Practicing Confession & Absolution – Dr. James Nestingen

Transcript (edited for readability).

Luther once said if you go to the sacrament and wonder if you have any faith, you should just lean back into the faith of that community around you and let them carry you. And that's what these gorgeous services have been — to be sustained, that you're using, and to be in the liturgical form, and I feel like the paralytic who finally is starting to move. It's really fun. So thanks so much for that. These services have been a pure joy.

And because of the way absolution has been neglected among Lutherans, we have lost a lot of the pastoral tradition that's needed to accompany it. There is an oral tradition, as you are surely well aware, among pastors. When we gather, we discuss various circumstances that we've confronted and talk about ways of responding to them. And when you deal regularly, in absolution, with sinners, there are some things that you have to learn. And I mentioned one of them yesterday: you have to learn to forget, and that, in some sense, is the hardest thing. I have a friend, a psychiatrist, who says that memory involves a chemical change in the brain. It just imprints itself, and of course, the harder we try to forget, the deeper the imprint goes. And so this is a kind of a gentle pastoral art.

There's a wonderful old story that Gerhard Forde would love to tell about a priest and a nun. This nun in his congregation was convinced that she was slightly more spiritual than he was, and it went back and forth, back and forth. She wasn't sure that the Lord was listening to her confession to the priest. So the priest got a little irritated with her. He told her that the next time she talked to God, with whom she planned regular commerce, she should ask him what sins the priest had confessed that morning. So they gathered, they met in the afternoon, and he said, "Did you talk to God today?" And she said, "I did." And he said, "Did you ask my question?" She said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Did you ask what sins I confessed this morning?" "I did," she said. "And what did he say?" He said, "I forgot." And that is the promise of the gospel: God's forgetfulness. I will remember your transgressions no more.

The preacher has a little less control of forgetfulness — forgetting the things that should be remembered and remembering the things that should be forgotten, seemingly inevitably. So these are just kind of the pastoral arts: learning to let it light off and learning not to keep it. We don't have this wisdom being handed down in our communities anymore. And so, I told you yesterday about running into that old Irish priest up in South Dakota. He had learned the art of forgetfulness, for instance, and he had learned many of the other things that are necessary — necessary preparations for hearing confessions.

To my knowledge, there is nothing available in the community anymore. There's all kinds of stuff in C.F.W. Walther about the importance of confession. And there's all kinds of stuff in the Confessions about the importance of confession, but very little practical, down-here stuff about how you go about this — how you set it up, what you do, and so on. So some of you are already asking questions about this, indicating your frustration with it.

There was an old pastoral — I will only say a pastor Agla — and, you know, there was a theologian of the ELCA tradition named Gerberding, who also wrote a pastoral handbook, or pastor's book, that's actually pretty good. I was thinking that this is really needed, and that there should be, after all, something in this tradition that would just give practical instructions and helps for clergy as they face various situations. It reminds me that we're the only professionals who don't have a professional association. Okay? Doctors have the AMA, lawyers have the American Bar Association, and they also have peer discipline and rigorous periodic review to keep up the standards of the profession. We don't have any such association. And consequently, we don't have these living kinds of traditions, oral traditions, that come down.

I grew up in First Things, like a lot of you did, and I remember as a boy lying at the top of the steps and listening to the discussion taking place, where lots of these questions were considered. We need something similar — where we can help one another.

Anyway, there are all kinds of practical questions that come up concerning absolution, and we'll touch on some of them, and we'll take more when I get done, so that if I miss something interesting for you, we have at least a chance to talk it over. For instance: what happens when somebody starts spilling the beans? Most confessions start unawares — a person is not aware of confessing, but you recognize it as such, and therefore you have at least a minute to take stock along the way of what's coming. So we should look at that. And then secondly, how do you know when a person is ready for the absolution? This question already popped up yesterday, and it's a major question for a professional person, so we should take that up too.

As we talk about these questions, I want to make a distinction between informal and formal confession. In fact, the fact that very few pastors provide private absolution any longer doesn't mean, as I said yesterday, that people aren't confessing. People confess. People get stuck in these narratives that won't resolve. And so, for instance, if you run into somebody who's been recently divorced, you're going to hear the narrative in more detail than you'd care for, complete with footnotes and illustrations of the perfidy of the former spouse. I mean, the story will unfold in such a way that you won't even get a chance to speak — it'll just go. So a confession is being made of a particular type, not necessarily a real confession — it might be more of an indictment — but at least a person is getting an ear.

