Fess Up

Psalm 32, Luke 19:1-10

“Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” This verse is a part of the annual liturgy recited every year during Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement an entire day spent fessing up to all your sins against God until there is no deceit left in your spirit. We have no such holiday in the Christian church, instead we confess our sins in worship each week…giving them maybe 30 seconds of thought. I agree with Jim Mays that “the practice of repentance can become so routine, inconsequential, shallow, lacking in real seriousness, wanting no sanctification that it is a presumption on the mercy of God and a belief in cheap grace.” (1) Reading this Psalm makes me feel like I’m not making the most of my confession. When I confess my sins in worship, do I really feel as though I’m fessing up to anything? Do I feel any true remorse? I’m not changing my tune, all of the sudden suggesting that the purpose of confession is to feel bad, to feel guilty, to feel ashamed. Remorse, guilt, and shame are not the purpose of confession, but they are a part of it—grace helps us get through guilt and shame, not avoid them. But am I really taking advantage of this gift of grace?

David tried to avoid fessing up to what he’d done. And boy did he have some sins to avoid. Psalm 32 is traditionally linked to David’s repentance for the Bathsheba affair and what amounts to the murder of her husband Uriah, sending him out on the front line of battle so that he would surely die. “I kept silent,” the Psalmist writes, “and my body wasted away.” You know what it feels like to have something “eating away at you.” That’s what David was going through. “Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity.”

The Psalm talks a lot about “having no deceit in our spirit,” and “not hiding any of our iniquity” what does this mean? The reality is that confessing sins is the act of sinners, and therefore can be sinful, can be deceitful. There are the two common ways we deceive ourselves when we confess: the first deception being that confessing our sins is an act of righteousness that earns grace; the second deception being that grace is effectual without our needing to confess our sins. In the words of St. Augustine “Do not claim the right to the kingdom on the grounds of your own justice, nor the right to sin on the grounds of God’s mercy.”

How do we avoid this first deception? How do we avoid thinking that we’re earning grace? We do this by reminding ourselves of God’s grace before confession. If God’s grace is there before we confess, then we cannot possibly be earning it. We remind ourselves of grace in order that we may allow ourselves to accept it, not in order to earn it. In this way grace frees us from this deceit and prepares us to receive its benefits.

How about the second deception? That we can avoid admitting we’ve done wrong. We may truly, deeply believe that grace does all the work for us, searches our depths, cleans out our closets, unburies our past. This just isn’t the case. Grace is not like a maid that shows up when we are not home and cleans things up. Grace travels with us through our shadows, through our sins, and many times introduces us to parts of ourselves we’ve kept hidden. It is said that grace simultaneously rescues us from sin and makes us aware of it. Fessing up, in light of this, is indicative of our having received grace. We would be unable to confess our sinfulness had not grace first revealed our sinfulness to us.

As 1 John puts it: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” But we live in a world where deception wins out most of the time. We favor the truth so long as it benefits us. No one seems sure where to turn for truth, who to trust, who to believe, so they go with their gut and trust what they want to be true. The Psalmist speaks of this using the metaphor of a work horse who cannot differentiate between a person who is treating them well and a person who is causing them harm. When one inserts a bit in their mouths to make them work they clamp their jaws shut and eagerly chew on it. But when one combs and grooms them to cleanse and beautify them, they react angrily and must be muzzled to prevent them from biting. “Don’t be like that,” the Psalmist writes, don’t be without the ability to differentiate between the sin that so easily seduces you to self-worship, and the grace the grooms you in the image of the LORD.

How willingly we submit to sin and selfishness, how we fight and fume when we’re asked to fess up. But “happy are those,” the Psalmist writes, “in whose spirit there is no deceit.” Those who trust in God will be surrounded by steadfast love. “Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.” This literally means “make others cry out in joy. As the righteous rejoice in their own good fortune, let them share their experiences with others that they too may be made happy by knowledge of God’s goodness.

We see an example of what this looks like in the story of Zacchaeus, something happens when he climbs down from that tree, accepts the invitation to dine with Jesus, encounters the grace of God incarnate. We don’t really get the scoop on how the conversation went down, but we do see the transformation of Zacchaeus…a transformation that involves his entire household, a transformation that benefits the poor and all those people whom he had previously defrauded. “His salvation, therefore, has personal, domestic, social, and economic dimensions.” (3) Just so our fessing up doesn’t merely open us to transformation, but also transforms all of our relationships, frees those relationships from sin and selfish aims. In sin we value others based on their usefulness to us and our needs. In grace, we locate value in the image of God that others bear. In fessing up and receiving grace, we open our eyes to that image in others, we avail ourselves to the presence of God that already surrounds us.

The Psalmist teaches that fessing up is how we receive grace. Grace is never forced on us, if it were, it wouldn’t be grace any more. Grace is a constant invitation, an invitation to that place where we encounter Jesus Christ, grace incarnate, for Zacchaeus it was an invitation to lunch, for us, it is also an invitation to a meal. Like Zachcaeus, perhaps we have something we need to climb down from to respond to that invitation. Confession is how we enable ourselves to receive grace, but it must be humble and honest confession. As theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer writes, it’s got to cost us something, because it cost God something.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.” (4)

Bonhoeffer and the Psalmist both profess the same truth, that when we confess, “[grace] comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’” (4)

Are you ready to lighten your load? Are you ready to receive grace? Are you willing to be transformed? Fess up.

1. Mays, James L. “Psalms” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1994, John Knox Press. Louisville, KY. p 148

1. Ibid. 147

1. Craddock, Fred B. “Luke” ” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1990, John Knox Press. Louisville, KY. p 220

Bonfoeffer, Deitrich. The Cost of Discipleship.