I am the stupidest person on the planet.  Seriously, I am so dense I make Gomer Pyle seem the savant. 

You have to chalk one up to my new father confessor because, while I am quite sure he is of two minds about hearing my confession and he is not an overtly caring pastor, I believe he is truly still waters run deep...in all manner of translation.

I went again on Tuesday, having gathered my nerve to finally speak about something that has kept me up for two months.  I am literally between a rock and a hard place.  I am in anguish.  Hence, the fasting and taking in only scripture for days on end.

When I go to private confession/absolution, I need time to...well...actually arrive.  So, I ask the pastor to sing the Agnus Dei from page 198 in the LSB.

Oh, Christ the Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,

Have mercy upon us.

Oh, Christ the Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,

Have mercy upon us.

Oh, Christ the Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,

Grant us Thy peace.
Amen.
 
I cannot ask for mercy, but I want to so very much.  Something about that tune, married with those words, speaks to me, calls to me, fills me.  So, as he sings this prayer, I join in the amen.  Then I pray the Psalter.  If there wasn't this rush about getting through the liturgy, I would definitely pray more than one Psalm.  But I choose them for the words I wish to speak.  Remember the old Prego logo?  It's in there!  That's how I feel about the Psalter.  ANYTHING you wish to pray is in that collection of prayers.  From mere snippets of verses to whole psalms.  Tuesday night,  I chose Psalm 139.

O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
    You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
         You understand my thought from afar.
    You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
         And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
    Even before there is a word on my tongue,
         Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
    You have enclosed me behind and before,
         And laid Your hand upon me.
    Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
         It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
    Where can I go from Your Spirit?
         Or where can I flee from Your presence?
    If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
         If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
    If I take the wings of the dawn,
         If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
    Even there Your hand will lead me,
         And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
    If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
         And the light around me will be night,"
    Even the darkness is not dark to You,
         And the night is as bright as the day
         Darkness and light are alike to You.
    For You formed my inward parts;
         You wove me in my mother's womb.
    I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
         Wonderful are Your works,
         And my soul knows it very well.
    My frame was not hidden from You,
         When I was made in secret,
         And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
    Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
         And in Your book were all written
         The days that were ordained for me,
         When as yet there was not one of them.
    How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
         How vast is the sum of them!
    If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand
         When I awake, I am still with You.
    O that You would slay the wicked, O God;
         Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
    For they speak against You wickedly,
         And Your enemies take Your name in vain.
    Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD?
         And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
    I hate them with the utmost hatred;
         They have become my enemies.
    Search me, O God, and know my heart;
         Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
    And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
         And lead me in the everlasting way.

I chose this psalm for the final plea:

    Search me, O God, and know my heart;
         Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
    And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
         And lead me in the everlasting way.

But I chose this one, too, because it speaks of love I do not understand.

Anyhow, I have never talked with this new pastor about why I ask him to sing.  He just does.  I have never talked with him about why I pray the psalter.  I just do.  And he listens.

He uses a different liturgy, which is somewhat problematic for me.

Someone pointed out something to me that I should have seen myself.  The words of the first part are quite distressing and I never thought I could admit such until she struck me across the head with them:  I have not let His love have its way with me, and so my love for others has failed.  Having a way with me is something men have done against my will.  These words are words that make me tremble deep within, that set me on edge, leave me bracing for what is to come.

So, taking courage from his willingness to sing, I mentioned the problem and asked if he had other words.  He was surprised, as you may have surmised, but gave me new ones to speak:  I have not let His love guide and direct me in all things, and so my love for others has failed.

Then there was the whole kneeling thing.  I cannot kneel without great pain and great consequence to future walking.  Were I to get down, I would need help getting back up.  And the cost would linger.  So, being Myrtle, I just plopped on the floor beneath the rail.  I think I discombobulated him.

Although I still do not understand, something about his being vested and my being at his feet when giving the Word of Absolution is seemingly inappropriate, so we had the whole not-tracing-the-cross-on-my-forehead thing.

