one of those passages where Martin argues that a proper understanding of ancient medicine, in this case reproductive medicine, can help resolve the apparent paradox. Specifically, in an article Martin published (Journal of Biblical Literature, 123/1, 2004, 75-84) he argues that the root of the interpretive paradox has to do with the proper interpretation of the word "covering" in v. 15.

The word rendered "covering" in v. 15 is peribolaiou.  Peribolaiou can refer to an outer garment and given the discussions about covering up in this text most translators have gone with this meaning. However, Martin points out that in the ancient world peribolaiou had a wider range of meanings.

Specifically, peribolaiou could refer to testicles. Which raises a question about the connection in the text with women's hair. Why is Paul talking about reproductive anatomy in a discussion about hair?

According to Martin, it has to do with how the ancients understood where sperm was stored and how hair aided the movement of sperm through the body.

Two ideas are important here. First, the ancients saw the head as the place where sperm was stored. Second, the ancients saw the hair as functioning like a straw, exerting a sucking force on the sperm. That is, where more hair was located more suction was exerted.

The idea is roughly as follows. A woman has a lot of hair on her head so that, when sperm enters her body during intercourse, the hair can suck the sperm upward and into her body. For the man the goal is to pull the sperm down and out of the body. The testicles were believed to be "weights" that helped exert this downward pull.

What all this means is that, according to the ancients, the hair was a part of reproductive anatomy, with the female's hair functioning as the analog of the male's testicles. The testicles in the male pull semen down and out and the hair of the female pulls the semen up and in.

This is one reason why Paul considers long hair on a man to be problematic. If a man grows his hair long he'll be unable to eject semen as his long hair will exert too much suction upward. (Insert funny and inappropriate joke about my own long hair.) A similar line of argument goes for females with short hair.

And all this explains what Paul is saying in 1 Cor. 11.15. Paul's argument is that a woman's long hair is proper to her nature. Why? Well, just as a man has testicles so a woman has long hair. The proper reading of v. 15b is this: "For long hair is given to her as a testicle."

And if a woman's long hair is sort of like a testicle then of course you'd want to keep that covered up during the worship service.

All of which brings us to the issue regarding if today's women should continue to keep their hair/testicles covered in Christian worship. At the end of the paper Martin concludes:

Informed by this tradition, Paul appropriately instructs women in the service of God to cover their hair since it is part of the female genitalia. According to Paul’s argument, women may pray or prophesy in public worship along with men but only when both are decently attired. Even though no contemporary person would agree with the physiological conceptions informing Paul’s argument from nature for the veiling of women, everyone would agree with his conclusion prohibiting the display of genitalia in public worship. Since the physiological conceptions of the body have changed, however, no physiological reason remains for continuing the practice of covering women’s heads in public worship, and many Christian communities reasonably abandon this practice.

A few weeks ago I listened to the radio program God, Good and Evil for the program Encounter. (H/T to Ben Myers who is featured in the show.)

During the program philosopher Susan Neiman discusses Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil. As many know, the phrase "banality of evil" was Arendt's attempt to discern the origins of the Holocaust from the personality of Adolf Eichmann, insights Arendt's summarized in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

The argument that Arendt makes in that book is that evil isn't dark and deep but is, rather, thin and superficial. Evil is ordinary people thoughtlessly making a million small choices. No doubt this account cannot explain all that needs to be explained about evil, but it does explain much, even much about the Holocaust. The Holocaust couldn't have happened if the German populace hadn't over time gradually consented through seemingly insignificant daily choices. Laughing nervously, but without objection, to the anti-Semitic joke. Not shopping at the Jewish store. Accepting the promotion when the more qualified Jewish person was passed over. Casting a vote on election day. And so on.

In talking about this, how evil is produced by a million small choices, in the radioshow Neiman floats the idea that if evil is banal in just this way then might not goodness be banal as well? Running with her suggestion, I wonder if we might speak of the banality of goodness? 

A few weeks ago I wrote a post for the Tokens Show reflecting on the work of Jean Vanier. In that post I shared a quote from Vanier who suggests that we give up visions of heroism to embrace the insignificance of our actions, the recognition that we are not going to accomplish great things as Christians. 

Goodness is, perhaps, more banal than heroic. Goodness is achieved through a million small acts of kindness, goodness, and generosity. Goodness is achieved through a million small acts of subversion, resistance, and protest. Millions of small Yes's and millions of small No's.

When the Hunger Games movie came out Aidan and I had the following conversation:

Aidan: Are we going to go to the Hunger Games movie?

Me: Yeah, everyone in the family has read the books and the reviews look good. I think we'll all go.

Aidan: You know what's weird?

Me: What?

Aidan: Bill [not his real name] in my class said that his parents won't let him read Harry Potter or go to the Harry Potter movies but that he's allowed to read and go to the Hunger Games. Because they are Christians. Why is that?

Me: Well, some Christians feel pretty strongly that things promoting witchcraft and sorcery are sinful.

Aidan: But the Hunger Games is all about making a tournament where kids kill each other. Isn't that sinful?

Me: Yes, yes it is.

Aidan: So what's the difference?

Me: Good question. Well, Christians, at least American Christians, are okay with murder but really, really scared of magic.

(Aidan ponders this as I ponder the fact that murder is real and that the Cruciatus Curse and Hogwarts are fake.)

Aidan:  I don't get it.

Me: Neither do I, son, neither do I.

Moral of the story: Conservative Christians are clueless and the Beck family is going to hell because we like both the Hunger Games and Harry Potter.

We sin boldly when it comes to youth fiction.

Months ago at the prison bible study Herb, my co-teacher, was leading a prayer. Herb is a Baby Boomer and a son of the South. I'm Gen X and a transplanted Northerner. So we learn a bit from each other generationally and regionally.

