Confession and Creation
This Sunday (the Sunday of the Paralytic), I began a series of homilies designed to help prepare the First Confession class for their “Second Baptism.” In this homily, I talk about the dual nature of Confession (repentance/absolution and commitment to Christ and Holy Orthodoxy), comparing it to the vows that are taken during the Christian’s Baptism (FWIW, the homily was actually pitched for the children – these are just my notes).
Picture: This icon of the creation and fall of man is taken from St. Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Church in Greenlawn, NY.
Homily Series on Confession: 1
The main goal of the Christian life is the perfection and union of the person, the community, and the world with the love and harmony that is in God. In other words, Christianity is designed to make us, our families, and all the people we love – indeed, all of creation itself – better. To make us holy.
Confession plays a large role in this process: through Confession all of the things that have separated us from this goal of holiness and unity are removed. We bring our sins to God, say we are sorry for participating in them, ask for His forgiveness and mercy, and then He reaches into our hearts and leaves us clean and whole.
But Confession is more than repentance and absolution. It reaffirms our commitment to Christ and Holy Orthodoxy. In this, it is much like another Sacrament/Mystery: that of Baptism. In the Orthodox Church, we baptize infants. This is because we recognize that it is best for children to grow up within the embrace of Christ, nourished by His Body and Blood. There are Christian traditions – heretical ones – that prefer to wait until the person understands things well enough to commit themselves to Christ with their entire rational will. They call the resulting baptism the “Believer’s Baptism”. When people backslide, some of these sects will then go on to re-baptize them once they have repented – then repeat as necessary. They think this makes more sense than doing things in the traditional Orthodox manner – it doesn’t. Not only is it best for a child to be raised within the Mysteries of the Church – something that they completely miss, but Orthodoxy recognizes the need to rational consent and for a mechanism to being backsliders back into good standing. We do it with the Sacrament/Mystery that these heretical sects have rejected: the Sacrament/Mystery of Confession.
When an infant is baptized, the priest asks the child if he/she rejects Satan and all his ways. The child does not understand the question, so the sponsor answers for the child. When the priest asks the child if the child unites him/herself to Christ, the child does not understand the question, so the sponsor again answers the question for the child. The child is then brought into the Church and baptized. Again, the child is then able to grow up knowing God’s love not as some sort of intellectual concept, but as a living part of their life. Then, once the child is old enough to understand, that child re-affirms those vows not by being re-immersed in water in some sort of “Believer’s Baptism”, but through the Mystery that is sometimes called the “Second Baptism” or the “Baptism of Tears”.
The new Baptism being offered to you is your own. In our first Baptism, our sponsors speak for us – but in confession, we all speak for ourselves [or refuse to do so by our lack of participation or refusal to take the process seriously]. Baptism is a Sacrament of renewal, restoring our relationship to Christ and His Church and recommitting ourselves to the fundamental Truths that it teaches.
But what are these Truths? What is it that Orthodox Christians believe? What is it that the person coming to Confession is professing? What is it that the person who stays away from the Mysteries of the Church – the person who prefers the accumulation of sin and their own illusions over the Way of Perfection that God has offered – [what is it that such a person] is rejecting? Over the next few weeks, we are going to be covering some of the
Let’s start out at the beginning; “In the beginning God created heavens and the earth.”(Genesis 1:1)
Who is God? He is the source of all Love, Beauty, Health, and Truth. He is all-powerful, He is all-knowing, and He is Good. It is also very important to know that each of you are very special to Him – He wants you to be part of His love, beauty, health and truth. Like a very good friend, he wants to help you through hard times and celebrate with you when things are going well.
What is the World – the “heavens and the earth” that He created? God made the world – it is an expression of love. When artists has love in their hearts, they create beautiful things: the draw wonderful pictures, the sing pretty songs, and the write good stories. This is an important thing to know about the world: it is like a living picture that He drew with His love. It is full of beautiful things: angels, stars, planets, flowers, sports cars, puppies, and kittens – but nothing is more special or more important than you. You – and all of His children – are made for something specific; something special and important.
Who are we? Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over [all the earth and everything that lives on it].” (Genesis 1:26)
This tells us how special we are: God made us to be like Him and to care for this world. What is this like? It is like how your parents made you out of love, then gave you a room – a special place set up just for you – to take care of. You are in their image – the house or apartment is theirs, but they set it up for you and tell you that it is your job to take care of it.
Sometimes we don’t do such a good job and our parents tell us we need to do better. They say this not just because they care about the room – after all, they love you MUCH more than the room. They say it because learning to take care of things is an important part of becoming a good person. So when we make mistakes, we don’t get mad at them for pointing it out: we say we are sorry and clean up the mess.
God is our Father: He put us here on this earth to take care of things. Sometimes we don’t do such a good job of it. We leave our toys out and we are mean to the people we share that room with. He tells us that we are wrong and need to do better, because learning to take care of this world is an important part of becoming good people. So when we mistakes, we don’t get mad at Him or His Church for pointing it out: we say we are sorry and clean up the mess.
Sometimes the mess we have made is so big that we cannot clean it ourselves. So we fall on our knees and ask our Lord to help us. And He does. There is no mess to big for Him to clean.
And that is one way of understanding Confession.