We have a friend who's going through a lot of agony. Her marriage broke up, and her congregation is breaking up, and she's losing her profession. She has brought this down on her own head — there's no question about her own implication. But she can't see her own implication; all she sees is the other. And of course, when she calls, you can stand with the phone like this, because the narrative is just going to go. And if you just say "all right," you know, to let her know you're still there — that's all that really matters. There's no occasion, no man whatsoever, you're just a receptacle for this narrative, which, of course, I know completely. And sometimes you'll miss part of it, and then I tuck it back in, so — you have to have some entertainment.

Anyway, these are confessions, even if we don't recognize them as such. They're informal, as opposed to the formal confession of someone coming to your office, or someone coming to you as pastor asking that you hear their confession. So the informal arises out of the relationship, it arises out of an occasion, it arises out of an immediate need. The formal is the actual practice. And generally what I'm going to argue is that the goal has to be to move the informal to the formal. That is — the informal is high-risk. It is immediately accessible; that's its gift. But it leaves the pastor exposed, especially out in the open, and so it's really important — we're going to continue this — to move it to a more formal practice. So we'll work on, first of all, the informal, and then the formal.

Because of the way our minds work, people look for an opportunity to confide in someone. When someone says to you, "It feels so good to get it off my chest," they're describing something that's happened internally and externally. Internally, they've given language to something that's been kicking around in there — an apprehension, a fear, a long-term concern, guilt. There are all kinds of reasons for that; narratives can be anything. And when they say, "It feels so good to get it off my chest," they've organized it kind of intuitively, and it feels good. There's some progression to it — it's no longer simply a disaster, something; there's something moving. And that movement feels good. And then the fact that another has heard that movement, and the fact that another has given an ear to that movement, breaks the solitude, the isolation, the sense of having been stigmatized. Now another knows, and has survived — not "has survived the knowledge," at least immediately. Now another has heard, and hasn't thrown up, or fallen into a fit on the floor, or run screaming out of the room, denounced.

One of my teachers, whom we described as the world's oldest living adolescent — he's 87 and he's 14, that's it, at the same time — he's so much fun. When he was serving in Mason City, someone came to make confession, and Roy said, "You want what?" "No, I mean, that's generally not recommended. What? I don't do that." The confession will probably stop right there. This is a nice thing about a confession — it's like, "Tell me" — one of my favorites, I just love this. I don't know if you know this name, Lou Smith. You knew of Lou? He wrote for — yeah, he was one of my dearest friends. I just loved him. We talked every night — every Tuesday night at 9:30, and I waited all week for that call. The Luther faculty was going to hell in a handbasket then. I had one or two companions on the whole faculty, but he was just solid as a rock.

He was so — he told me that he'd go into confession, and he started making his confession, and the pastor said, "I know how you feel," and then he confessed a little more, and the pastor said, "I've been there myself." I mean, sometimes — you have to pardon the French, this is a small room — Lou said, "Would you just shut the fuck up? I didn't come here to hear about you. I came here for God's word. If you can't keep silent until I say it, then I'm gonna leave." I mean, that's just perfect. That's just what should happen. Because the pastor was confused — clarity wasn't needed. That's why — yeah, vicarious, exactly. Yeah, it comes in here.

When he died — she whispered — he told his wife, Ellen… He was speaking out at the Society of the Holy Trinity meeting down in North Carolina, and he woke up sick, and they took him to the hospital, and he had a torn aorta. And they were going in surgically, and so Lou knew that there was maybe one chance in two that he would come out alive. Well, another dear friend of mine, Larry Yoder — Larry was with him — and he looks at Larry and says, "You tell Ellen that if she eulogizes me, I'm gonna come back and haunt her. And then tell her that I love her." Perfect. You know what — that's something.

Anyway, people look for a possibility, look for the chance to confide the narrative in someone, and generally, as you know, that narrative has to do with something that's hanging on — resentment. For example, a wonderful woman in California says, in her novel, that resentment is the only poison we eat ourselves, thinking how much damage we're doing to the other person. That person just won't dissolve in the narrative. It won't become a story. And we go back, and we go back, and we go back, and we unearth the person, and then we throw mud at them. And then we go on, and again the person arises — that person is in control of us, and it won't let go. And so we tell the narrative over and over and over again, trying to dissolve the power that they hold over us. But it won't let go.