Anyway, when Herb was leading the prayer he said, "And Lord, protect us from Old Scratch."

After the prayer was over I asked aloud, "Who is Old Scratch?"

Herb was incredulous. Didn't I know that Old Scratch was the Devil? I did not. Nor, it seemed, did any of the guys in the class.

Apparently, Old Scratch is a name for the Devil that was more widely known a generation or so ago. It apparently started in New England but eventually took hold in the South. Here's the entry from The Free Dictionary:

Old Scratch

n. Chiefly Southern U.S.

The Devil; Satan.

---

[Probably alteration of scrat, from Middle English, hermaphrodite goblin, from Old Norse skratte, wizard, goblin.]

Regional Note: Old Scratch, like Old Nick, is a nickname for the devil. In the last century it was widely used in the eastern United States, especially in New England, as is evident from the Devil's name for himself in the Stephen Vincent Benét short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster." Now the term has been regionalized to the South. Old Scratch is attested in the Oxford English Dictionary from the 18th century onward in Great Britain as a colloquialism: "He'd have pitched me to Old Scratch" (Anthony Trollope, 1858). The source of the name is probably the Old Norse word skratte, meaning "a wizard, goblin, monster, or devil."

In literature Aunt Polly describes Tom Sawyer as being "full of the Old Scratch" because of his rebellious and mischievous ways. In A Christmas Carol during the visions of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come Scrooge overhears a conversation describing his death: "Old Scratch has got his own at last."

I find the name Old Scratch delightful. I now use it all the time. I've even gone so far as to introduce the name to Freedom Fellowship, the church Herb and I attend on Wednesday nights. And it's slowly catching on. The name is too quirky and fun to be allowed to slip away.

And he came to Nazareth
where he had been brought up: 
and, 
as his custom was, 
he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, 
and stood up for to read.
And there was delivered
unto him the book 
of the prophet Esaias. 
And when 
he had opened the book, 
he found the place 
where it was written,
The Spirit 
of the Lord 
is upon me, 
because he hath 
anointed me 
to preach 
the gospel 
to the poor; 
he hath sent me 
to heal 
the brokenhearted,
to preach 
deliverance 
to the captives, 
and recovering of sight 
to the blind, 
to set at liberty 
them that are bruised,
To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
And he closed 
the book, 
and he gave it again 
to the minister, 
and sat down. 
And the eyes of all them 
that were in the synagogue 
were fastened on him.
And he began 
to say unto them, 
This day 
is this scripture fulfilled 
in your ears.

--Luke 4.16-21, King James Version

This is a continuation of my William Stringfellow Project where I read through all of William Stringfellow's books in chronological order in their first editions. This is the third installment of this series. We've already done the first two of Stringfellow's books--A Private and Public Faith (parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) and Instead of Death. In this post we turn to Stringfellow's third book My People is the Enemy: An Autobiographical Polemic.

My People is the Enemy was published in 1964 (original dust jacket pictured here) and was the first of what would become a distinctive style of Stringfellow's, the theological memoir where Stringfellow blends his autobiography with theological and political analysis.

My People is the Enemy is my favorite book of Stringfellow's. Perhaps because this part of Stringfellow's biography is so compelling. For My People is the Enemy recounts Stringfellow's reflections about living in Harlem after he had graduated from Harvard Law School. At the time of the writing Stringfellow had lived in Harlem for seven years. This sets the subject matter of the book which is focused on race relations and urban poverty. Much of the material in the book is dated as Stringfellow always wrote to the issues of his day, speaking concretely about politicians, policies, and events in 1964, both nationally and in NYC. (This is why I don't recommend My People is the Enemy to others despite the book being my personal favorite.) But the issues Stringfellow was wrestling with are still very much with us.

The content and style of My People is the Enemy makes it hard to review and summarize. Many of the most powerful passages are biographical in nature, long passages impossible to distill. One of the most powerful of those passages, coming at the end of the book and functioning almost as its theological culmination, is the story of Lou Marsh who was killed by the gang members he was reaching out to and working with. Another powerful story is Stringfellow's account at the start of the book about moving into his Harlem tenement on East 100th Street. Before moving into his apartment Stringfellow tells of some extermination work he performs:

I had taken one precaution for my first inspection of the premises--I had a DDT bomb (of the sort that was used in the Army), which I had picked up at a military surplus store. I entered the apartment and looked around. I found a dead mouse in the toilet, which I disposed of. I opened a window, so as not to DDT myself, and then I released the bomb. I sat down on something for a moment to see what would happen. From everywhere--from every crack and corner, from the ceilings and walls and from underneath the linoleum, from out of the refrigerator and the stove, from in back of the sink and under the bathtub, from every place--came swarms of creeping, crawling vermin. I shuddered. I remember saying out loud to myself, "Stringfellow, you will never know here whether you have become an alcoholic." Who could tell, in such a place, whether or not he is having delirium tremens?

The first part of the book deals mainly with poverty and the second half turns to race relations.

In his discussions of poverty Stringfellow mainly describes poverty as vulnerability to death, his great theological theme:

Poverty is vulnerability to death in its crudest forms. Poverty is the relentless daily attrition of contending with the most primitive concerns of human existence: food and cleanliness and cloths and heat and housing and rest and play and work.

Because of this vulnerability the lives of the poor expose the activity and power of death in human affairs. Death becomes visible in the struggles of the poor to find food, secure shelter, and keep warm. Most of us, being affluent, are relatively immune to these struggles which creates the illusion that death isn't at work in our lives. But the lives of the poor puncture this illusion. The struggles of the poor reveal the activity and power of death in the world. More, the poor witness to the fact that we, the affluent and rich, live at the expense of others. Stringfellow on these points:

The travail of the poor is intercessory for the rich--for them, in their behalf, in their place, it substitutes for their own suffering. They [the rich] would suffer if the poor did not purchase for them some immunity from suffering...

