+Points to ponder

1. Have you ever taken advantage of personal confession and absolution with your pastor? Why? or Why not?
2. What do you make of the pastor saying, in the Divine Service, “… I forgive you all of your sins …”?
3. Why do you think people avoid confession? Is there a positive way we can share the benefits the Church has been given through the Office of the Keys?

+Sermon Transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace be unto each of you from God our Father and our Lord and King, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Let us pray: God of all power and might, author and giver of all that is good, put in our hearts the love of Your name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and in Your great mercy keep us in Your grace; through Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Every once in a while, someone will ask me, ‘What’s it like to be a pastor?’ or ‘What is your favorite thing about being a pastor?’ I do love to study the Word, and to wax theological at times. But I think that my favorite part is the responsibility of exercising what we know as the ‘Office of the Keys’ for God’s people. That is what Jesus spoke about to His disciples in Matthew chapter 16, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

This echoes what Jesus said to the disciples in the room in which they were locked after the Resurrection: “[H]e breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.’”

One of our confessional documents, the Smalcald Articles helps us to understand what this means:

“The Keys are an office and power given by Christ to the Church for binding and loosing sin. This applies not only to gross and well-known sins, but also the subtle, hidden sins that are known only to God. As it is written, “Who can discern his errors?” And St. Paul himself complains that “with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” It is not in our power to judge which, how great, and how many the sins are. This belongs to God alone. As it is written, “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.” Paul says, “I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.”

Of course, we hear this each Sunday as we gather together, and we sort of clear the air in the beginning of the service with Confession and Absolution. It is daunting and exciting all at once for me to stand in front of you, and by Christ’s command and authority declare the forgiveness of your sins – that as we remember our Baptism, we would be unburdened and ready then to hear the Word and taste that very gift of forgiveness in Holy Communion.

But I also greatly appreciate being able to do this one on one with folks too. That is having that conversation with someone who has become burdened enough by their sin that they want to confess. And that they trust me enough that they are willing to confess to me. Then comes their big reveal. The statement is made, the bombshell is dropped – and after the sin has been confessed, they wait, expecting me to gasp or fall out of my chair. Or, at the very least we won’t have eye contact from there on out. The expectation is that any reasonable person, especially a pastor, would wince or cringe at the unexpected revelation that the person sitting in the same room as them is – wait for it – a real live sinner! This is the moment when my lack of surprise is a genuine surprise for them.

But, at that point, the Spirit has already done His work to convict their conscience which is a mercy of God. But, more, the Devil did his accusing work to make the person feel isolated, unique, and alone in their brokenness. The truth is that the Devil does not need to work all too hard to get us to sin. I mean, we come by it naturally. Instead, the Devil works to make us feel alone in our sin. When St. Paul says, “the wages of sin is death,” he is reminding us that sin is what separates us – from God, from creation, from each other. And so, Satan tries to convince us our sin is well beyond the scope of what others (including God) could stomach, let alone pardon. And when the fog of deception lifts and the person sees the lie for what it was, when my lack of surprise genuinely surprises them – I confess that I find joy in that very moment. Forgiveness means something more when it is offered with all the facts on the table.

“[Martin] Luther had a maid in his house named Elizabeth, who, contrary to his wishes, left his service and became so wicked that she gave her soul to the devil. Not long after, she was stricken with a serious disease and became very despondent. At her request Luther was called to her bedside. When he arrived, Elizabeth confessed to him that she felt very sorry for what she had done and also revealed to him her greatest grief, namely, that she had given her soul to the devil.

‘That is nothing,’ replied Luther. ‘Listen, if you had given all my clothes to a stranger when you were still in my service, would that have been a valid transaction?’ ‘No,’ answered the maid. ‘Well,’ Luther replied, ‘thus it is here. Your soul does not belong to the devil, but to Jesus, your Lord. You cannot give away what does not belong to you. Go therefore to your Lord and ask Him to receive again what belongs to Him; but cast the sin that you have committed back on the devil, because that belongs to him.’ The maid did as Luther advised and soon thereafter was found [greatly relieved.]”

In our Gospel reading for this morning from Luke chapter eleven, Jesus fully acknowledges our sinful condition with His eyes wide open and freely offers costly grace.

And so, we are invited to ask our Father to forgive our sins, even as we find ourselves in an ongoing state of living as a sinner among sinners as He teaches us to pray: “and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us…”

Then, Jesus provides two illustrations to show us our relationship with God. And, unsurprisingly, our corresponding character in each scene is, to put it nicely, flawed.

“And He said to them, ‘Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.”

In this illustration, we are like an impudent friend who comes presumptuously shouting through his neighbor’s window at midnight to borrow some bread because he has none of his own to serve his guest. This poor guy’s embarrassments abound.

The next illustration is even more stark, even seemingly harsh: Jesus says, “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

In this second illustration, Jesus talks about how we give good gifts to our own kids. This starts positively enough, but then He drops in the seemingly casual, “If you, then, who are evil...” Evil! For Jesus, it is simply a matter of fact that we are evil! We are not just flawed, or broken, slightly marred, or in need of a little grace here and there. No, left to ourselves, we are opposed to God’s goodness. The word He chooses is ‘evil.’

Although this could be a very depressing diagnosis, we should recall the context of the person who came to me for the purpose of confessing their secret wickedness. They knew the depth of their problem, at least as far down as they could see. What they may not have known – what they needed to hear was that someone else knows how bad it is and still cares for them. This is what Jesus gives us here.

And so, the “power of absolution is not dependent on the faith of [the one] who is being absolved but on the promise of God. If a king presents you with a castle, but you refuse to accept it, the validity of the gift is thereby not affected. The absolution of even a godless preacher is valid. A pearl remains a pearl, even though it be in the hand of a thief.”

Beloved, God does not just love us. He knows us and still loves us. Jesus fully acknowledges our sinful condition with His eyes wide open and freely offers grace - costly grace.

Grace is free to us, but costly to God. Our forgiveness came at the price of Christ’s shed blood in our place. God does not merely say, “That’s okay,” to our sins, or “No problem.” Sin is a problem. It is not okay. God does not condone, nor does He ignore sin. Rather, He forgives it. He forgives our sin and our sinfulness at the cost of His Son’s life.

And so, our reading today in Luke chapter eleven is not merely about hereditary sin and actual sins, nor is it even merely or only about providing a pattern for prayer. No, it is fundamentally about God our gracious Father and His promise to hear us, answer us, and provide for us. And where we might be tempted to doubt this promise because of our intimate awareness of our own sinfulness (as if that disqualifies us), it turns out God is fully aware and still makes His promises anyway! And not only does He make His promises, He keeps them! Amen.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”