So when you get people wandering around with narratives like this, any part of the story, anybody will do — that is, they're gonna talk. And they're gonna talk to someone, and they're gonna talk to someone they think is safe, at least for the time being — maybe even a stranger on an airplane — but somebody, because the narrative has become so heavy. The whole process of unfolding has become so difficult that they've got to get rid of it.

It's very important to recognize about the office that we hold — that there's something of the witch doctor that still hangs over us. My friend Lee Griffin, to whom I referred a couple of times already, likes to say that we're totemic. The first time I learned this — we had, in the small town in western Oregon where I served, we took turns calling at the hospital, the little hospital. The ministerial association had been asked to take care of the hospital, to make sure everybody got a call on. And so we would just take the names and go through the rooms. Sometimes they would be members of other churches, sometimes — in Oregon, of course, the most unchurched state in the country — we were dealing with flat-out, unvarnished pagans, and we're proud of it.

And in my family, we wore clerics for services and not generally elsewhere. And so I put my clerics on and went up to the house, but when I came into the intensive care unit, all of a sudden there was a big arm around my neck and I got pulled out and pulled to the floor. It was the nurse. And I said — she's a real good friend of mine — I said, "Marina, I didn't know you loved me so much." She said, "No, no, no, no," she said, "the machines, monitoring the patient, just went slow." He saw my cleric. And, yeah, he did — I mean, the fear just welled up in him.

I mean, we have to recognize that when people find out you're a pastor — they recognize that you're a pastor if you're accustomed to wearing a cleric and they see you — you're gonna get a certain type of confession. It may be a confession of self-justification. It may be an attempt to bargain something away. But people are gonna talk. And people are going to say things — which is, of course, my airplane story. This is just, you know, par for the course.

So the fact that we're not holding services of confession and absolution doesn't mean that people aren't confessing — they are confessing, and the words are totemic. What is that? That we — the person senses that. Okay. You have the quality of the totem. We represent, in the person's mind, the power of the divine in some way. Okay. And they want to come, and that promotes fear, apprehension. But it also promotes, you know, a certain type — they deal with us as God's representatives. Okay, it's a superstitious kind of thing. It can be useful, but if you start cultivating that, you'd better watch yourself. I mean, that's very important to recognize.

Most of the time, where this happens informally with pastors, I think it's at coffee. It happens in the car when you're going to a district or circuit meeting. It happens in an empty room — just sitting there, people start to talk, and they see an opportunity, and they take it. They've got your ear for the moment. And, you know, you've heard all of these stories that I've heard many times — you're driving, and you learn about a divorce that's undigested, or you learn about family conflict that's in full flight, or you learn about — I mean, the story is told — my son, my god, my sister, my brother — you know, somebody close, usually somebody in the family, and the story is told in such a way as to…

Now, the warmth and privacy that encourage confession can also undermine it. This is the power of informal confession, that it is readily accessible. It doesn't have to be scheduled, it doesn't have to be — it just happens, it's just available. But the weakness of it is that it becomes so personal. When a person finds this narrative, and the pastor — I understand it, you hear it, it's your personality, it's your friendship, it's your loyalty to the person, it's the privacy of the situation, it's the fact that there are a couple hours available in a car, the fact that you're willing to keep listening — all of this promotes the possibility of the confession.

And so, I will say, an informal confession deserves an informal absolution, generally speaking. You don't have to come to the formal act of absolution — you can say things like this: "You were baptized into the forgiveness of sins. I'm pretty sure Christ can handle this." Or you can say something like, "Christ Jesus knows you're a sinner, and he welcomes you." But generally, I get real nervous about these informal absolutions. What you're doing is inviting the person to continue in conversation.

[Question:] Could we just get some clarification, to be helpful — can we define the word absolution? [Schuyler:] The oral declaration of the forgiveness of sin. [Question:] Well, because we talked yesterday about the liturgical expression, "I forgive you." Okay, but that's not the same thing as — but we're using the word absolution for both of those. [Schuyler:] Right, one is informal, the other is formal — so your distinction is formal and informal. [Question:] Right, okay, I'm just trying to get a distinction. [Schuyler:] Well, that's fair and necessary. The informal is simply — my custom is to say, "God's peace," in greeting and leaving. And that's an absolution, but it's a very informal absolution. And my friends who know me, know that that's the absolution. Lots of people don't have a clue it's an absolution — it's informal, and it's just bearing witness.