...All men, in short, live in a history in which every action and omission and abstention is consequently related to all else that happens everywhere. That is the theology of Adam's Fall and with him, the fall of all men. In history, we live at each other's expense.

What sophisticates the suffering of the poor is not innocence, nor extremity, nor loneliness, nor the fact that it is unknown or ignored by others; but, rather, the lucidity, the straightforwardness with which it bespeaks the power and presence of death among men in this world. The awful and the ubiquitous claim of death is not different for the poor than for others, or, for that matter, for nations or ideologies or other principalities or powers; but among the poor there are no grounds to rationalize the claim, no way to conceal the claim, no facile refutation of the claim, no place to escape or evade it...

...What sophisticates the suffering of the poor is only the proximity of their life to death every day...

...The awful vulnerability of the poor is, in fact, the common vulnerability of every man to the presence and power of death in the world

For Stringfellow, then, the heart of the Christian witness is to step into this state of vulnerability as a sacrament of resurrection, to bear witness to life in the midst of death's works. This is why the Christian witness is most potent among and with the poor. Among the poor the power of death at work in all our our lives becomes most obvious and, thus, creates the location where the witness of resurrection is most clearly revealed. This is why the work of God is most clearly observed among "the least of these."

How is resurrection made manifest in this arena where death is active and militant? A large part of it, for Stringfellow, is the sacrament of presence and using that presence to discern and name resurrection in the midst of death. A passage where Stringfellow discusses this:

The Word of God is present among the poor as well as among all others, and what I have called earlier the piety of the poor reveals the Word of God. The piety of the poor is prophetic: In a funny, distorted, ambiguous way it anticipates the Gospel. This is confirmed every day in East Harlem. There is a boy in the neighborhood, for instance, who is addicted to narcotics and whom I have defended in some of his troubles with the law. He used to stop in often on Saturday mornings to shave and wash up, after having spent most of the week on the streets. He has been addicted for a long time. His father threw him out about three years ago, when he was first arrested. He has contrived so many stories to induce clergy and social workers to give him money to support his habit that he is no longer believed when he asks for help. His addiction is heavy enough and has been prolonged enough so that he now shows symptoms of other trouble—his health is broken by years of undernourishment and insufficient sleep. He is dirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable, broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And he knows it. He knows at last that he has nothing to commend himself to another human being. He has nothing to offer. There is nothing about him that permits the love of another person for him. He is unlovable. Yet it is exactly in his own confession that he does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us. For none of us is different from him in this regard. We are all unlovable. More than that, the action of this boy's life points beyond itself, it points to the Gospel, to God who loves us though we hate Him, who loves us though we do not satisfy His love, who loves us though we do not please Him, who loves us not for our sake but for His own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts us though we have nothing acceptable to offer Him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is the scandalous secret of the Word of God.

It is, after all, in Hell—in that estate where the presence of death is militant and pervasive—that the triumph of God over death in Jesus Christ is decisive and manifest.

The Word of God is secretly present in the life of the poor, as in the life of the whole world, but most of the poor do not know the Word of God. These two facts constitute the dialectic of the Church's mission among the poor. All that is required for the mission of the Church in Harlem is there already, save one thing: the presence of the community which has and exercises the power to discern the presence of the Word of God in the ordinary life of the poor as it is lived everyday. What is requisite to mission, to the exposure of God's Word within the precarious and perishing existence of poverty, is the congregation which relies on and celebrates the resurrection.

Let me highlight that last bit (with one edit) again:

All that is required for the mission of the Church among the poor is there already, save one thing: the presence of the community which has and exercises the power to discern the presence of the Word of God in the ordinary life of the poor as it is lived everyday. What is requisite to mission, to the exposure of God's Word within the precarious and perishing existence of poverty, is the congregation which relies on and celebrates the resurrection.

Two years ago I wrote a post--Uncle Richard and The Shark--about the fun I have with my nephews. My brother has four boys, my sister has two, and Jana and I have two. So that's eight boys around when we go home to visit Mom and Dad in PA. Collectively the boys are called "the cousins" and they call me "Uncle Richard."

As I wrote about in the post about the shark one of the things that Uncle Richard does with "the cousins" is to get involved in little adventures.

This year it was vampire hunting.

During last Christmas in Erie Jana found a book about all the paranormal stuff in the city. Haunted houses and other sorts of ghost and monster stories. Aidan, our youngest, loves this sort of thing so Jana bought him the book.

So the book is in the car this summer as we drive back to Erie for some summer vacation. And reading the book Aidan finds a story about a crypt in the Erie Cemetery that contains a vampire.

We know this cemetery. The Erie Cemetery--started in the mid-1800s--is right across the street from our favorite ice cream stand--Whippy Dip. So we see this cemetery all the time. But who knew there was a vampire in there?

The Erie Cemetery is pretty big. And being an older cemetery it's pretty cool. Jana and I have walked around it before.

On the south side of the cemetery is a substantial, tree-covered hill dotted with mausoleums.  According to Aidan's book one of these mausoleums has a vampire inside.

How does anyone know this? Well, the mausoleum has no name on it. The only thing on it is a V above the door.

That's right. Only a V above the door. Gotta be a vampire lair, right?

In addition, the mausoleum has a burnt look with the story being that concerned citizens of the town once tried to burn the vampire out.

Hearing Aidan read all this out loud in the car I say, "Cool! We gotta check that out."

Getting to Erie we tell the cousins that there is a vampire in their town but, don't worry, we know where it's located. And we're going to go vampire hunting.

Well, in reality we are just going to go to the cemetery to find the mausoleum marked only with a V and see how creepy it is. 

And to make it as creepy as possible I do insist that we go at sundown, right before the cemetery closes. If there is a vampire inside sundown might be a good time to catch the vampire leaving his crypt to go stalk the night. That's what I tell the boys.