When I tried to talk about that, the next time he put his stole on my head.  I felt like a whore, to put it bluntly, so filthy to the touch that he had to put cloth between he and I?  I cried the whole way home.

Later, I learned the why of it: by using the stole, the pastor is emphasizing that he is merely in the stead of Christ, in the office of the undershepherd.  It is Christ, through his undershepherd, pronouncing forgiveness.

Well, needless to say, I felt stupid about that one.  But this is not what I am talking about.  I am far, far, far stupider.

Things went "better" the next time because I was not on the floor and I got my cross.

[To have the sign of the holy cross and all that it implies, represents, traced on the forehead of a sinner such as I takes my breath away, gives me a comfort beyond words.  It is a touch that lingers far past the moment.  It is both a balm to my soul and a guard against my ever relentless, merciless, wily foe.]

So, Tuesday, after much prayer, I gathered my courage and tried to speak.

There was much silence.
Time ran out again.
And there was the second set of words that are problematic for me.

In his liturgy, which is based on a careful study of Luther's practice, the penitent asks for forgiveness after finishing the confession.  I don't want to have to ask again.  Getting in my car is asking.  Driving over to the church is asking.  Walking through the door is asking.  And...I actually already ask in the first part of the liturgy that comes after some verses from Psalm 51.  Dear Pastor, I ask you to please hear my confession and to pronounce forgiveness in me in order to fulfill God's will.

I couldn't ask a second time.  Such silence there was to my words.  So miserable am I in the matter of which I spoke.  What if he said "no"?

I cried.
He had a meeting.
No absolution.

Aside from a few clarifying questions, he did say one thing:  You need to stop looking at your faith.  It was the second time he has said this to me.  I had not a blooming clue what he meant or why he would possibly say this. Faith is the most important thing to a Christian, right?

I wailed the whole way home.  I wailed my way through asking another pastor for help.  Below is a portion of his reply:

...you are in such sorrow, and you needn't be.  You have not failed at confession and absolution, nor at being a Lutheran, nor at being a Christian and a child of God.  You are a struggling sinner, who is nevertheless loved and cared for deeply by the Lord.  Your forgiveness is not contingent upon anything in you, nor anything you do.  It is already sure and certain and complete in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, who died bearing all of your sins in His Body, and yet was raised bodily from the dead, and lives and reigns eternally at the right hand of God.

Asking your pastor to sing the Agnus Dei with you is a fine thing to do.  I'm sure he doesn't mind.  Every pastor does things a little differently, but I suspect that he is quiet at various points, because he does not want to intrude upon your confession; he is being patient and gentle with you, because he cares for you and wants to be faithful in his office.  If you have not shared with him, perhaps in writing as you have written to me, how hard it is for you to ask for forgiveness, he may well find any number of ways of helping you.  I'm quite certain that his goal is to serve you, and certainly not to make things difficult or challenging for you.

Now, understand this: Holy Absolution is precisely for sinners, just like yourself, who know and tremble at their sins.  Sins are bound only for those who harden their hearts in unrepentance.  And even then, the binding is done for the sake of calling them to repentance and to the forgiveness of Christ.  Everything is always about the forgiveness of sins, the forgiveness of sinners.
 

When someone comes to confession, I assume, as Dr. Luther did, and as most any pastor would, that the person is a penitent sinner who desires absolution in faith.  Given that, and given that absolution (forgiveness) is already sure and certain in Christ Jesus, of course I will forgive his or her sins in the Name and stead of Christ.  There is no pending contingency.  There is no sin so shocking or horrendous that it will not be forgiven, freely and fully, by the Word of Christ, which He speaks from His very Cross.  This is what it's all about.  If you are ashamed of your sin, that is all the more indication that you are a repentant sinner, for whom the Holy Absolution is exactly intended.  Have no fear that you will be denied or turned away.  But, even if you are afraid and uncertain, know that the Holy Absolution is for you.  Your fear and uncertainty, your shame and weakness, do not undo that which Christ does.

