I used to hate the prayers of confession in worship.  I was a pretty good person, I thought, who had mostly done everything right.  These prayers did not apply to me, I would think.  But I would be ever so happy that my neighbor over there, who had clearly wronged me this week, was being asked to pray them.  I couldn’t have identified at all with Paul.  I was comfortable in my self-righteousness and quite in denial about my wretched state.

What I needed was a little more accurate self-assessment.  Your life and the people in it will tell you who you are, if you’re willing to listen; and then you find out with great certainty that you do know what the apostle Paul is talking about here.

I know what I ought to do, but I do not do it.
I know what I ought not to do, but I do it.

I know before I open my mouth that my words will be hurtful.  I say them anyway.
I know when I get up in the morning that I should allow more time in the day for prayer and study, but I do not do it.
I know that I should eat five fruit and vegetable servings and that I should not take a cookie every time I pass by the plate…but what I ought to do I do not do; and what I ought not to do, I do.
I know that I should exercise more and sit less.
I know that I should listen more and talk less.
I know that I should forgive more easily, and blame less.
I know that I should live spend less and save more.
I know that I should write those thank you notes;
And get that solitaire game completely off the computer.
But I do what I shouldn’t and don’t do what I should.
I know…I know

You can see how if any of us would spend too much time with our own list, we could work ourselves into a state of wretchedness.  St. Paul was describing human experience, for sure.  I love that the translators have chosen the English word “wretched.”  Though a little old fashioned, and perhaps even a bit melodramatic, it is a word that connotes a truly horrible condition:
Afflicted
Suffering
Anguished
Woeful
Miserable

The apostle Paul, having been fortunate enough to be an educated man in both the ways of the Pharisees and the ways of the Greeks, and having both standing in the Jewish community and citizenship in the Roman empire, and having been confronted by the risen Christ and transformed from a persecutor of Jesus followers into the most effective evangelist the early church had; describes himself as wretched.  But this is not just a personal statement.  Paul is right in the middle of a theological argument about salvation, and the role of the law and of grace.  Paul does not mean to describe himself alone as wretched.  He means to use his own experience to point to the condition of all of humanity.

Put simply, it is this.  We cannot save ourselves.  Not that we don’t want to.  Not that we aren’t capable of the effort.  Not that we don’t know what we ought to do.  It is not a character flaw that prevents us from saving ourselves, it is our human condition.

Paul is not talking to the so-called “unsaved,” but to Christians who are struggling with the question, “If I am saved from sin because of my faith in Christ, why do I continue to sin?”  This is the source of Paul’s wretchedness – that he continues to fall short of the mark, even though he understands himself fully reconciled to God and set free from the power of sin, he still struggles with the presence of sin.

Even though at peace with God, and assured that God’s love welcomes and approves of us just as we are, we continue to live in a sea of sin.  There are systems and structures and powers and principalities and qualities of our own human personality structure and lived experience that make it nearly, if not totally impossible for us to be completely free of sin and still live in the world.  Paul assumes that this is a source of anguish for the Christian – that once aware of the grace and holiness of God we want to be free from sin; hence our anguish that we cannot be.

This is not a comfortable truth for us.  We have been taught that we can be the captain of our own ship; the master of our own fate; the ruler of our own will.  We have been taught that a particular set of behaviors will make us acceptable.  And we will strive mightily to meet those expectations, and if we miss the mark, we may take our failure so personally that we forget that we are loved and accepted just as we are.  This is the desire of our human nature, what Paul calls the flesh: to do it all by ourselves and remain unwilling to acknowledge our limitations as part of our identity.

On the other hand, we’ve been taught that external standards don’t matter.  That we can do whatever we want; that individualism and personal freedom are a basic right that give us license to behave however we wish to behave so long as we break no laws.  So we can feel justified, even if damage is done, if we adhered to the letter of the law.  This is the desire of our human nature: to argue our case based on the technicalities of the law rather than the qualities of loving relationship.

Sin is something more than the personal sins that we commit.  The structures of sin are built into the world in such a way that we cannot avoid participating.  I recall several years ago, when Ohio re-instituted Capital punishment, and the first execution in many years was carried out.  I was heart-sick over this turn of events in our civic life.  I felt the need to confess that I had been complicit in the taking of a human life.  I did not kill anyone with my own hands.  But I am a citizen of a state that killed someone in the name of its citizens.  I could not single handedly do anything to prevent myself from participating.  As a citizen, I participated.  That is when I realized why we need prayers of confession.

I don’t intentionally mean to participate in the corporate greed that has captured our economic system and is escalating the divide between rich and poor in this country.  But my retirement funds, and the endowment funds of this congregation are invested in a stock market that places the highest priority not on the well being of workers, but on shareholder value.  But when my retirement fund statement comes, I’m all about shareholder value!

I need prayers of confession, because I live in a sinful world, and I participate because I can’t not participate.

There are these two ways of living in sin: the systems and structures that are sinful that we cannot avoid; and the personal sins where we use our power to hurt others, or where we fail to use our power to help others.

The truth is, I need prayers of confession for the times when I personally, and quite of my own will and outside the will of God, sin.  I no longer resist opportunities to confess my sin.  And here’s what finally got me comfortable with that.  Back in the day when I thought they didn’t apply to me, I wanted to be like the perfect people.  That meant never acknowledging my own failures of errors, unless absolutely forced to, and then only with anger and resentment.  Even a liberating faith, when lived out of one’s own strength alone, can be debilitating.

Well here’s a news flash.  There are no perfect people.  None.  Anywhere.  That’s a false role model.

Grace and community offer an alternative role model.  And that is the model of the saint.  A saint is a sinner who lives in a sea of sin, bathed in the grace of God.  They seldom do anything wrong – either by the letter or the spirit of the law – not because they are perfect, but because they learn from their mistakes.  They seldom sit and idly accept the systems and structures that are sinful in the world.  They name the sin.  Sometimes they actively protest it.  And they work tirelessly to change it – some with quiet persistent prayer, some as activists.

This is a role model which values the struggle.  It lives to learn and learns to live.  There is no failure except a failure to learn and strive for a more excellent way the next time.  And it depends on the grace of God through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

There is a lot of good self-help advice in the world, and there are skilled therapists who can help us examine our psychological pain and find a way out of it that is life giving.

But for the wretched reality that we are broken people in a broken world and always will be; there is not just advice – there is gospel good news.  That’s where Paul goes in chapter 8!

The gospel is not just good advice.  It is good news.

Jesus Christ lived in the broken world and got broken by it.  And in that brokenness, even if sin is still present – we are given a new power.  Here we announce the good news:

Forgiveness is more powerful than revenge.
Learning from failure is more powerful that success.
Receiving is more powerful than taking.
Giving is more powerful than keeping.
Broken bread and poured out wine is more powerful than any weapon.

You and I are already set free.  We are loved and beloved.  Bold to confess because we know we’re forgiven; welcomed not because we’ve earned a welcome, but because Jesus extends the invitation.

Let us therefore confess our sins, together and in silence, as we prepare to be welcomed by our host at this table of blessing.

(silent confession)

Hear the good news! While you are yet a sinner, Jesus Christ is giving his life for you.  By the power of his love, you are forgiven.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.