A feature of every classroom at Ardmore Elementary School were two posters, one labeled "Rules," and the other labeled "Consequences."
The first rule on the "Rules" poster was "Follow directions the first time given" and the second rule was "Raise your hand and wait to be called on before speaking." The other rules had to do with keeping your hands to yourself and keeping track of your belongings and keeping your chair firmly planted on the floor and not running in the hallways.
The "Consequences" poster outlined a list - an escalataion, if you will - of disciplinary action, as offenses mounted up throughout the school day. A first offense earned you a warning, symbolized by your name being written on the chalkboard. A second offense added a first check mark after your name and a ten minute time-out. A third offense added a second check and resulted in missing recess. Enough checks and you were sent to the principal's office, which would result in a phone call home, or detention, or at the extreme, suspension.
I got my name on the board only twice in elementary school, and both times, ironically, because I spoke out of turn to tell the teacher how I hadn't been misbehaving. See, to a first and a third grader who was about as goody two-shoes as you can get, the greatest injustice was to be implicated in a whole-class reprimand for poor behavior.
In first grade, our class had been generally unruly after lunch, and the teacher told us that she was disappointed because we were all behaving badly. Except that of course I hadn't participated in the shenannigans! So I spoke up, without raising my hand, to say "But I wasn't talking like everybody else!" Bam. No raised hand. And challenging the teacher. Yup. There went my name, up on the board. Of course I cried. Of course my kind teacher took me to the hallway to explain that she had been talking generally about the class, but that when I spoke up, I had forgotton to raise my hand, so I had indeed broken a rule.
In third grade, a similar situation. We were making Mother's Day cards. They were pretty elaborate, as I recall. One of my friends next to me was making a card with a pop-up house on the front. Not just a house, but a lawn and a curb and a garbage can with a garbage bag in it, filled with little scraps of paper. The temptation proved too much with those little balled-up scraps of paper, and the guys next to me started throwing them at each other. My teacher took the opportunity to say that if we all had time to misbehave, then we must all be done making our cards, and so we were going to move on to another activity. Frustrated that others' bad behavior had cut off time for me to finish my card, I called out "I wasn't throwing things and I'm not done!" Again, no raised hand. Again, the need to set the record straight. Again, my name on the board. Again, instant tears. Again, a conversation out in the hallway with the poor teacher who felt terrible for making me cry.
There is something in each of us that wants only to be held accountable for our own actions, good or bad.
And is it fair to say that most of us consider ourselves to be reasonably good, upstanding people? Not many of us reflect upon each day as we brush our teeth before bed thinking, "Wow. I was a horrible person today. I was mean and rude, I stole a bunch of stuff, I broke a bunch of laws, and I damaged a bunch of property." In general, the Christian idea of individual sinfulness remains, for most of us, as a theoretical notion, at best. Because we generally think about sin, or sins, as bad things we take action to do. And most of us don't spend a lot of time each day actively seeking to do evil in the world.
What I couldn't understand as an eight-year old is that sometimes, or maybe more than sometimes, I am going to be part of a situation, a system, or a context where my own behavior doesn't matter, and where the behavior of the group - good or bad - includes me, whether I like it or not. Maybe I wasn't goofing off with the rest of the class, but I was yet sitting in the midst of an unruly classroom. I might not have been throwing paper, but I was talking to and giggling with those who were.
These days, I think I live a pretty upstanding life. But I also know that I am yet implicated in a whole world full of faulty, sinful, and even evil systems, situations, and contexts. I buy cheap clothes that oppress factory workers across the globe, I waste too much water when I bathe each morning because I like basking in the flow of the hot water, I live in a capitalist society where the rich are very rich and the poor are very poor, I vote in a governmental system that is filled with positioning, corruption, and the inherent selfishness of contemporary partisan politics. I take for granted the rights granted to me as a middle class, American, white, heterosexual, educated woman with a stable family and strong support system.
I don't come from a religious background that requires regular individual confession and absolution, though our liturgical resources certainly offer the option. If pushed, I know that I could find things about my individual behavior and disposition to confess in any given day - I'm prone to impatience, frustration, perfectionism, and I know that I can act hurtfully out of those things. But for my own generally optimistic generation, my own personal sins don't seem as compelling a narrative as all the goodness and hope that I might also be bringing to the world.
I was at a clergy Bible study yesterday and this question of sinfulness came up. The feeling among my colleagues - many of them a generation older than me - is that our congregations have lost touch with a theology of sin, and that the remedy is to keep hitting harder the reality that each of us is individually sinful.
I demurred, because I don't think that individual sin is the most compelling - or the most important - narrative for members of our congregations, and certainly not for people my age and younger who, despite being critizied as selfish, self-centered, and entitled, are actually shown to be quite generous, compassionate, and concerned with equality, justice, and goodnes. I instead proposed that our theology of sin, confession, and abosolution might be better served if we thought in terms of collective, corporate shortcomings and injustices.
The idea is that the power of sin is bigger than just our own consciences. If evil is really a force in the world - and I think that it is pretty easy to look around and see the powers of sin, death, and brokenness made manifest - then the true narrative of sin is the narrative of systemic injustices that we've been born into and that we are all responsible for, even complicitly.
This is why I think that corporate confession and forgiveness is perhaps a more important liturgical rite than individual confession. When we together confess that we - all of us, all of our world - have fallen short of God's hopes and dreams, there is no room for any one of us to say "but I'm really just fine." The power of corporate confession is that it says, in so many words, "specifically, all of you are held captive to the powers of sin, death, and brokenness in the world." And the word of forgiveness on the far end of our prayer is much more powerful when it is not just a trifling matter of "you are forgiven for not sharing the last cookie with your sister," but instead is a word of "specifically, all of you, all of this world, despite your brokenness, are yet made whole and offered grace, salvation, and mercy."
Now let's be clear. I don't often think any of these profound things while I'm praying the confesssion at the beginning of worship. I'm not sure if anyone does. We say the words, repeat them, read them, go through the motions...and that's okay. Some days we think about them and mean them whole-heartedly. Other days we offer our voices to the chorus, even if our hearts aren't really in it, because it's hard to internalize sin sometimes, and it is hard to get vunlerable in the presence of the assembly. The good news? The prayer "works" either way.
We all stand up together, and speak in one voice, speaking words of confession and repentance on behalf of ourselves and on behalf of one another and on behalf of our whole world. It is humbling to say, out loud, that the power of sin and evil in the world is bigger than my own ability to behave well. And it is equally as humbling to remember that God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us (all!) from our unrighteouness.
Confession and forgiveness, like so many other parts of the Christian faith, are not merely matters of "me-and-God." Faith pushes us to think cosmically and corporately about our place in the created universe, and about God's saving intentions not just for me or you, but for all creation.