Tag: Confession and Pardon

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Confession and Pardon Current Events / Activism Liturgy

Confession of Western Christian complicity in Palestine’s plight

Collage on cream paper of various symbols of Palestine as well some of Judaism, including doves and pomegranates, poppies, watermelons, lemons, keffiyeh, the evil eye, oranges, and the Palestinian flag.
"With Love to Palestine" (2023) by Shereen Audi

As a church that aims to live into God’s call
to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly,
we must acknowledge where we’ve fallen short —

particularly when it comes to the horrors
that Palestinians have faced in a Western-backed colonial project
since the British Mandate for Palestine in 1922,
into the Nakba, or great catastrophe of ethnic cleansing in 1948,

and up through the present day,
in these many months of violence escalated to genocidal levels.

If our desire for peace is true,
we will let go of any false peace
built on top of silenced voices and disenfranchised bodies.

We will cease to cry “Peace! Peace!”
at a people that has not known peace for over 100 years.

As one step towards a true peace, let us confess together the ways in which, individually and collectively, through action or inaction,
we have aided and abetted atrocities
against fellow human beings with whom we share God’s image:

We confess our compliant silence
from inside the heart of Empire.

Allowing hopelessness to collapse us into inaction,
we shrug in despair as Western powers fuel our excess
with African, Asian, Latin American, and Arab suffering,
and the stealing and stripping of Indigenous lands
all across the weeping Earth,
including in Palestine.

We confess our complicity as Christians
with our long and ongoing marriage to Empire —

our bloody past of crusades and pogroms,
missionary schools, eugenics, and all kinds of evil
wrapped in a guise of Christian “love” —
that extends into our present.

We confess our ties to Christian Zionism
begun in the nineteenth century British Empire
and continued through our “progressive” theologies of the late 1900s.

We confess the ways we reduce all Jewish people into a monolith
instead of respecting the diversity of perspectives and allegiances therein.
We confess how we treat our Jewish siblings as pawns
in our guilt and savior complexes, our various redemption myths:

We imply our faith supersedes Jews’ own on the one hand,
while on the other, we twist the very real issue of antisemitism
into a weapon to forward our colonial projects and anti-Arab racism.

When nationalism and Christian supremacy
erect murderous walls and stifle the reality
of one Beloved Community of all human beings,
Forgive us, redeemer God. Move us into honesty.

In our complicity, we confess our willful ignorance,
our failure to seek out accurate information —
allowing vital stories to be silenced
or twisted into lies.

We allow ourselves to be lulled by pretty propaganda
lifting up modern Israel as a “promised land” for Holocaust survivors,
for environmental justice and queer inclusion,
because that feels better than the truth:
survivors silenced and kept in poverty;
desert biomes forced into European molds,
ancient olive trees obliterated,
and the searing truth that no place that enables racism and apartheid
can ever be a queer friendly or environmental paradise.

When fear or uncertainty keeps us from speaking up;
When we choose our own comfort over courageous conversations,
Forgive us, redeeming God. Move us into courage.

Finally, we confess a collective failure of imagination.

We have fallen for the lies that this conflict
is too complicated to resolve,
that justice is impossible,
that hope is dead —
instead of listening for Spirit’s wisdom
and noticing God’s inbreaking Kin-dom
in the vision and voice of Palestinians
who have never given up on justice,
on believing in peace,
on believing in a multicultural, interfaith future for the land.

Forgive us, redeemer God.
Move us to seek, center, and celebrate
Palestinian visions of justice and peace.

In repentance and hope,
we pray to the God of both Sarah and Hagar, both Isaac and Ishmael,
Parent of all peoples and protector of the oppressed:

Help us recommit to seeking your Spirit at work among ruins,
to lifting up the voices Empire aims to silence,
to God’s Kin-dom where all peoples, all Creation,
can live together in joy.

__

Friends, our shortcomings are great, but God’s love is greater.

In his invitation to peace
after his execution and resurrection,
Letting go of the betrayals of the past
in order to initiate a faithful future,
Jesus reminds us that it is never too late
for collective wholeness and healing.

Thus reminded and redeemed by the God who crosses every border
and tears down every wall,
we may extend the peace of Christ to one another — 

not an easy peace, not a halfhearted peace,
but a peace built on justice and mutuality —

both here in this space, and across the world.

The peace of Christ be with you…

Please feel free to make use of this piece in worship or Sunday school, in ceremony or across social media. Just credit it to Avery Arden of binarybreakingworhsip.com — and I invite you to email me at queerlychristian36@gmail.com to let me know you’re using it!

You may make small adjustments to fit your own particular context.

About this piece:

We are many months into genocide, and misinformation still abounds; the USA and other Western nations continue to fund Israel’s violence; Palestinians continue to be bombed, starved, imprisoned, defamed.

We cannot lose steam; we must continue to speak up, to educate one another and get active till Palestine is finally free.