Your sins haunt you because Satan hates you, and he is the wicked accuser of God's brethren, day and night.  But he is a liar and a murderer, as he has been from the beginning.  The truth is that God does not hold your sins against you, but lavishes His grace and mercy and peace upon you in love.  There is no condemnation for you, because He has hidden you safely in Christ; not because of any strength in you, but precisely in your weakness.  Do not despair or lose heart.  Christ has also known your weakness and borne it, as He has known your sin and carried it and put it to death in Himself.

Talk to your pastor about your fears and struggles.  Write them down for him, if that is easier for you than trying to articulate them out loud. Give him a chance to love and serve you, as I'm sure he desires to do. Then trust him as the man whom God has provided to speak His Word and work His works for you.  It is Christ your Savior who stands with your pastor in His Office, for the purpose of comforting your aching heart with His forgiveness of all your sins.

Seriously, if you have not yet had the joy that is private absolution, you should go.  Does he not speak so clearly why this is so?

Too chicken to write a letter, I printed out my email to the pastor, which spares me not in the least, and his reply and practically shoved them in the pastor's hand after Wednesday night's service, nervously muttering that I wanted him to read them, to understand why I couldn't finish the liturgy.

I will, to be truthful, admit that I do not understand why he couldn't just finish for me.  Is the liturgy, in this instance, that important?  These things I do not profess to understand, though I cherish, respect, and honor the heritage of the our faith that is handed down in liturgy, most particularly for the fact that the liturgy is teeming with the Living Word.

But, again, this is not the reason I am now convinced without a shadow of a doubt that I am the stupidest person in all of history.

My dearest friend Bettina posted yesterday (somehow I missed this) about baptism:

In learning about Baptism, I am realizing how much I have missed in the 26 years of my Baptism. What I thought I was doing—showing others that I had accepted Christ into my life, joining my church, and following Him through the waters of baptism—I am learning I actually did nothing.

I went through the motions, but God did the work. He saved me, He washed away my sins, He covered me with the Holy Spirit. I didn't realize what He does through Baptism. But He didn't just do the work then, He has done it every day since and continues to save me, wash me clean of my sins, and cover me with the Holy Spirit. He does the work through Baptism, but also through His Word and The Lord's Supper.

God gives me my faith. And what a gift. To have salvation, the Spirit working in me, the name of Christ on me. I knew I had these things, in a sense, but not from my Baptism. Well, I hadn't really thought about the fact that Christ's name is on me. And what that means. If I believe that I have to do something first, before Baptism, than I am limiting God to my abilities. And let me tell you that that is limiting, since I can do nothing without Christ. I can't believe without the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes with Baptism. I want my children to have the gift of faith. To have Christ's name on them. To have salvation. To have their sins washed away. I want them Baptized.

There's a lot I had not really thought about, known about, but now I know that I am missing so much. Take the 10 Commandments, the Apostle's Creed, and The Lord's Prayer. They seem simple, but there is so much teaching packed in these three that I have never heard.

I am hungry to learn more. 

My heart sang at this.  I took in her words, but in part they did not register. [Do you notice a trend in her thought process?]

Well, after reading this, I took my fill of Four and Twenty+ Blackbirds, Pastoral Meanderings, Lutheran Logomaniac, Theologia Crucius, and Weedon's Blog.  If I find nothing new, I usually delve into back posts.  Nearly sated, I dove over to Babylon Falling to see if Pastor F had anything new to savor.

Today, he posted something he wrote several years ago about a fantastic, but true encounter he had on a train.  In part, I found myself pouring over his words because on the way to Africa I had the same encounter.  We had a long layover in Amsterdam.  That city is known for...well...less than moral behavior.  There I was in the airport, a fresh faced, very naive missionary sitting at a table with Muslims and Animists and atheists talking about God, a crowd of people surrounding us.  Oh, being a [deluded] Protestant, I was ready to convert the world, win hundreds for Christ.  For six hours, I sat with those folks and argued.  It was heady stuff for a 21-year-old who believed unequivocally in the Lord Jesus Christ.  I only wish I had, at that time, been taught the proper division of Law and Gospel so that I could have spoken more truth than I did.