[Question:] Is that, like, we have liturgically, in some of our liturgies, the distinction between the absolution and the declaration of grace, and anyone can and should declare the grace to someone who is confessing and telling their story, especially if it's unresolved. [Schuyler:] Right. Well, Luther will say that's not only a Christian's right, but duty — that is, your duty as a believer is to bear witness at that point. [Question:] Certainly, the hope that lives within us. [Schuyler:] Yes, right. And, you know, at the same time, the formal act, the formal liturgical act, which I think is the sacrament — we're careful with this — but that does not undermine the flood of grace.

[Question:] Can you speak to whether or not the distinction I'm making between the informal and the formal absolution — I see both as having the power of God's word? [Schuyler:] Yeah, obviously, but the formal, or the liturgical, from the office — you receive it as from Christ himself. That's not just declaring something, that's actually giving it in a sacramental sense. [Question:] Like you and I agree? [Schuyler:] No, well, you see — Elizabeth was a lifelong student of the Henkel family, who published the first Book of Concord published in America. David Henkel — they were in a fight like we're in, in the ELCA right now, where the cultural Christians want to steal the gospel to endorse whatever they happen to find attractive at the moment. And we're holding out for the particular, definite Jesus. And so Henkel was in this situation with the old, founded North Carolina Synod, and these guys happened to come from — both Lou Smith and Larry Yoder come from these old connections.

David Henkel wrote an outstanding sermon called "The Heavenly Flood of Divine Regeneration." And that's the image for sacramental theology — the heavenly flood. Whereas, you know, my [teacher] here argued, the logic of the sacraments is flood logic. The logic is not the logic of a trickle that has to be regulated, but of an overflowing flood. And so we don't want to get caught limiting it — to say, well, a pastor gives a whole, and a layperson gives a part. If the word is there, God is there. And if God is there, the flood is moving. You see? So what we can and should say is that for the sake of order, for the sake of — the absolution requires very careful tending in the life of the community. And that's a pastor's job. At that point, I don't want any of my lay people touching that, because I'm not gonna have that flood messed with by some idiot who's going to some club in order to do theology there. Or, in the case — here's a gracious, great old teacher who's doing a hymnal for the Bethanys — her theology was shaped by her mother and a Lutheran Brethren family, so that what she knows is suspicion of the sacraments.

[Question:] Yes, right, terrible. [Schuyler:] It's just godless, it's demonic, and, of course, she thinks of it as utterly biased. So she will not tolerate an unqualified absolution. And, you know, her mother — this is how this works — she was on the faculty with me. So when her mother was dying, they couldn't find a pastor — she just hates the theology that I hold — but she wanted me to look after her mother. So I went, took care of her mother. Her mother would go nuts if I said, "Trust in your baptism." If she heard that this morning, she'd just explode with wrath — teaching people to trust their baptism, teaching them to distrust Jesus. There's not enough obscenities that can be gathered. But that is the overwhelming mindset.

[Question:] Oh, that's about the old Adam. [Schuyler:] Yeah, that's right — old Adam wants to control us. The old Adam doesn't wanna die. So the old Adam rises up when the sacrament comes. That's universalism, or that's double predestination, and oftentimes it jumps from one side of the horse to the other, just that fast.

So — I mean, one of the things I just love here, coming in from the outside, is your awareness of the office. This is sacred, and this is a gift of grace that you have received, to honor the office to which you've been called. I can't tell you how refreshing this is. At the same time, the office door has to open. I mean, there are people out there, right? And we want to let this flow — because, as Luther will say, it's the duty of a Christian to forgive.

And when a father pronounces absolution to the child — my middle son, my oldest son, was picked up on a DUI, spent the night in jail. I went out to pick him up, got in the car, smelling of vomit, and just horrible. I spent the whole night lying in bed with my wife, explaining that she knew where the seed came from — it wasn't from her family, "I married this wild ass of a man" — "No, what I have to live with, don't you pick them up? No." He was sitting outside the jail waiting for me, and he got in the car, and he said, "You know, I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am." And he's 26, and weeping. So I said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I forgive you your sins." I think it's as close as he's come to faith. You don't withhold it at that point. I was not functioning in my office — I was functioning as father. [Question:] Yeah, I was gonna ask. [Schuyler:] That's honest too, though. [Question:] Yeah, exactly. [Schuyler:] And we have to be — while recovering the office, which is desperately needed and critically important in the life of the church — my concern is that we not restrain this bubbling, because this bubbling is Christ Jesus out there. I have other sheep that are not of this fold — I want to get them too. So keep the office, but let it flow. You see what I mean? [Question:] Yes. [Schuyler:] Yeah, I love it.