My hope is that this Confession can be one piece igniting further conversation and action in faith communities. If your community is not at a place where a confession like this could be shared in worship, make it the subject of a Sunday School lesson or coffee hour conversation instead.

For resources describing the various claims in this piece, see this post.

  • My top recommendation on Palestine & Christianity is Mitri Raheb’s book Decolonizing Palestine; read a summary of it here.
  • For discussions on fighting antisemitism while supporting Palestine, my top rec is Safety through Solidarity by Shane Burley and Ben Lorber.
Categories
Confession and Pardon LGBT/queer Liturgy

Confession of Anti-Trans Violence & Assurance of God’s Grace

A gold logo reading "GA 226, Salt Lake City" over a mountain vista

Drawing from Luke 4:16-30
and F-1.04 of the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (USA)

PRELUDE:

As Presbyterians, we believe in a God who takes up the cause of those whom human societies consider “least.”

In this era of escalating anti-trans rhetoric and legislation, in our own state and beyond, our faith calls us to affirm God’s movement among and through the trans community in particular.

Even as we leave room for some differences in belief, we can agree that there is no place in the life of the Church for discrimination against any person. 

United in this belief, let us confess together the ways in which we continue to fall short in protecting and celebrating the gender diverse members of God’s human family:

CONFESSION

When we refuse to recognize the unique ways
our transgender siblings participate in co-creation
and manifest the Divine Image
of a God far vaster than any rules we devise or boxes we build,

Forgive and transform us, Creator God.
Open us to choose respect over rejection,
conversation over misinformation,
relationship over alienation.

When we look on as oppressive forces hold our trans kin captive —

suffocate their free will, strip them of health and safety,
drive them to desperation and rob them of their very lives —
and we shrug off their plight, assuming it has nothing to do with us;

or else stay silent out of fear for our own security and comfort,

Forgive and transform us, Liberator God. 
Wake us to the life-or-death urgency of this struggle.
Open us to choose action over silence,
to risk much in the name of justice.

When our denomination’s promises
of full participation and representation for all persons and groups
remain unfulfilled —

with many queer candidates still finding their ministry obstructed,
and trans parishioners forced to choose
between staying in hostile spaces
or leaving their spiritual homes to seek belonging elsewhere,

Forgive and transform us, God who favors outcasts.
Open us to see both the possibilities and perils of our institution,
so that we may revise the things that harm
and bolster the things that liberate.

God who hears and joins in our lament,
God who speaks through unexpected prophets,

instill in us a hunger for your justice
that will drive our solidarity and action
until we have become — in fact as well as in faith —
a community of all people
made one in Christ by the power of your Holy Spirit.

PARDON

Friends, we have a long way to go, and much work to do —
but we rejoice now in the assurance that, through Jesus Christ,
we are forgiven and renewed to continue the journey.

Thanks be to God.

PEACE

Assured of God’s mercy, we may be bold in sharing Christ’s peace —
a peace built on justice, a peace that preserves diversity —
with all we meet. 

The peace of Christ be with you.
And also with you…

Please feel free to make use of this piece in worship or Sunday school, in ceremony or across social media. Just credit it to Avery Arden of binarybreakingworhsip.com — and I invite you to email me at queerlychristian36@gmail.com to let me know you’re using it!

You may make small adjustments to fit your own particular context.

About this piece:

I wrote this confession and pardon to be used during morning worship at the PC(USA)’s 226th General Assembly.

I was asked to center its call to acknowledge where we have failed our transgender kin around Luke 4′s account of Jesus reading from Isaiah in his local synagogue — the prophet’s proclamation of good news for the poor, the imprisoned, for disabled persons and all whom Empire oppresses.

When Jesus announces after he reads, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled,” his audience raves, impressed by this local boy grown up into a wise teacher. It’s only when he continues his commentary to make it clear that gentiles will be receiving the Spirit of God’s liberation as well — for did not Elijah and Elisha minister to gentile widows and lepers? — that the crowd’s praise sours into rage.

What a fitting text to draw from when confronting our own resistance to expanding God’s liberation to those we consider outsiders. God is lavishing Their Spirit on Their queer children, freeing Their trans children from bondage and into ministry — and there are many who refuse to recognize this divine activity.

Just days before this confession was shared in worship, the General Assembly discussed and ultimately approved the Olympia Overture, which seeks to solidify protections for queer members — particularly queer ordination candidates — of our denomination. Though I rejoice that this overture passed, the debates were painful to witness, reminding me that I share this spiritual home with people who deny my humanity, my vocation, or God’s movement through me and those like me — and who balk at naming this denial “discrimination.”

If you’re interested, I wrote another piece — Beatitudes for the prophets who move our churches into truer welcome — in response to those overture debates.