And so we went. We walked through the cemetery. Around a bend on the hill we saw a burnt looking mausoleum...

We drew closer...could this be it?

We checked for names...

The blood red sun dipped below the horizon as darkness fell...

No names could be seen on the charred stone...

Only a V...right above the door.

Vampire!

Some of the boys did seem legitimately creeped out. Particularly as dusk fell.

But before we left, a picture to commemorate the event. The Great Vampire Hunt. Here at the vampire lair is Uncle Richard and his wonderful Mother along with their entourage of vampire hunters: Michael, Brenden, Levi, Matthew, Cole, Aidan, and Mason.

The Vampire Hunters

Good times. And how to end the night? What do you do after vampire hunting? Well, you walk across the street and get some ice cream at Whippy Dip. Of course.

Best night of the summer.

I said it then about the shark, and I'll say it now with the vampire.

I love being Uncle Richard.

We must pray that God will teach us to love those we do not like and then to like those he is teaching us to love.

--Jean Vanier

So I'm teaching through the book of Genesis out at the prison. And the other day we got to one of the stranger passages in the bible. To get ready for the class I had to spend some time looking into the Nephilim. You'll recall the text:

Genesis 6.1-4 (NIV)
When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. 

The Nephilim were the offspring of "the sons of God" and the "daughters of men." Children who go on to become "the heroes of old, men of renown." Along these lines, some think the Nephilim were giants as the only other appearance of the word Nephilim occurs in Numbers in the description the spies bring back about the people in the land of Canaan:

Numbers 13.32-33
And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

As to the etymology of the word Nephilim the consensus seems to be that it comes from the root npl (נָפַל) "to fall" suggesting that Nephilim means "the fallen" or "the fallen ones."

There are many curious things about the Nephilim in this text, but perhaps the most curious thing has to do with their origins. What's going on with all this business about "sons of God" having sex with "daughters of men"?

There have been two schools of thought about this: the fallen angel theory and the descendants of Seth theory. The former I knew about, the latter I'd just learned.

I think most are familiar with the fallen angel theory. In this view the "sons of God" refer to angelic beings who lust after human women and have sex with them. The children of these unions are the Nephilim who seem to be like demigods. The Greek myths come to my mind here. Percy Jackson anyone? This view gains some support from various noncanonical sources like the book of Enoch (a book that seems to be quoted in Jude 14-15).

The second theory has to do with marriage between the descendants of Seth and the descendants of Cain.

In Genesis 5 we begin to transition out of material related to the first family and into the story of Noah and the flood. To mark this transition there are some genealogies given in Genesis 5. One of the things you notice in these genealogies is that it seems that Seth is contrasted with Cain, with Seth being good and Cain being bad. The descendants of Seth are the good bloodline and the descendants of Cain are the bad bloodline.

One sign you get of this has to do with the 7th descendent in each line. The 7th descendant on Seth's side is Enoch who we are told "walked with God" and who did not die but was "taken away by God."

By contrast, the 7th descendant on Cain's side is Lamech who comes across as a general badass, a sort of super-duper Cain as I've written about before.

All fine and dandy, but why would human descendants of Seth be called "sons of God"?

The idea goes back to how Seth seems to be the "image bearer" of God as his father Adam was:

Genesis 5.1-3
This is the written account of Adam’s family line.

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 

The argument here is that the "image of God" is carried through the line of Seth. These "sons of God"--the descendants of Seth--"fall" when they begin to intermarry with the descendants of Cain ("the daughters of men"). And while it might seem that this argument is a bit stretched it is worth noting that some Gnostic sects saw Seth as the father of the children of God, the elect. In this we see a dualism where Seth and Cain function as the primordial ancestors of the "children of light/God" and the "children of darkness/Satan" respectively.

Either way, what I think is clear in this strange text is a concern over illicit mixing. As I talk about in Unclean, these mixings are seen as normative threats. Mixing becomes associated with sin. Thus, much of the Levitical code seems preoccupied with preventing various illicit mixtures. And, incidentally, so does much of the contemporary church.

And yet, the great scandal of Jesus is that he mixes with tax collectors and sinners. And it's also the great scandal of the church in the book of Acts that Jews and Gentiles begin to mix in the Kingdom of God.

Sometimes mixing, it seems, is holy and good. The Nephilim notwithstanding.

I was thinking about singing the other day. Because when you think about it that's what Christians do more than anything else. We spend most of our time singing.

And I wondered, Why is that? Why are we commanded to sing? What's so important about singing?

Because, again, when you step back and think about it this is an interesting point of distinction. If I never went to church I wouldn't sing a whole lot. Yeah, I'd sing here and there with the radio or strumming my guitar. But not like or as much as I sing at church. At the end of the day if I don't go to church I sing hardly at all.

Christians, it seems, are a people who sing.

Pondering this, the following story from the book of Acts came to mind, the story of Paul and Silas's arrest in Philippi:

Acts 16.22-25
The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.

I wonder why Paul and Silas were singing in jail. They had just been savagely beaten. They had open wounds, were bruised, were suffering from blood loss and they couldn't move much (even to relieve themselves) due to their feet being in stocks. They had to be feeling pretty grim.

And so they sang.

This made me think of the singing during the American Civil Rights Movement. Singing is what drove the movement. People would gather in churches and sing Freedom songs before going out to face angry mobs. And then they sang on the way to jail. And then they sang in the jail. They never stopped singing.

Why?

I think for the same reason Paul and Silas were singing. To keep their courage up. Singing is a way of resisting despair and fear. Singing is an act of resistance.

I've witnessed this myself. Some nights at the study I lead at a local prison I can tell the men are down, depressed, discouraged or despairing. Some weeks are hard weeks. And when I get a sense of this, that it's been a particularly hard week, before I get into my material I have them pass out the songbooks so that we can sing.