Okay, now, so when I say absolution, in this informal sense, I'm talking about — you know, what the person says — I like to joke like that, I like to say, "I think Christ can handle that." He hasn't got the vomit back yet, you know, he's not gonna turn his back on you. I mean, you want to just keep the type coming — let the flood roll — in this informal way. But sometimes, like that story I told you about the airplane — sometimes the best way — the problem with this type of absolution is people think you're a good guy. They think you're just being nice to them. And, of course, then that lasts about five minutes. "He was a nice guy, but I still got this to deal with."

So what you want to do is be real careful with these informal things. You always want to be moving them to the formal. You want to be moving to the point where the office is in place, and you can lay hands on the head and actually say it. That's the best, and the most reliable, because then it's not just good old pastor who would never hurt anybody, it's not just old Jim who likes sinners and enjoys hearing a good story — Christ Jesus is working. That's what you want.

So, like in that story of the airplane — that confession got way down, the whole thing was coming out, and you can't beat something like that informally. That's like spitting in the ocean — it's not gonna go. You have to — I mean, you're under obligation, you have — you must. And time and place and occasion and situation don't mean diddly squat compared to the fact that a sinner has confessed. The kingdom of God has come in the heart. The kingdom of God has come to a Vietnam vet, who's got blood all over his hands, who's been in one place after another where he didn't belong, who's just lived a shameless life, and finally Christ Jesus has found him. This is the resurrection of the dead — Lazarus rising, and you're not going to sit there and say, well, Jesus can handle this. You want hands on, and you want to say formally, "Christ loves you, I forgive you all your sins." I mean, the guy — I mean, this guy called me every day for three weeks in a row: "Is the message still the same?" "Still the same." "Come over here so I can put my hands on your head." "Alright, I will be there after work." I mean, you know, what can be better than that? I mean, golly, you see that once in the ministry, you know, that's just pure joy.

So you want it to be formal. Sometimes I've done the same thing — this is getting a little bit ahead — but once I had a woman who came to me for confession. The students knew — even in good old Lutheran, Luther Seminary, where the whole place had gone to hell in a handbasket — the students knew that I had heard confessions. So people would call me up and say, "Can I come and see you?" And I would say, "Yes." And so this woman came in, and she wanted to make confession. She made her confession, and I knew from the time — she had confessed what was troubling her on top, but there was definitely something under there. So when I absolved her, I said, "I declare unto you the forgiveness of all your sin, for what you have confessed and what you have not been able to confess." So she came back, of course, and she came for the whole year, every once a week.

In the northwestern building — yeah, Luther — they have a confessional that was designed into the building. It's in the chapel. There's a beautiful crucifix in the chapel. Lovely. And if you look at the wall behind it, there's a cross in the wall, with — black, with mirrors — that's one-way glass. And behind that cross is a room, a confessional. It's one of the most gorgeous confessionals that I've ever been in, where the architect knew what he was doing. He designed it so that the penitent looks over the shoulder of the pastor to the crucifix while making confession. I mean, you can't imagine — you know what it's used for? Storing AV equipment. It's like — I mean, it's just criminal. So I raised a fuss, of course, and I got a key, and they agreed that I could use it as a confessional if I put the AV equipment back when I was done. If you ever go up there, you should go and ask to see that confessional — bet you they wouldn't even be able to find it anymore.

So anyway, this woman confessed the whole year and still hadn't been able to let it out, and by this time I knew what it was. You know what's happening nowadays with all the happy-talk lesbian, homosexual stuff — oh yeah, college girls' associations are likely to be with other women, and there's lots of confusion. She had been touched inappropriately in the shower. She had liked it, and then hated herself, and was convinced that she had been so contaminated that she would never be courted, and was so ashamed, and was absolutely sure that she was wearing this lesbian experience on her face. She was so full of shame that she could not say it. And every time she got close, she just — so I got my confessional key.

