Dr. Yolanda Pierce continues her six-week series of Lenten Devotionals. Devotionals can be found on KineticsLive.com every Wednesday beginning with Ash Wednesday.
By Dr. Yolanda Pierce,
Many Christian worship services include a time for public confession: prayers of corporate and personal repentance. This is often followed by an assurance of pardon: the reminder of God’s forgiveness for our sins and our need for God’s grace. I think both these elements in worship are exactly right; confession and forgiveness are essential in a right relationship with God and with each other. But I wish the worship service would not move quite so quickly from the confessional mode to the assurance of pardon.
We have sinned and we have been sinned against. These words cannot be empty gestures if the assurance of pardon is to have true meaning. How have we sinned, in thought, word, and deed? Before there is reconciliation, there must be truth. Have we sinned against our neighbors with the greed which lurks in our heart, our unwillingness to yield even a penny of our salaries so that others may have health care? Have we sinned against others with an attitude of selfishness, believing that since we have pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps, everyone else can do the same?
We have sinned and we have been sinned against. In what structural and systematic ways have we been sinned against? In what ways, personal and intimate, have we been wounded by the harsh words and thoughtless actions of others? Can we name those persons and parties that have been sinned against? Can we name the perpetrators of those sins, even if our name is among the guilty party? Are we willing to label certain policies as evil and sinful, when they systematically deny groups a voice and human agency? Are we willing to offer reparations to those who have been sinned against?
The idea of reparations scares many Christians, this notion of compensation for injury or insult or genocide or slavery. But reparations involve a two-fold process: the acknowledgement that a loss or a theft has occurred (naming the sin) and then the restoration or repayment of that which was lost (forgiveness and reconciliation). With our mouths, we speak of confession and pardon; with our tongues we ask for forgiveness and reconciliation. But with our whole hearts and hands, and out of the abundance of our resources, we can offer reparation to those injured by greed, indifference, hate, and racism.
The Lenten season is a time for confession and repentance. The celebratory joy of the assurance of pardon, embodied by the Easter season, is almost already upon us. But let us sit with the corporate and private confession of sin a little while longer. Let us sit with the necessity for reparations a little while longer. Let us sit with our own complicity and guilt and privilege a little while longer. True repentance and reconciliation begins with a contrite heart.
[box_light]Dr. Yolanda Pierce is the Elmer G. Homrighausen Associate Professor of African American Religion and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary, and Liaison with the Princeton University Center for African American Studies. She blogs @ Reflections of an Afro-Christian Scholar[/box_light]
Relate Posts:
Lenten Thoughts for Weary Christians – Preamble
Lenten Thoughts for Weary Christians – Sackcloth
Lenten Thoughts for Weary Christians – Broken Vessels
Lenten Thoughts for Weary Christians – Remembrance
