Confronting and Confessing, part I

**This is an excerpt from the talk that I gave earlier tonight on confronting and confessing sin as a community**

Confrontation and confession means simply this, coming face to face with our junk, or turning to face our friends in their junk… it means seeing the junk, and calling it what it is… sin.

Sin is, very simply, broken relationship… between you and God, between us, between you and others.

We cannot get rid of it on our own. So confession of it means together admitting that we need Jesus to rid us of the brokenness. Together, asking for forgiveness…

The vision for InterVarsity this year has been to be a missional community of grace which follows Jesus into raw, intentional, and transformational relationship in order to bless the campus.

And because we’ve stated it, we’re started to feel a holy hunger for it. And some of you, I’m willing to bet, have been quite frustrated by that… because you want raw and real, but you feel like you just find cleaned-up and concealed.

Just look at this poster up here and all the dots that are on it, saying: “I or someone I know cannot admit when they are wrong or confront someone who has wronged them.” My friends, this poster accurately reflects the fact that it is hard for us to be raw or intentional! And part of that is… it’s hard for us to admit when we’re wrong or weak… and equally hard for us to confront others when they’ve hurt us.

If we want to be a community that is raw, intentional and transformational, that begins by learning how to be a community which practices forgiveness, which develops a culture of honesty, openness and brokenness. We first have to learn how to live as a body, not as individuals….

When Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 21-27, he uses the metaphor of the body to describe the church… telling the Corinthians,

12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

In other words, what Paul is saying here is… we are all fundamentally part of the same body. We belong together. If there is something going on in one part, it affects every part.

If one of your legs has gangrene, why would it not send pain impulses to the brain, so that the rest of the body could help it recover? But, many times, we do exactly that… we’re struggling with sin or we see someone struggling with sin and our reaction is “heal yourself” or “I’ll take care of it myself.” Paul has pretty harsh words there… He says,

21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

This is completely counter-cultural… we live in a society which says, “your junk is your junk.” Even our vocabulary emphasizes keeping our stuff “personal:” we talk about personal computers, personal issues, personal space, and personal history.

Our culture tells us that it’s none of our business to care about what goes on in a friend’s personal life.

Our culture tells us that it’s judgmental for us to even think about confronting someone else.

Our culture tells us that it’s safer and better to just minimize conflict, and only deal with the issues if you have to.

What Paul is saying here is radical to our culture! He’s telling us that we need to change our mentality from that of individual to community. What affects your roommate, matters to you because you are members of the same body. When a relationship is torn and broken, it affects the health of the body in the same way that a torn ligament would affect the physical body... we are the body. This is why we are called to confront others who have wronged us and to communally admit when we’re wrong!