This had to be horrible — this could not be anything else but formal. The office was required, and it was the office that was sought. And so I told her I wanted her to meet me there in her Sunday best. And while I am not necessarily commonly accused of being high church, I wore every vestment that I own. And I met her in the confessional, using my vestments for their proper purpose, to proclaim. And she came, and she finally made her confession — wrecked, just wrecked. Her whole life was hanging in this. And when I absolved her, it was like an icebreaker plowing through a huge drift — it was just bang, bang. She was scared, weeping and frightened, and I called her within a half hour. I said, "Come back, come back, I want to say this again." And again, a half hour later — because I was just desperately afraid — and, you know, I finally — and, of course, the classic problem is that the sin becomes the focus, and then when the sin has gone, the original problem is still there. So here's a young, gifted, attractive woman whom men are afraid of, and she goes out, and she's not gonna be courted even when this business has been cleared up.

I had to just flood her with this. I was preaching in Idaho — Caldwell, Idaho, west of Boise — and during the sermon I looked back and I saw her sitting there, and I just froze, because I had prayed for her so long, and worried, and hadn't seen her, and hadn't heard from her. Well, I finished — I could hardly wait to talk to her. I was standing at the back, shaking, and she came. She said, "I remember — all the time you spoke the absolution to me, it was like being in a cold mountain stream, flowing over me with goodness. It was the beginning of my life in Christ." She was so lost in her sin, in the memory of the sin, in the shame of the sin. That's what the office is for. You can only do that stuff formally — the informal is not gonna work at all in a situation like that.

So then the question becomes — and there are some other things you are — in the outline we can look at — I mean, it's important to be protected. The office does that. Even the law recognizes the integrity of the office. And so if someone comes and makes confession — I mean, sometimes, for instance, I know some of you also hear fifth steps, in AA, huh? You do that? Yeah. When you hear a fifth step, you get the whole shooting match there, and oftentimes there are crimes, and there's serious stuff, and you want to be protected. The fifth step is therapeutic — confession is for forgiveness. But when you hear fifth steps, they oftentimes turn in the direction of confessions, and I always try to move that way, because I don't like to carry that stuff around. I'd rather have Christ's shoulders carry it — that little — anyway.

You have the office there, and you have the protection of your office there. And one of the things I just love — the Norwegian Missourians did the same thing as Missouri — that is, we used to have Saturday afternoons where you could go and talk to the pastor before going to the sacrament, where you didn't have to register for the sacrament. I don't know how many congregations still do that, but that's a wonderful opportunity. It was originally set up for confession, so that everybody was stopping by, and if someone had something to talk to the pastor about, they had an opportunity. That was a real good thing. And I think it would help prevent close communion from becoming closed communion, too. If you're available Saturday afternoon, a half hour before service, then people have a chance to come — if you have visitors, they have a chance to say, "I would like to receive the sacrament." What's the possibility? And then it's a little more gracious, I think, because the possibility has been given. That's the office.

Well, informal absolution doesn't necessarily have to face the question of readiness or authenticity — is this person ready to hear the absolution? Informal absolution is oftentimes driven by a pressing need. The person just has to tell, and they don't care who they're telling, but the need is so pressing that it's hard to restrain — it just spills over. And there are other kinds of narratives, for sure — some narratives are told to assess blame, some of them are told to keep up the indictment, some of them are told for self-justification. You have to distinguish, but oftentimes these things have been sitting in the conscience so long that they've left real saddle sores, and the person is in such a red-hot haste to get rid of it, that you know for sure that it's right.

The other narratives are poisonous. For instance, one of my friends, from Volga, Iowa, who lost her husband and is losing her vocation — she has a narrative that's poisonous. And the narrative is to assess all the blame to her husband and exonerate herself. And I will not say an absolution to that. It's the only time I've ever heard, in connection with another pastor — I went out to preach, and when I got to the suburb of Minneapolis, the pastor had just left his wife. So I had gone out there to help with the service, and I wound up with three services in a suburban congregation, and no old pastor whatsoever. And so, as soon as the service got done, we started looking for him. His advisor was there — a real close friend of mine — and his dad was there. And, you know, you can just guess — he was sleeping with the treasurer of the congregation, whom he said was the one authentic person he'd ever dealt with, of course. His dad had been the assistant coach to John Wooden at UCLA, and had joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which had gotten all the moralism of the evangelicals, and, of course, what it meant to my student was that his wife was responsible for his adultery.

