"The Art of Confession, Part Two"
The value of introspection guided by faith.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 6, 2005
Text: 2 Corinthians 13:5-14
Two sets of footsteps were coming towards the door. I stood there, anxiously waiting, to see one of those people particularly. As they got closer, my heart began to race a little. The door finally opened, and standing before me were a nurse and a frail, elderly man. The nurse gave me very strict instructions: “You are not to take too long with him. He is not having a good day.”
The man came towards me, and shook my hand and held onto it because his vision was diminished. He took me into a small room with three chairs - old and stuffy and dirty and rather uncomfortable. The only thing adorning the walls was a picture of the Pope. He closed the door behind us, invited me to sit down and said it was a privilege to see me. As we talked, I realized the privilege was all mine.
The name of the man with whom I was conversing had been given to me as someone in Chile that I should meet, but I had no idea exactly who this 87-year-old man was. In his blue shirt, jeans and slippers, he was Father José Aldunaté. The name meant nothing to me before I went to Chile last month, but it is now a name I will never forget.
He asked me about my ministry and I told him about our church and what we do, and a little about my background, and why I was in Chile, and what a wonderful time I had been having. Then, I asked him about himself, for surely this meeting was not about me - it was about him. Father Aldunaté had a doctorate from one of the Pontifical Universities in Rome. He told me quite humbly that he had been one of the people who wrote the moral sections of the Second Vatican Council documents in the 1960s, which has advised Popes ever since. He was a leader of the Chilean Jesuit community. He taught seminarians, published books, and traveled worldwide giving lectures. This frail, almost blind, 87 year-old man was talking to me. When I heard his story, I realized that he was not only a great scholar, not just a great priest, but also a man of his word, a man of conviction.
The darkest days of Chile's history were marked by torture. The situation was so bad that one man, Sebastian Acevedo, killed himself in front of the cathedral in 1983 because his son and daughter had been kidnapped and tortured by the secret police and he wanted the world to pay attention. Father Aldunaté, realizing exactly the sorrow that this man and many others were facing, started the Sebastian Acevedo Anti-Torture Movement, to find those who had been tortured and minister to them, and to speak for the voiceless. Father Aldunaté ended up in jail, arrested many times, although he himself was never tortured.
Now, as the years have gone by, and Chile has moved into a new prosperous and flourishing era, there is a twinkle in his eye. As he talked about what he had done and about the church and about life and ministry, all of a sudden he changed from a man with creaking bones and wrinkled skin and aching joints into a man who seemed to me 30 years old. He came alive in my presence. I asked him a question at the end: “What advice do you have for a youngish minister like me? What word can you impart?”
This is a man who has kept alive his passion for human rights and justice, who has kept alive his love for the church and pastoral ministry and theology. He said, “I want you to keep the faith, and not just keep it, but even be willing to die for it, if necessary. It seems to me that is what the Holy Spirit expects of all those who call themselves by Christ's name.” When it was all over, he got up. I looked at my watch: The meeting was supposed to be half an hour, but an hour and 40 minutes had gone by in what seemed a mere second.
He shuffled off along the hallway to meet the nurse, who took him by the arm, and my feeling was one of great humility. Our text this morning says: “Test yourselves to see whether or not you are in the faith.” When I stood in the presence of that man, I couldn't help but test myself. I had to ask myself the very same questions that anyone would in the presence of such an all-encompassing faith: “Am I like that? Is that the kind of passion I have? At age 87 will I still have that light in my eye when Jesus' name is mentioned?”
You see, my friends, we all, whether we are in the presence of a José Aldunaté or not, need to look inside ourselves, to assess our own faith. Very rarely in our fast-paced world is there a moment for introspection or self-analysis. From the moment we get up, we start to race. Those of you with young families know the feeling: You grab a coffee as you head off into a busy life, and you charge through the day. You play chauffeur, and you go to events, and you come home at the end of the day, and you collapse, and you switch on a little television, and you fall asleep on the couch, and you decide to climb upstairs to bed. Then another day just like it begins!
The fast pace of the world gives us few opportunities to test ourselves, to look at ourselves, to look inward and see who we really are and whether we are in the faith. In challenging the people of Corinth, the apostle Paul, had to do that. He was faced with a terrible conflict: False teachers had come into the Church and were teaching a false doctrine, and were leading people astray. Even in this church that Paul himself had founded, some were questioning his leadership and his integrity. The irony was the church that Paul built was now testing Paul's faith. In having to confront and deal with this, Paul uses his authority, but more than anything, he says, “I want you to look into you own heart. I want you to examine yourselves. Never mind me; never mind the false teachers; is what is in you faithful? Are you living a faithful life? Put yourself to the test.” As I read that, I believe that all of us in this Lenten period need to test ourselves. We need a time of introspection.
Now, introspection is not new. It is not even necessarily Christian. The great Stoic philosopher of Paul's day, Seneca, had a habit of going to bed and having a conversation with his mind, his “amimen,” and in this dialogue with his mind he would ask himself: “What habits have I followed today that need to be corrected? What vices have I committed today that need to be cured? What ways have I followed that should be better?” Seneca realized the need to check in with yourself at the end of the day, and to ask yourself whether or not you have truly lived up to the standard you have set for yourself.
Epictetus, also a contemporary of Paul and of Seneca, quoted Pythagoras, of all people - I always associate him with mathematics, not with meditation and philosophy - and what great advice this is, my friends:
Let not sleep come upon languid eyes,
e'er thou has scanned the actions of the day.
Where have I sinned;
what done or left undone?
From first to last, examine all,
and then blame what is wrong;
and in what is right, rejoice!