So, I rather eagerly read through his story.  The bit below made me chuckle:

While everyone was enjoying it, I have to confess that my seminary training was serving me very well – contrary, I must add, to the many brothers in my circuit who seemed to think I still had a lot to learn about the real world and real “ministry.”  I felt like a theological Chuck Norris, staving off a torrent of Wikipedia-informed combatants with practiced martial skill, careful never to take the green-belts to the mat with a bone-crushing, one-shot blow to the head, but nonetheless countering their every attack with just enough deftness to keep them coming back for more. Reject(er)s of mega-church society as they mostly were, the last thing they needed was the pat answers they’d already heard. What they needed was to spar, to have a chance to win, to test their streetwise moves and find the value (or lack thereof) of their own disciplines.

Oh how, in that airport, I, too, danced wickedly with the sword of Scripture, wielding it with deftness that I know now was the Holy Spirit. I could just see this rather intelligent, rather confessional pastor skillfully wend his way through the conversation for he truly knows that proper division.

And then.

And then.

And then.

Well, it was, at least, until this upstart young pastor walked into their philosophosizing and made the audacious claim that Christianity isn’t about believing in Jesus “so that” you can get into heaven. It’s about Jesus dying on a cross and rising from the grave because creation sucks and He refuses to leave it mired that way.

In my "training,"  I had learned Christianity is not about religion, it is about a relationship. To live as a Christian is to work at deepening that relationship through bible study, where you see what the verses mean to you and how you can apply them to your life.  You take steps to move closer to Jesus, expressing your faith through baptism, prayer, and witnessing.  And you get connected with God through worship, plugging yourself into a church were you serve Him, praise Him, and give the sacrifice of  your life to Him.  Part of that involves bringing people to Christ and helping them begin their relationship with Him.  That relationship is faith.  If you are good at it, you have great faith.  If you are not, you need to work at those things so as to garner more faith.  Being good at it meant that you did not struggle with sin. 

And then.

And then.

And then.


Christianity is not about “faith.” It’s about Jesus. It’s about what he said about himself. It’s about what he did by himself. And it’s about the reasons and effects of what he said and did: to give you no other choice but to believe that what he said and did is the cornerstone of human history, without which there is no real reason to be alive at all. Or, if you must, to self-admittedly live in a world of ignorance, chance, empty answers and eventual defeat.


On two different occasions, Pastor E, very carefully, very cautiously, told me that he thought I should stop looking at my faith.  The second time, I wanted to blurt out, "But what does that mean?"

The real meat of Pastor F's story about that surreal encounter on the train was about what he gave them, the heart of his every response was Jesus.

So how did it all end on that night train through Ohio, my wife asleep with my two kids in coach and me sitting up “partying” until three a.m.? We covered the gambit, from “why should I believe what the Bible says,” (Answer: because Jesus is risen from the dead, so what he says is probably right,) to “why is abortion wrong?” (Answer: because Jesus is risen from the dead, and he likes babies to stay alive,) to “how is the morality of Christianity any better than the moral teachings of Islam or Buddhism?” (Answer: it isn’t so much, but Jesus is risen from the dead, and that means something far more important than moralism!) And for all the times they’d been told to believe in Jesus so they could be saved, through all the Sunday school and VBS and youth group parties, with all the pressure tactics and emotional manipulation of charismatic worship, amidst the history-channel/Dan-Brown misinformation of the age, not one of them had ever been forced to reckon with the all important claim that the reason to be a Christian is because history is on the side of the empty tomb, and it is that fact alone which creates faith in the one True God.

Jesus.

Jesus.

Jesus.

Pastor D's email signature includes: Crux Sola Est Nostra Theologia.  Translated, this means the cross alone is our theology.  He told me this.  I didn't understand.  I thought I did.  But I didn't.  Oh, I did not.