And once we start singing something starts to change. The singing gets better, louder. The mood becomes more hopeful. Spirits start to lift. Smiles start to appear.

And once we start they don't want to stop.

They keep calling out the numbers to hymns, and I keep my study notes tucked safely away, and we keep singing into the night.

It is said that someone once asked St. Ignatius, "What would you do if you knew that the world was going to come to an end tomorrow?"

St. Ignatius replied,"I would go on doing what I'm doing now."

I've always felt that this might be the secret to happiness. I can't tell you how many people I know who can't be happy in Abilene because they have to be in the mountains or by an ocean. They can only be really happy, really at peace, somewhere else. I think most of the world is that way. Happiness is never about where you are right now. Happiness is always somewhere else. So if it were your last day on earth you wouldn't stay put, you'd try to jet off to some exotic spot and drink a Corona. The good life is always there. Never here.

But what would it mean to say, truly, that if today was your last day you'd get up, just like you always get up, and simply go about your business? It would mean, I think, that you'd figured out a way--by the grace of God--to experience bliss wherever you are. You'd have solved the puzzle, passed the test, discovered the secret. There is no need for flight. Grace is right here, right now.

I think about this all the time and I actually spend a great deal of effort working on exactly this. I want to be able to say with St. Ignatius, "I would go on doing what I'm doing now." I think that's the secret to happiness.

Any Johnny Cash fans out there?

The year 1968 was a pretty tough year in America. Vietnam. War protests. The Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated. Robert Kennedy assassinated.

But there were some highlights. Apollo 8 was the first manned ship to orbit the moon. On Christmas Eve those back on earth heard the Apollo astronauts--Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders--take turns reading the first ten verses of Genesis 1.

And 1968 was also the year Johnny Cash recorded his live performance before 2,000 inmates at the notorious Folsom Prison.

The resulting album At Folsom Prison jumpstarted Cash's career. It had been many years since Cash had recorded a hit. Some of this had to do with Cash's drug problems. But some of it was cultural as well as record companies, in the wake of the British Invasion, felt that country music was too old fashioned for the psychedelic vibe of the '60s. But Cash convinced Bob Johnson, the new head of Columbia Records, to let him make a live album of one of his prison concerts. Cash had been doing prison concerts for a few years and wanted to capture the energy and electricity of those performances. Johnson agreed. And Cash was proved right. At Folsom Prison was a commercial and critical success. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Both Time and Rolling Stone have At Folsom Prison as one of the Top 100 albums of all time.

There are many things that make At Folsom Prison special. I'm particularly fond of the guards breaking in from time to time to make announcements. You just don't hear that on many albums. But what makes the album so iconic is how it captured, symbolized and solidified Cash's reputation as someone who stood in solidarity with those on the margins of society--the poor, the down and out, the disenfranchised, the criminal and the marginalized.

In the 1999 re-release of At Folsom Prison the liner notes contain a handwritten note from Johnny Cash written a few years before his death in 2003. It reads:

Folsom Prison Blues

The culture of a thousand years is shattered with the clanging of the cell door behind you. Life outside, behind you immediately becomes unreal. You begin to not care that it exists. All you have with you in the cell is your bare animal instincts.

I speak partly from experience. I have been behind bars a few times. Sometimes of my own volition sometimes involuntarily. Each time, I felt the same feeling of kinship with my fellow prisoners.

Behind the bars, locked out from “society,” you’re being re-habilitated, corrected, re-briefed, re-educated on life itself, without you having the opportunity of really reliving it. You’re the object of a widely planned program combining isolation, punishment, taming, briefing, etc., designed to make you sorry for your mistakes, to re-enlighten you on what you should and shouldn’t do outside, so that when you’re released, if you ever are, you can come out clean, to a world that’s supposed to welcome you and forgive you.

Can it work??? “Hell NO.” you say. How could this torment possibly do anybody any good…..But then, why else are you locked in?

You sit on your cold, steel mattressless bunk and watch a cockroach crawl out from under the filthy commode, and you don’t kill it. You envy the roach as you watch it crawl out under the cell door.

Down the cell block you hear a steel door open, then close. Like every other man that hears it, your first unconscious thought reaction is that it’s someone coming to let you out, but you know it isn’t.

You count the steel bars on the door so many times that you hate yourself for it. Your big accomplishment for the day is a mathematical deduction. You are positive of this, and only this: There are nine vertical, and sixteen horizontal bars on your door.

Down the hall another door opens and closes, then a guard walks by without looking at you, and on out another door.

“The son of a ….”

You’d like to say that you are waiting for something, but nothing ever happens. There is nothing to look forward to.

You make friends in the prison. You become one in a “clique,” whose purpose is nothing. Nobody is richer or poorer than the other. The only way wealth is measured is by the amount of tobacco a man has, or “Duffy’s Hay” as tobacco is called.

All of you have had the same things snuffed out of your lives. Every thing it seems that makes a man a man. a woman, money, a family, a job, the open road, the city, the country, ambition, power, success, failure – a million things.

Outside your cellblock is a wall. Outside that wall is another wall. It’s twenty feet high, and its granite blocks go down another eight feet in the ground. You know you’re here to stay, and for some reason you’d like to stay alive--and not rot.

So for the fourth time I have done so in California, I brought my show to Folsom. Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform for. We bring them a ray of sunshine in their dungeon and they’re not ashamed to respond, and show their appreciation. And after six years of talking I finally found the man who would listen at Columbia Records. Bob Johnston believed me when I told him that a prison would be the place to record an album live.

Here’s the proof. Listen closely to this album and you hear in the background the clanging of the doors, the shrill of the whistle, the shout of the men…even laughter from men who had forgotten how to laugh.

