(This is the third sermon in our Lenten series, "Recipe for Repentance". Previous sermons can be found here and here, and the Ash Wednesday message can be found here.)
“That’s it; you’re in time-out!” How many of us have heard these words and experienced the pure panic of a child knowing that they’re in big trouble? Although we usually thought of it as a punishment in the moment, a time-out should more accurately be considered a “behavior modification strategy”. Unlike grounding, in which privileges are revoked as a method of negative reinforcement, a time-out is intended to remove a person from their normal environment and give them the opportunity to reflect on their bad behavior. After all, you can’t express remorse or make it right if you don’t understand what you’ve done wrong. In the words of parents since time immemorial, you’re put into time-out in order to “think about what you’ve done.”
As adults, there’s no one really with the authority to put us into time-out anymore, and we certainly don’t feel like we’d have the time for it anyway…but it’s just as important a tool of behavior modification for us now as it was when we were kids. More so, even, because the behavior that needs modifying in adults generally has farther-reaching ramifications than kids’ behavior does. Although I bet few of us do it intentionally, we should be regularly taking “time out” from our normal routine to reflect on our transgressions. To “think about what we’ve done”.
God knows that we need it. Literally: God is acutely aware of our collective and individual need for a “time-out”. So, when early Church leaders first developed a consistent liturgy for the Reformed tradition, they made sure to include a weekly time-out for us all to reflect on our wrongdoing, which we still observe today. We call it the “Prayer of Confession” (although “Time-Out for Sinners” would certainly be an attention-grabber, wouldn’t it?). It’s more than a ceremonial admission of our guilt; it’s meant to be an honest, heartfelt reflection on the things we’ve done that separate us from God. Our ancestors in faith recognized our need to reconcile with God through honest confession before we can authentically and fully enter into the rest of worship.
Interestingly, there’s one aspect of the liturgical time-out that hasn’t endured quite as consistently as the time-out itself. According to tradition, the prayer of confession should be followed immediately by a recitation of the law, often represented by the Ten Commandments. I’m not quite sure exactly why this practice fell out of favor—maybe because it became tedious, maybe because of latent antisemitism in the Church, maybe because it just didn’t seem necessary after a while. But I think that the Church has actually lost something in dropping this aspect of the confessional liturgy.
Theologian Walter Brueggemann calls the Ten Commandments, “a proclamation in God’s own mouth of who God is and how God shall be ‘practiced’ by this community”.[1] It’s more than a list of self-evident rules; taken together, the Ten Commandments are an essential framework that informs our entire faith life. In the New Testament, when asked to identify the Greatest Commandment, Jesus doesn’t pick one of these ten to raise above the others—instead, he summarizes them all as a whole. He tells us that “all the law and the prophets hang on” the collective commandments to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. A habitual recitation of the Ten Commandments helps us to remember ALL the different ways we’re called to “love God” and “love our neighbor”, and to reflect on ALL the many ways we’ve fallen short.
The Ten Commandments aren’t the literal sum-total of God’s expectations for us; they’re merely the broad strokes of the law meant to provide us with a moral framework. Taken together with the Greatest Commandment(s), they help us understand what’s really important: not the specific rules we obey, but how we stay in right relationship with one another and with the divine. So we shouldn’t treat them as a finite checklist, but as a jumping-off point for our time-out reflections. “You have heard it said ‘Don’t commit murder’,” Jesus tells us, “but *I* say to you that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of judgement.”[2] The Ten Commandments are a tool to help us recognize ALL of our sins—not just the “big ones”.
So when we put ourselves into “time-out” each Sunday, we shouldn’t spend the time patting ourselves on the back for not committing murder this week. We should be reflecting on all the ways that we’ve failed to live up to the totality of God’s law as summarized in the Greatest Commandments. We should be taking a deep dive into not only the content of our actions, but the content of our hearts, and painstakingly admitting every single way that we’ve fallen short of these basic laws. Let’s take a moment and do that now. (I invite you to respond with the sign for “forgive us” after each petition.)
When God tells us, “You must have no other gods before me,” we probably won’t be confessing our devotion to the Greek pantheon of gods, but we might need to repent of our devotion to the gods of work, or money, or pleasure. Walter Brueggemann says we live in a world of “unacknowledged polytheism”[3]…and I think he’s right. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit to all the things that we’ve put before God: Lord, forgive us for the times that we’ve put our faith in the things of this world instead of in you.