So his advisor and I heard his confession together. And when he confessed all of his wife's sins, I said, "You got on the basis of this — your confession — indicting your wife." Was he mad? He just went ballistic. It was a good thing there were two of us in the room, because I thought he was gonna attack me. He simply could not confess. And I said, "You can't do this to me." He said, "You can't do this to me." I said, "I have no alternative." And he said, "Absolutely not." I said, "When you confess your sins, then I will absolve." And of course, he did whatever a sinner does — he made me the problem, just as he'd made his wife the problem. So I waited a couple of weeks, then I called him up, and I said, "I'd like to talk to you." He said, "I don't want to talk to you." I said, "Yeah, well, we won't talk." He said, "Wait a minute." So he came over, and I took him behind the house, because my kids were in the house and I didn't want — and he finally was able to confess. When I absolved him, he just wailed. All of the neighbors were wondering if somebody was getting beat up back there. But it finally did come to terms, you know.

I mean, sometimes you have to withhold the absolution for the sake of the absolution. You can't absolve him of his wife's sins — preposterous. That's just the way it works. Anyway, these are poisonous narratives — they're killing narratives — and the person carries them, and for faith, they're gonna destroy it, so you want to be real careful.

The surest sign of repentance comes when the subject changes. As long as the subject is "him," it's the same old game. But when Christ becomes the subject of the verb, you're in a different league — then things are starting to move. Generally, what I wait for is the point where the person begins to speak against themselves. Through the first part of the narrative, they'll speak for themselves — they'll explain the conditions and the mitigating circumstances and the process that brought them to this point. That's the beginning. The middle of the narrative comes when the breakdown occurs, and then, you know, it goes like this: "I should have. I could have. Maybe if I'd done—" You know then that the heart is softening. As long as it's "me, the victim, against the other who is the marauder" — as long as it's me, I am acted upon, but not acting. When the person starts — when that stops, and the person begins to say, "I should have, I wish I had, maybe I could have, I didn't see it at the time, I didn't realize it maybe" — already things are starting to yield a little bit. And then the very next step is to say, "I'm the one. It's me. I did it. I caused it. I can't believe it, but—" And now you're in the realm of repentance.

This is the true — what is it — the redemptive self-hatred, where Christ Jesus brings me to the point where I see my sins and I say, "Oh no, who will deliver me from this body of death?" And you say, "I will, I can help you with that." That's Christ Jesus there. And this — you know, psychotherapeutically, self-hatred is a problem — in repentance, it's just a joy. Here it's a good thing.

I had a very close friend whom we had to take into treatment. We'd go to his house, and I noticed that he was slopping up quite a bit of wine. He never got drug— he never got drunk, but by the time we left he was usually pretty well afloat — not six feet off the ground, but maybe two and a half. And that was one bottle of wine, and then there was a bottle of wine over at the office, and pretty soon it was two bottles of wine a day. And his wife called and said, "We have to do something, we can't let this go on, it's gonna kill him." So I called some friends over at the Johnson Institute — they're fabulous. So we arranged a Johnson-style intervention. You know what those are — you start with the person furthest out in the circle of relationships and you move into the closest, and you name the drinking and the consequences for you, and you just hand it over.

I was the only one there that wasn't part of the family. And so I started — I talked about his drinking, and I named the consequences for me, and he said, "You've enjoyed it too, haven't you?" I didn't even get on base — that was not even a bunted foul ball. And it went in closer and closer and closer. His wife, who had lots to say. And then his son. And we didn't budge him an inch. And when his daughter finished — his granddaughter got off her mother's knee and started toward him and said, "Grandpa." And he turned and said, "When can I start treatment?" I mean, just that little girl squeezed the repentance out of him, like he was crushing a grape. It was just perfect. Well, it doesn't get better than that.

Okay, questions.

[Question:] How does the pastor receive the word — when there are comments, does he ever comment? It's one of the puzzling things — below, but— [Schuyler:] Yeah, yeah, I mean, how is the word of God? Do you ask? [Question:] The — she piece, you're just in here. [Schuyler:] Yeah, that's right. And my conviction is this: you don't comment until afterwards. There's a point in the Small Catechism, Luther says that the pastor may offer some advice. And sometimes, you know, the kind of confessions — my wife was an attorney, and I always say people came to her because they wanted her to solve problems. People never come to me and tell me — they know they have problems that can't be solved. The kind of people that come for confession are people who are in situations where they can't get rid of the person, you know, as a member of the family, or somebody they work with. And for that reason, advice is not gonna cut it — it's not applicable. But sometimes you couldn't find things — you can hear things that are helpful. And then, after the absolution, it's appropriate to say something. But in the act of confession, the confession has the right of way.