But mostly you’ll feel the electricity, and hear the single pulsation of two thousand heartbeats in men who have had their hearts torn out, as well as their minds, their nervous systems, and their souls.

Hear the sounds of the men, the convicts all brothers of mine with the Folsom Prison Blues.

--Johnny Cash

The other day I was thinking about the notion of doxological gratitude (H/T to David Kelsey for this turn of phrase). Those thoughts about doxological gratitude brought to mind this poem entitled "Thanks" by W.S. Merwin:

Thanks by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

One of the objections that Arminians have about Reformed theology has to do with the doctrines of election and predestination. The most notorious version of these ideas is called double predestination. This is the belief that, before the beginning of time and creation, God selected and then predestined two groups of people, the saved and the damned. That is to say, before you were even born God had predestined you to either go heaven or go to hell. Before you were born that fate has already been determined and there is nothing you can do to change it. The fix is in.

Double predestination has been roundly criticized, even within Reformed circles. But many people do subscribe to the doctrine. Double predestination is deemed to be a crude bastardization of Reformed theology, but crude bastardizations tend to be pretty popular.

Reformed believers tend to reject double predestination in one of two ways. The first way is to suggest that God actually doesn't predestine anyone to be lost. Humans damn themselves. So that's on us. God's actions in the face of this situation are wholly positive, an act of electing and calling out a subset of the lost. So there's no double predestination here, God doesn't elect to damn you. That's something you've done to yourself. God has only predestined the saved. So it's not a double predestination, just the predestination of the elect. A single predestination as it were.

The rebuttal from Arminians in this regard is that while God isn't positively electing to damn the lost in choosing the elect this really is just a distinction without a difference. To not elect Mary Smith is to say no to Mary Smith. A no that existed for all eternity. So while this might not be a sin of commission, it looks like a sin of omission. That is, while this might not look like the classic form of double predestination it's still an eschatological game of Duck-Duck-Goose. Damned ... damned ... damned ... elect!

In light of this, the second and better way the Reformed rebut double predestination is to say that election has nothing to do with individuals. People--human beings like you and I--aren't elected by God. God elects Christ. Christ--and Christ alone--is the elect.

To be one of the elect, then, is to be found "in Christ." We are God's elect "in Christ." And a theological bell and whistle you can add here is that this election is communal. God calls out a people, a people found to be "in Christ." The elect are the church, the called out people who are "in Christ." This communal bit is important, but the most important piece is the "in Christ" part.

The idea here is sort of like this. Christ is a container. God predestines and elects this container. This container will be the vehicle of God's salvation. So the critical issue is being "in" the container. If you are in the container you are elect "in Christ."

This move helps as it shifts election away from individuals to focus on God's actions in Christ. God isn't electing (or damning) Mary, Bob and Joe as individuals, playing eschatological Duck-Duck-Goose with them. God just taps Jesus on the head and says once, "elect." God just elects Christ. So the key for Mary, Bob and Joe is to get on the Jesus-train, to be found "in Christ" and, thus, among the elect.

All this is fine and it does fix a bit of the problem with the doctrine of election. Election is just about God's actions in Christ, about God choosing Jesus to be the Savior.

I've got no problem with this, but I do have question. Yes, I'm the kid at the back of the Reformed classroom with my hand in the air.

Yes, God elects Jesus and not Mary, Bob, or Joe. But for Mary, Bob and Joe to be among the elect they have to be found "in Christ." Right? So here's my question: How do Mary, Bob and Joe get to be "in Christ"? How do they go from not being in Christ to being in Christ? Concretely, specifically, and plainly what has to happen?

If Jesus is the container how do Mary, Bob and Joe get inside?

As I see it, two answers present themselves.

First, God picks Mary up and puts her in the container and doesn't pick up Bob and Joe. That is, God elects Mary but not Bob and Joe.

The problem with this vision is that it completely destroys the argument that God just elects Jesus and that God's election is communal and not individual. All we've done with this "in Christ" mumbo jumbo is to create a two-stage election. God first elects Jesus and then elects certain individuals to be in Christ, picking out persons and putting them into the Jesus-container.

This blows up the argument in that it's this Stage Two election activity that's being disputed. We are back to a situation of eschatological Duck-Duck-Goose, the notion of double predestination (active or passive).

Okay, the second way Mary might be found "in Christ" is that she climbs into the container by herself. That is, Mary might hear the Good News that God elected Jesus. And hearing that Good News about Jesus Mary might decide to climb into the container, she might choose to accept Jesus as her Lord and Savior.

Now, this second vision of Mary climbing into the container does keep the "in Christ" notion intact. That is, God really just elects Jesus and only elects Jesus so it's up to Mary to climb into the container. If Mary does so she'll become elect, she will be found "in Christ." And if Mary doesn't climb into the container she'll be lost.

But here's the deal: it's up to Mary. She's got to decide. God isn't going to pick her up and put her into the container. There is no Stage Two election. God just elects Jesus and only Jesus.

So Mary's got to make a decision about her relationship to the container. She's got to decide to climb in or not. Because God isn't playing Duck-Duck-Goose with Mary. Or with me or you. So if we want in, we have to climb in. We've got to decide.

But if that's the case, if it's up to us to decide to get into the container or not, then guess what?

That's Arminianism!

And yet, that's what the Reformed say they don't believe.

So count me confused.

As I see it, it really just boils down to this. You're either an Arminian or you believe in double predestination, either the classic variety or the Duck-Duck-Goose variety. Because the election "in Christ" argument is either just more Duck-Duck-Goose or it's the equivalent of Arminiansim.

So either way, it boils down to a choice: Arminianism or double predestination.

Arminianism or Duck-Duck-Goose.

A few weeks I mentioned that Jana and I got to spend some time at the monastery of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, the home of author Joan Chittister.

