Molly Phinney Baskette - Standing Naked Before God: The Art of Public Confession

TO MY DEEPLY BELOVED COMMUNITY,
FIRST CHURCH SOMERVILLE UCC,
FOR KEEPING IT REAL, ALL THE TIME.
THIS IS YOUR BOOK, IN EVERY SENSE.

The Pilgrim Press, 700 Prospect Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115
thepilgrimpress.com
2015 by Molly Phinney Baskette

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. Changes have been made for inclusivity.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

19 18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-0-8298-2030-0

ISBN: 9781483557458

CONTENTS

How to Tell the Truth:
A Manual for Doing This at Any Church in America

I know my transgressions; my sin is ever before me (Psalm 51:3).

One Columbus Day weekend, the prayer of confession lumped us all in with the Conquistadors: Oh God, we declared in unison, we have enslaved your people and raped your land. Another time we had to say sorry for hating our bodies. I dont treat my body as well as it deserves, but I cant honestly say I hate it. Some confessions stick in the throat.

But I love confession anyway. I dont even mind being lumped in with Conquistadors every now and then. I know my pedestrian sins are not the moral equivalent of mass murder. But I also know that, as someone once put it, over the years Ive collected a lot of sewage in my heart.

Faced with huge moral choices, like whether to hide Jews from the SS, I hope Id hide them. But I wouldnt be surprised if I turned them all in. I get Mother Teresas reply to someone who declared her a living saint: Theres a Nazi sleeping in my soul.

I think of my sinfulness as a chronic conditionits not a great thing to have, it flares up and causes trouble, but with treatment its survivable. I also think that denying my human condition sets me up for worse things than run-of-the-mill sinning.

Some people find confession depressing. They want to hear that theyre good, and getting better all the time. They want church to further their self-improvement projects. Im not so keen on that. Every time becoming a better person has been my goal, pride has always been too happy to help me achieve it. Thats just the way it is with us sinners.

So. Thats my story. In this book, lots of other people share their stories and come out as sinners too. If that doesnt sound appealing to read about, read on anyway. Theres hard to come by wisdom in these pages. It turns out that standing naked before God does us no lasting harm. In fact, it does us lasting good. It can even make us really happy. But dont take my word for it. Please. Read, think, pray. Then try it and see.

Mary Luti

T o my gorgeous, wise, raw, vulnerable, smart, perfectly-imperfect wounded-healer Beloved Firsties at First Church Somerville UCC. Thank you for showing up and telling your truth, even while your knees knock, even if the snot runs out your nose while you do it. Thanks for, often, making us laugh through our tears. You make God so real to so many, and make us fall in love with Jesus when we least expect to. And: you make me so happy and proud to be your lead pastor every darn day.

Thank you to my spectacular colleague Jeff Mansfield, who fixed broken toilets and chiseled ice from slippery church sidewalks so I could stay home in my nook and write through the hardest New England winter in a long time. Everything is going to be ALL RIGHT!

Huge thanks to all my UCC peeps at the Mother House and in diaspora: Tina Villa, my sassy, supportive, truth-telling editrix extraordinaire, and to Aime Jannsohn, Marie Tyson, and Marchae Grair, who support the bizness of bookselling in such helpful ways. To Quinn Caldwell and Matt Laney: thanks, brothers, for reading an early draft and cheering me on, but also challenging me to push a little further, and to Maren Tirabassi, always there with the right poem, the right prayer, the quick answer to one more question about how to be a better writer, and a muse for others writing.

Strong hugs and deep gratitude to my long-suffering family (Ill start dinner in just one minute! Really! An hour later ): Rafe, already wise in the ways of worship leadership and getting the comic timing just right; Carmen, who glows with golden God-moments; and my best of all best friends, Peter, who cheers me on or pops the ego bubble, according to the needs of the day. To Sue, whose resurrection stories ring through the ages, and Jason, my go-to theologian.

A special note of gratitude to Heather Kirk-Davidoff, pastor emeritus of First Church Somerville, who first invited us to bring our stories before God.

And, of course: thank you, God, for giving me the biggest kind of life, a life I never imagined possible. Please keep growing me up in every way into Jesus Christ (Lord knows you have more work to do).

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether youre going to live it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it, and find out the truth about who you are. ANNE LAMOTT

Last year I wrote a book called Real Good Church: How Our Church Came Back from the Dead and Yours Can, Too. I charted our congregations slow, steady return from the brink of death. Our miraculous growth has been manifested in the scads of millenials in our pews, the buzz of babies in the back of worship, the wild games of tag that happen in our sanctuary during coffee hour. Where once we were a graveyard, now we are a three-ring circus.

A unique feature of our church is our liturgist program. Our liturgist doesnt read scripture or otherwise parrot another persons words. Instead, every week, throughout the year, a different person makes a public confession of sin and vulnerability. You heard me right.

When I arrived at First Church, this program was already in place. In a congregation of about fifty active members, about ten would regularly take the stand. Now that we are a congregation of about three hundred, there are eighty people who are willing to tell their story. The waiting list to serve as liturgist is twenty months long.

Real Good Church was a book about the two hundred different things our congregation did over many years to slowly, gracefully grow. But still people keep asking me: whats the