“Blame what is wrong; in what is right, rejoice!” Use the end of the day to assess yourself. To test yourself is a worthy thing.
Introspection is part of our own Methodist tradition. In 1729, the Wellesleys created at Oxford a very strange club that became known as the “Holy Club.” Can you imagine belonging to the Holy Club? Can you imagine putting that down on your profession schedule at work that you have to attend the Holy Club? Well, calling it the Holy Club was a bit of a put-down really, but these Methodists still met every night and, at the end of the meeting, they would ask themselves 27 questions to see if they had lived up to their calling in Christ. In other words, they examined themselves: They went into their hearts and minds to see whether the day lived truly reflected their faith in Christ.
Some years ago in South Africa, I used to attend a Wednesday evening dinner and service at an Anglican seminary called St. Paul's, where I eventually was made an honorary fellow. St. Paul's was a wonderful place. I actually started going there because they always had a magnificent dinner before the worship service. It was the only good meal that I got all week as a student. Excellent, three courses, and you didn't pay for a thing.
There was, however, a little quid pro quo: You really were expected to attend the Evensong service afterwards. It would be impolite to eat and run! So, I attended the Evensong services, and they were beautiful! I loved Evensong. At the end of it, they introduced a quiet time of reflection to assess the day. In this quiet time, even in the midst of all the uproar around us in South Africa in the 1980s, there was peace, and time for honest introspection. You know, I got more out of that time than out of the meal or out of the service, as good as they were. Somehow, just being still and looking into your own heart says so much.
However, there are real dangers in introspection. Sometimes introspection and testing oneself can lead to morbidness. You look at yourself and you feel rotten. My day has been nothing. I am nothing. The more you look into the dark chasm of your soul, the more you find it is empty. You can become full of morbidness and despair.
Sometimes, a time of quiet reflection can make us obsessed with ourselves. I once saw a poster that had only the picture of a woman, bordered north, south, east and west by “Edith,” and that was it. In other words, we can see ourselves at the centre of things, and when we become introspective, we can dwell on ourselves too much, to the point of becoming obsessed.
Or, we may take the exact opposite tack. We might be like the man that I referred to three weeks ago in the first of this series, the Pharisee, who says that I am just glad that I am not like everybody else. I have assessed myself, and I have deemed myself better. Look at this poor publican, look at him. I am the righteous one!
I am reminded of a little story about a mother whale speaking to her baby, who says: “When you get to the top and start to blow, that is when you get harpooned.” In other words, if our self-assessment is one of pride, if it is one of arrogance and self-righteousness, then introspection, for all it could be worth, seems as nothing.
Paul does not say, “Test yourselves.” He says, “Examine yourselves to find out if you are in the faith.” That is the key. It is being in the faith that makes that introspection worthwhile. What good is it, for example, simply to see the bad that you have done in your life, and have remorse?
I read an article not long ago about a bank in New York State that hired a janitor. His first day at work was a day that everyone was leaving early, and the janitor wanted to get away with everybody else and have a day of freedom, so he decided to hurry. At the end of the day his job was to shred all the trash. The only problem was that in his desire to get out of there early, he not only shredded the trash, he also shredded all the day's deposits. Well, two things happened: first, he was fired; second, they brought in hundreds of people to try to put all the shredded pieces together, but they were unsuccessful. The article said that the janitor felt sorry for what he had done, but feeling sorry does not put the deposits back together. Remorse is one thing; doing something about it is entirely different.
Faith is doing something about it. Faith is a guide along our way. Faith is to be the source of inspiration for our lives. Remember I quoted from the Southwell Litany three weeks ago? There is one stanza in it that stands out like a beacon:
Give us knowledge of ourselves:
our powers and weaknesses, our spirit, our sympathy,
and imagination, our knowledge, our truth;
Teach us by the standard of your Word,
by the judgments of others,
by examination of ourselves;
Give us an earnest desire to strengthen ourselves continually
by study, diligence, prayer, and meditation.
Faith must illuminate our lives. It must be illuminated by the Word. The Word must be a source of guidance in our path. It is no good just having a faith if it is not a faith based on the Word. The Word must speak to us. The Word must nurture and guide us. The Word must set the boundaries of our lives. We need to meditate on the Word. We need to pray. I don't mean just reciting all the things that we have done wrong. We need an earnest, honest crying-out to God, just like David did in the Psalms, when he wrote, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.”
God, know my heart. Test me, and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is anything offensive in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Now that is prayer! That is meditation! That is diligence! In our busy lives, and in our hectic careers, and in the demands of our everyday life, we need to have that sense of self-examination, illuminated by our faith: that the Word and prayer and meditation and diligence might not just make us full of remorse, but might do more, they might make us better people. They might allow us to put the day that has gone behind us, for we cannot alter that now, and move into tomorrow with a new passion and a new purpose and a new sense of what we ought to do.
When Father Aldunaté was shuffling away along the hallway in his slippers, I realized something had been missing in our conversation: We had not prayed together. I had this incredible urge to pray with him. He was wandering off, and I said, “Father Aldunaté, where are you going?”
He replied, “I am going for my devotions before supper.” At 87, he still went to his devotions everyday.
I said, “Before you do that, I would ask that you pray with me, please.”
He sat down, and his eyes lit up! Somebody had asked him again to lead in prayer. Do you know what his prayer was? The very last words of our text this morning: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore. Amen.”
I looked into his eyes; I felt humbled. I looked at his face; I felt strong. I listened to his prayer; I felt resolute. I had been tested by a great man, and I needed to realize that the only strength that any of us have is faith. So test yourselves. Look inwards, but look to Christ, and when you do so, the blessing will be yours. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.