I give thanks to all who courageously spoke up in support of the Olympia Overture; may they find themselves surrounded by support and love after living out such brave vulnerability. And I pray that those who feared or raged against its passing will find themselves broken open, bit by bit or all at once, by the Spirit of Wisdom who guides us all into understanding. Maybe this overture’s passing can be an opportunity for deeper conversations that will draw us all closer. Maybe. If we all are brave, and bold, and ignited by love. If we all commit ourselves to living into F-1.0404‘s call to openness:

"...a new openness to the sovereign activity of God in the Church and in the
world, to a more radical obedience to Christ, and to a more joyous celebration in
worship and work;

a new openness in its own membership, becoming in fact as well as in faith
a community of all people of all ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, genders, and
worldly conditions, made one in Christ by the power of the Spirit, as a visible
sign of the new humanity;

a new openness to see both the possibilities and perils of its institutional
forms in order to ensure the faithfulness and usefulness of these forms to God’s
activity in the world; and

a new openness to God’s continuing reformation of the Church ecumenical,
that it might be more effective in its mission."
Categories
Confession and Pardon Liturgy

Confession & Pardon: Learning to Face Hard Truths with the Prophet Amos

Call to Confession

God sent the prophet Amos to Israel
to warn the rich and powerful
that the natural consequence of their mistreatment of the vulnerable 
would be destruction for all.

In many ways, the modern United States 
is not unlike that ancient nation —

A land of plenty only for the powerful few,
while the oppressed go hungry and unheard.

So come, let us confess our failings
by hearing some of Amos’s words
as if they were proclaimed to us.

Prayer of Confession

“Alas for those who are at ease in Zion,
and for those who feel secure…
Alas for those who ignore the evil day
        causing violent rule to draw near:
  for those who lie on beds of ivory,
   and lounge on their couches…” 
(Amos 6:1, 3-4a)

“…They have been led astray by the same lies
    after which their ancestors walked.” 
(Amos 2:4)

We cannot bear to hear of the atrocities
inflicted past and present by our fellow Christians
against Indigenous peoples —

such news shatters our faith in the Church,
wracks us with grief and guilt 
we don’t know what to do with.

We cannot bear to believe all the stories 
of violence committed by police
against Black persons and other persons of color —

such stories shake our trust in our country,
leave us wondering where else we could go
when our own safety is threatened.

We cannot bear the knowledge that
our world is burning due to human greed —
don’t we need the gas that poisons our planet
to power our cars and homes?

God, when we think we cannot bear these truths,
give us the strength to face them — 
for in avoiding them, we move towards our collective doom.

“I raised up some of your children to be prophets…
But you…command the prophets, 
Saying, ‘You shall not prophesy!’”
(Amos 2:11-12)

“[You] hate the one who reprimands in the city gate,
abhor the one who speaks the truth.” 
(Amos 5:10)

We cannot bear the messages of
people we have individually harmed,
or of communities whose oppression
is the price of our own prosperity

because they pierce through our illusions
about ourselves as “nice” people,
and expose the pretty lie of the American Dream
for the nightmare it is, accessible only to the privileged;

they make us feel bad and defensive,
and expose the poison festering beneath
our “respectable” facades.

God, when we think we cannot bear these truths,
urge us all the harder to face them. 
Do not let us look away!

“They do not know how to do right, says the HOLY ONE…”
(3:10)

You alone, O God, can teach us how to do right. 
Open our hearts. Help us lower our defenses.
We will face the harm we have done
so that we can move forward.

Assurance of Pardon 

God declares, “Let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream!”
(Amos 5:24)

Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus,
such justice is possible!

God will make all things right,
and empowers us to join Them in that task.

I wrote this confession for a service centered around Amos chapter 7, which includes the metaphor of the plumbline, which God has used to measure Israel only to find its very foundation is completely skewed; the whole thing must be leveled and rebuilt.

Israel’s high priest Amaziah cries that “the land cannot bear [Amos’s] words,” and tells Amos to go on back home to Judah, because his prophecies are not welcome in Israel. But in reality, it isn’t the message that Israel “cannot bear,” but the avoidance of that message: because Amaziah rejects this message and the repentance and reform it necessitates, Israel will be invaded and driven into exile by the Neo-Assyrian Empire; by 722 BCE, the Northern Kingdom of Israel will have fallen, leaving her sister nation Judah standing alone.

There are so many truths that we likewise avoid because we believe that we and our communities cannot bear the guilt, grief, and upheaval those truths would bring. But to fail to face those realities and respond with active reform spells doom for us all.

As James Baldwin writes in The Fire Next Time, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

What realities are the members of your faith community avoiding? How can the community come together to face them together?

_____

In the case of how white Christians can and must face our complicity in antiblack racism, I recommend Good White Racist? by Kerry Connelly as a good starting point. Connelly goes into the neuroscience behind why we react to our words or actions being called out as if such a thing were a life-threatening attack; how we value being “nice” and not making others uncomfortable to seeking justice; and how to move past that hardwiring.