Many of you know Chittister's work, but if you don't here's a great quote from a recent interview she gave to the Jackson Free Press. The interviewer's question: "So, as a woman of faith, as a monastic, how do you see your role and the role of other people of faith in the world?"

 Sister Joan's answer:

It's a simple one: To see injustice and say so, to find the truth and proclaim it, to allow no stone to be unturned when it is a stone that will be cast at anyone else. It's just that simple. There is nothing institutional, organizational, political about it. It says: "Where I am, you may not harm these people. You may not deride them; you may not reject them; you may not sneer at them, and you certainly cannot blame them for their own existence."

[This post from two years ago got some recent attention on social media sites. Because of that I though I'd bring it back out front...]

I've been thinking recently about the virtue contrasts between the early Christians and the Greeks, the Stoics in particular. In a recent post I'd mentioned that the Greeks privileged self-control while the Christians gave love pride of place.

I'm not sure where I read this, but that discussion reminded me of the contrast some have made between the deaths of Socrates and Jesus. Socrates died the ideal Greek death. Self-composed, stoical, and philosophical. While his students grieved and wept, Socrates calmly drank the hemlock that would kill him.

Jesus, by contrast, sweats blood in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus resists death and is in agony as he faces it. A far cry from Socrates.

In short, the Christian ideal isn't to be stoical. The goal isn't emotional resignation, apathy, or detachment. The Christian ideal is to weep. We see this not only in the garden of Gethsemane, but also in the gospel of John when Jesus confronted the death of his friend. There it says succinctly, "Jesus wept." And in following the Man of Sorrows Christians are commanded to "weep with those who weep."

To be a Christian is to weep. A lot.

Why?

Because, it seems to me, weeping is the only way to see the suffering and pain in the world as objectively bad. The goal isn't to stoically accept the pain, suffering, and death. We aren't supposed to be reconciled to the suffering or to see our suffering as an illusion or mistake. We are supposed to emotionally resist. We are supposed to weep. To lament. To cry out. Life isn't okay and I'm not supposed to act like it is. To weep is to object, to protest.

And to be clear, I admire the Stoics. Socrates remains a hero of mine. But in the end, my sensibilities are Christian.

I weep.

Gift

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw blue sea and sails.

--Czeslaw Milosz, from Selected and Last Poems (1931-2004)

In light of yesterday's post on the confession of sins, let's talk about one of the more puzzling passages regarding the forgiveness of sins in the gospels. It occurs in the gospel of John after the resurrection. Jesus appears to his followers:

John 20.19-23
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Catholics don't have much of a problem with this text. As they read it, this passage confirms their view that the church, in carrying the authority of the apostles, has the power to "bind and loose" sins on earth (see also Matt. 18.18).

But what are Protestants to make of this passage? According to the way Protestants read the bible this exhortation of Jesus to his followers wouldn't have been narrow--aimed at only a few--but wide, aimed at every Christian and not just at the apostles (and those representing them on earth).

If that's the case, then ordinary Christians have the ability to forgive sins or withhold forgiveness from each other.

Which is a bit of a head-scratcher. Isn't Jesus the one who is forgiving my sins? And didn't he already forgive my sins on the cross? If so, what's this business about fellow Christians not forgiving me and leaving my sin outstanding?

My Catholic readers are, I'm guessing, enjoying this. This is one of those texts that Protestants just ignore because it gives them fits.

So what are we to make of this?

Here's what I'm thinking.

One of the problems with Protestantism, particularly evangelical Protestantism, has been its overemphasis on Jesus forgiving our sins. That is, it is assumed that forgiveness really is just between you and Jesus. This is the classic individualistic emphasis--It's just Jesus and me baby!--we see throughout Protestantism.

The point being that Protestants have tended to ignore, often completely, the communal facet of forgiveness. We should care for more than just the forgiveness of Jesus. We need to care about becoming a community of forgiveness where we forgive each other.

And I think in the text above Jesus really ups the stakes on this, suggesting that failing to become a community of forgiveness--failing to forgive each other--will have eternal consequences. When we fail to forgive each other on earth nothing in our private experiences will Jesus will wipe away that sin. Until forgiveness is experienced among our brothers and sisters that sin, in some form or another, remains on the books. If we want forgiveness, Jesus is saying, it's up to us.

Now that last line is pretty alarming, but work with me here.

Imagine what Jesus is saying was literally true. We are all in a church together. And, being people, we'll sin against each other. But following Jesus we feel called to be a community of forgiveness. We've been entrusted with the "ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5.18). Because of this we take passages such as this to be the foundation of our common life together:

Matthew 5.23-24
Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

That is to say, before we do anything as Christians, before we pray, sing, worship, take communion--before we do anything--we work on being reconciled with each other. Because this reconciliation--the giving and receiving of forgiveness--is what defines this community as a Jesus-following community. It is in the forgiveness of sins, extended by each to all, that makes the community a church. All others communities where reconciliation is postponed for worship, song, sermons, prayer, classes, ministry or communion are false churches--pseudochurches.

And the reason why reconciliation is so central is because, if we take Jesus literally, if we haven't forgiven each other ours sins remain outstanding--unforgiven on earth and in heaven.

That is a radical notion, but stay with me a bit more because what I want us to appreciate is the moral genius at work here, the practical outworking of how this idea creates the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

To be concrete about it, imagine I sin against Joe. And let's say Jesus's formulation is literally in force, that the reality of the situation is that if I want God to forgive me I need Joe to forgive me. If that's the situation then let me bring us to the million dollar question: How might that formulation energize my desire to be reconciled and at peace with Joe?

I know it'd be a big kick in my pants to get right with Joe. My reconciliation with Joe is no longer optional or something that can be postponed, perhaps indefinitely. Suddenly, my reconciliation with Joe has become deeply intertwined with my reconciliation with God. Outstanding sins on earth become outstanding sins in heaven.