I look at my faith and it is a miserable thing.  I look at my faith and see decades of failure.  I look at my faith and despair over how little I trust, how little I expect, how little I receive.  I look at my faith and at best I see a dim reflection, feeble and flickering, of the grace, mercy, and love of Jesus Christ.  I look at my faith and I do not sleep, I do not eat, I do not have peace.

I may be wrong about this, but I think this is precisely why we have the symbolism of a mustard seed when it comes to Christ teaching us about faith.

     When they came to the crowd, a man came up to Jesus, falling on his knees before Him and saying, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic and is very ill; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him."

     And Jesus answered and said, "You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me." 

     And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at once.

     Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not drive it out?"

     And He said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. (Matthew 17:14-20)

     He said to His disciples, "It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come!  It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.

     "Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.  And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' forgive him."

      The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"

     And the Lord said, "If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and be planted in the sea'; and it would obey you.  (Luke 17:1-6)


Faith is not about us, about what we can do.  The smallest speck of it can move mountains, command trees.  Trees!  We, of our strength, would not be moving that mountain, would not be commanding that tree. What man can move a mountain?  What man can command a tree?  Ah, one Man.  The God made flesh that we might be saved.  Remember the fig tree?  One word from Christ and it withered and died.

      Now in the morning, when He was returning to the city, He became hungry.  Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only; and He said to it, "No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you." And at once the fig tree withered.

      Seeing this, the disciples were amazed and asked, "How did the fig tree wither all at once?"

      And Jesus answered and said to them, "Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' it will happen. And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive." (Matthew 21:18-22)

All things...believing...will receive.

Not doing.  Not a relationship.  Not us.  Not me.  Jesus.

Bettina cracked me up today because she was telling me about E sticking out her tongue (she rolls her eyes, too) and I asked where she learned that.  Becky swiftly replied, "She's a sinner!  What do you expect?"

A while ago, Bettina wrote on her blog that she finally knew what her problem was:  she was a sinner.  Well, I have known that, about me, for decades.  Only, people of faith were not supposed to be sinners, too.  Confessional Lutheranism straightened this out for me, fairly well, even if I despair of the struggle.  It was good to struggle!  Strange.

But I still thought that the struggle represented my faith.  And that being a Christian was all about faith.

I think this is why the condition of the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer was so bothersome to me.  What Pastor W was trying to teach me was not that I needed to forgive so as to see evidence of faith in my life, but that any forgiveness was the evidence of faith because forgiveness is a work of Christ, not man.   I was so focused on how well I know myself, how puzzling forgiveness is to me.  So, I was thinking, but I do not forgive as I should, so how can I be forgiven then, how can I have faith?  Pastor W was singing sweet, sweet Gospel to me and all I heard was Law.  Barely, barely I understood because I did manage to sit beside my boss in her time of need when my whole being did not wish to be there.  I knew that had to be of Christ, not I, so I had to have some faith because I did that.

Stupid, stupid, stupid me.

After everything I have written.  After everything I have read.  After hungering for the Lord's Supper and craving the Word of forgiveness, I still didn't get it.

It's not about faith.  It's about Jesus.  Jesus gives life.  Jesus gives redemption.  Jesus gives mercy.  Jesus gives faith.

I got the fallacy of works-righteousness.  I understand that I didn't accomplish anything because I couldn't accomplish anything.  After all, I failed for years even though I tried with my whole being.  I didn't see that I was making faith a work, too, in making my struggle with sin representative of whether or not my faith was good enough.  It is not a work, but a gift.  Being a Christian is not about faith in Jesus.  It is about Jesus.

Not faith.  Jesus.

Not faith.  Jesus.

Not faith.  Jesus.

He does everything.  He is everything.  All of that work.  All that He is.  All is mine in Him because I have died with Him, risen with Him, in the waters of Holy Baptism.  His name is placed upon me.  And in that Name I am holy, I am righteous.

If—as has been suggesgt suggested—I stop looking at my faith and look at the cross, what will I find?  Constant, complete, unending forgiveness.  Sustenance, strength, and rest.  A cloak for my shame.  This I know.  This I do not understand.  But I do believe.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!