When God tells us, “Do not make an idol for yourself,” we probably won’t be confessing the golden statues of our athletic heroes that we keep around the house. But we might need to repent of the idols we keep in our minds—the images we create as a reflection of ourselves—of a god who looks like us, thinks like us, and acts like us. A god who loves the things that we love and hates the things that we hate. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit to the ways that we try to create God in our own image: Lord, forgive us for the times that we’ve worshiped a “you” that isn’t truly “you”.
When God tells us, “Don’t misuse the Lord’s name,” we probably won’t be confessing all the times we’ve pronounced the Tetragrammaton, “Yahweh”. But we might need to repent of the times we’ve used God’s name to justify our own desires, our own human recklessness and destruction. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit how we use God’s holy name to advance our own agendas: Lord, forgive us for the times we’ve carelessly misused your name for our own ends.
When God tells us, “Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy,” we probably won’t be confessing that we accidentally went back to work a day early, but we might need to repent of the times we’ve neglected to rest our bodies and minds, and of the times that we’ve expected others to do the same. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit to our participation in a culture of productivity over self-care: Lord, forgive us for the times that we’ve considered the holy act of rest optional.
When God tells us, “Honor your father and your mother,” we probably won’t be confessing that we forgot to celebrate Mother’s Day, but we might need to repent of the times that we’ve criticized older generations as ignorant or burdensome—or for that matter, the times that we’ve looked down on *younger* generations as naïve or vain. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit that we’re unthinking participants of the generational wars: Lord, forgive us for the times that we forget to see our fellow human beings of all ages as beloved children created in your image.
When God tells us, “Do not kill,” we probably won’t be confessing to literal homicide, but we might need to repent of the ways that we give our tacit approval to systems that kill others on our behalf: warmongering, capital punishment, and healthcare that forces people to choose between food and life-saving treatment. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit to our complicity in the taking of human lives: Lord, forgive us for the times that we’ve ignored the ways our culture values profit and safety over the gift of life that you’ve given to humanity.
When God tells us, “Do not commit adultery,” we probably won’t be confessing to marital infidelity. But we might need to repent of the ways that we abuse our relationships with others, whether secret-keeping or allowing resentment to fester. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit that whenever we act out of any motivation other than love, we’re not honoring the inherent worth of the other: Lord, forgive us for the times that we’ve used our relationships to make ourselves feel better instead of seeking mutual blessings.
When God tells us, “Do not steal,” we probably won’t be confessing to grand larceny, but we might need to repent of hoarding resources that God has called us to share with others or of supporting businesses that abuse employment laws to steal their employees’ time or pay. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit that we steal all the time, just not always in the most obvious ways: Lord, forgive us for the times that we’ve taken that which does not belong to us.
When God tells us, “Do not testify falsely against your neighbor,” we probably won’t be confessing to legal perjury, but we might need to repent of gossiping with half-truths or clinging to a false narrative about someone else in our own minds. And we all know the all-too-prevalent trend of spreading false information without fact-checking it first. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit that false testimony isn’t always intentional: Lord, forgive us for the times that we’ve allowed our own biases and prejudices to dictate the information we share with others.
When God tells us, “Do not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor,” we probably won’t be confessing that we’ve been secretly peeking in the window next door and taking notes. But we might need to repent of comparing ourselves to others in our social media feeds, or buying into the latest diet fad, or treating Black Friday as a sport. While we’re here in time-out, let’s admit that we often seek fulfillment in that which we don’t possess: Lord, forgive us for the times that we’ve ignored the blessings that we do have in our efforts to “keep up” with others.
Like the secular version, liturgical time-out isn’t a punishment. It’s an opportunity for us to realize what we’ve done, so that we can do better. It’s not easy, because it’s counterintuitive: our instinct is to project the best version of ourselves to the world. But since God already knows all our sins, don’t you think it’s a good idea for us to be on the same page? When we reflect on our sins, we’re not creating more trouble for ourselves. We’re just taking responsibility for what’s already out there, so that we can do better.
Before we leave time-out for today, there’s one more thing we need to do. A prayer of confession is incomplete without an assurance of pardon. This is a central part of our faith: that before we even open our mouths to confess, God is already prepared to forgive us. God is just waiting for us to ask. So beloved, hear, once again, this good news: no matter how many times we turn from God, no matter how many ways we break the rules, no matter how much we deserve a harsh judgment, God will never abandon us. In the name of Jesus Christ, I declare to you that we are forgiven! Never be afraid of what you learn in time-out, because this truth will always be waiting for you on the other side. Amen.
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[1] Walter Brueggemann, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 1, p 406.
[2] Matthew 5:21-22, CEB.
[3] Walter Brueggemann, "New Interpreters Bible Commentary, Vol. 1, p. 409.
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