And I wonder, as we think about this, if this might be the genius of what Jesus is saying, exactly what he was getting at.

Because isn't the problem with Christianity that we want God to forgive us but we don't care about being reconciled to others? Isn't it much easier to pray to God for forgiveness than to put in all the time and relational work to live at peace with others?

What if Jesus is saying that forgiveness on earth has eternal consequences. What if Jesus is saying that it's in our relationships with each other where our sins are truly forgiven. Forgiveness in heaven might be irrelevant if you don't forgive each other on earth. Why fall down at the altar asking God to forgive me when I need to be falling at Joe's feet asking him to forgive me? Isn't that exactly what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5? Isn't Jesus saying that Joe's forgiveness is more important, more pressing, and more vital than the forgiveness of God at the altar?

Let me give another illustration of this.  Imagine you are a parent with your small child at a playground. Your child gets into a little fight with another child and punches, as little kids can do, the other child. You jump in to scold your child. Your child, feeling contrite, looks at you and says, "I'm sorry."

Well, what would any good parent do in that moment?

I know what I've done. I say, "I appreciate that, but you really need to go say sorry to that little boy over there."

I think this is what Jesus trying to say. Jesus is effectively saying, "As God's representative on earth I forgive you. So you don't have to worry about that anymore. You don't have to go to the temple and make sacrifices anymore to secure God's pardon. In my life, death and resurrection I've ended your need to seek forgiveness from God. For I have forgiven you. Now you are released to live out that forgiveness with each other. Those are the actions--your forgiveness of each other--which will determine your eternal destiny. How you forgive on earth is how you will be forgiven in heaven."

I think that's a fair interpretation of Jesus's message. Consider the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant or Jesus's consistent refrain that "as you forgive others so you will be forgiven."

Luke 6.37
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."

And here's the deal, even if you reject this strong formulation it is indisputable that if I restrict forgiveness to what happens between God and myself energy and urgency is sapped from seeking forgiveness from others because that just isn't my most pressing concern. I think we've seen the practical effects of this all over the place. I sin against Joe and then seek forgiveness from God in prayer. I never really get around to seeking reconciliation with Joe. That's just not my central concern. And it might not be a concern at all.

To conclude, there is an objection here. What if Joe doesn't forgive me? Can Joe hold a sin against me keeping that sin outstanding and unforgiven in heaven? And if so, wouldn't Joe be holding my eternal destiny in his hands? If Joe's keeping the books on me and Joe doesn't wipe my slate clean then what is going to happen to me in heaven?

Three responses. First, if your overriding concern is saving your own skin rather than working on your relationship with Joe then you've missed the point of everything we've been talking about. Quit worrying about hell and go talk to Joe. If you do that trust God that the rest will be taken care of. Just go talk to Joe.

Second, we have to remember the symmetry of the situation. Joe is commanded to forgive you. And if he doesn't Joe's damned himself. You don't have to worry about if Joe does or doesn't forgive you. You just have take care of your side of the equation. As Paul says, "as far as it depends upon you live at peace with everyone."

Finally, we have to keep the communal focus in mind. It's a community of forgiveness that we are imagining. A community where I am to forgive Joe and Joe is to forgive me and there are others around us helping us both to do this. That is, I don't think it's best to think of two people keeping score. I think what Jesus is doing in John 20 is giving us a picture of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Sure, any given expression of this will fall short of the ideal. But that doesn't take away from the vision of what Jesus is calling us to, that if we want God's forgiveness in heaven we should be focusing on forgiving each other on earth. By ending the temple sacrifices God pushed forgiveness out of heaven and onto the earth--out of the temple and into the church. A community of forgiveness replaces sacrifices on an altar.

But I want to end by coming back to that scary question I raised above.

If Jesus's formulation is literally in force, does that not mean that I hold your eternal destiny in my hands?

And does that not also mean that you hold my destiny in your hands?

Does it mean that we are all mutually holding our collective destinies? On earth and in heaven?

I wonder if that isn't exactly what it means.

The Churches of Christ, my faith tradition, isn't a liturgical tradition. Lots of people in the CoC lament this. I don't...much. I love liturgy, but only in doses. (We like to go to a local Episcopal church on holy days.) I don't think I'd like liturgy every Sunday. In this, I guess, I'm just reflecting where I come from.

That said, there are certain things in Christian liturgy that I think are absolutely essential which  are missing in my church and in many other non-liturgical Protestant churches. That is to say, while I don't think we need to do full liturgy week in and week out there are critical components of the liturgy that I think can't be ignored. And yet we do.

An example here is the confession of sins.

Without liturgy I don't know when low-church Protestants ever get around to confessing their sins. Sure, there are often small group venues where prayer requests are shared. But more often than not, people tend to share life-stressors rather than sins.

And to be clear, I don't think liturgical and communal confession is a cure-all for this, but at least it's something.

From the Episcopal Church:

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

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 neighbors 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.

The confiteor from the Catholic Church:

I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.

A few years ago I was visiting with our worship committee and shared with them my feeling that we needed to add the confession of sins to the beginning of our worship. And being from a bible-driven tradition I told them that we didn't need to use the words used in liturgical churches. We could use the words of Scripture by using various penitential psalms.

Sadly, my church hasn't taken up this suggestion.

Now why, you might be wondering, do I feel that this is so important?

I think the confession of sins pushes back on the triumphalism and self-righteousness of the church. See, I have this hunch. My hunch is that the most triumphalistic churches out there don't have the confession of sins in their worship service. Not that saying the confession is a panacea and fix-all. But it has to have a salutary spiritual effect to take a moment each week to corporately say "We've sinned."

We've sinned, often grievously so, against our neighbors by not loving them as we love ourselves in both what we've done to them and what we've failed to do for them.