[Question:] I think, in Belgic — this manual, the confession, England — I doubt he had come into the house — you might press them to make sure they're gonna confess what they really should be confessing. [Schuyler:] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's appropriate. I mean, you can ask questions — "Have you said it yet?" "Have you confessed the sin that's coupled to that?" And that's a legitimate question, and it's non-intrusive. It lets them— that was what made Lou— right, this way anger, the pastor was interrupting his — including this personality, where you— you know, I mean, that's one of— that situation of the pastor friend of yours in Spokane.

[Question:] You said that you were aware of the story, and she was not forthright in confessing the entirety. What latitude do you have in ferreting the truth out from her, if she's not willing to confess to all the things that you're aware that she's done? Is there— [Schuyler:] This is a really difficult situation. I had the same situation, actually, with a pastor, and there were three things I knew for certain were issues, and he was willing to admit to one of them, and — yeah, I've got to bust you on this, yeah. We couldn't — in AA they say, "He's not drunk enough yet." [Question:] Really? [Schuyler:] Yeah, there's a — in the group — when a person confesses, they're breaking code, because the code says you're responsible for that. And so when they acknowledge some, they're already uncomfortable — they're sprawled, they're all out, and they'll get stuck there and can't go the next step. And there are various strategies that have been proposed — like with my friend who was drinking — the Johnson Institute has a strategy, and that strategy is to bring up the bottom, that is, to bring him to the point where he hits bottom early, rather than letting him fall all the way. Generally, I'm not real confident of that.

And with this friend, this woman from Volga — she's being removed from the clergy roster, for good reason; she should not have been on the clergy roster in the first place — and I was her advisor, and it's a matter of some repentance to me that this happened. I wish more than anything — I have challenged her, I have asked her to back off of her husband, because she's gonna destroy herself, and I've raised questions, but I literally can't bring the bottom up far enough. And, finally, I just shook the dust off my feet. I want to— I mean, she refuses to hear, and her refusal to hear has damaged these relationships, and now her son has got a desperate disease, just diagnosed at — male, he's 23. They're trying to thin his blood and hope that that'll take care of it, but that's a slim chance. So she's gonna lose literally everything. But she's gonna be right about it.

[Question:] I was wondering if you could help us — when we see something that others don't see when we hear them in their narratives — you know, like you mentioned, confessing someone else's sin, sometimes it seems like, in their own complaints — you realize these are legitimate things, things that I would not blame anyone for being upset about, even upset with God — but how would you suggest that we take them to their own unbelief, that you can visibly see, that there's this other way they're confessing as they're making their complaints about "why has God done this" and "why is this"? [Schuyler:] Yeah, yeah, that's just great, you were a true pastor to ask such a question. Sometimes it's simply to name it. This is like Adam naming the animals — the heart simply can't accept what's happening, and it can't give it a name. And sometimes the best thing you can do is just to say, "Here's what it is." This is what the doctor does — I go to the doctor and I say, "Here's what's happening, here's what's happening, here's what's happening," and the doctor gives it a name. He says, "This is what it is." That can be very helpful, because when you know what it is, then you can be armed against it.

I had — I lost a couple of years of my life to heart irregularity, and, right after I retired, that was a terrible ordeal, and my heart went haywire. And I would sit at the table and fall asleep with a spoon halfway to my mouth, and I'd go to bed at 8 o'clock and lie there all night long — my heart was going 180 beats a minute. And I developed an irregular circuit in my heart. So I had two procedures, and they were both — full time working on it. And when I went to the doctor, and the doctor said, "This is what it is, and this is what we can do" — it was resurrection of the dead. I woke up — they went up through the vein, with probes, and drilled a hole here, and went right in, and I was on the table for six hours, and then drove to Fort Wayne the next day and started teaching. I woke up and said, "This is going to be better." I felt so much my old self getting home. It makes sense.

So when you name it — I think the reason we get hesitant is that we want— the old Adam in us wants to make it an accusation. It doesn't have to be an accusation, it can be matter-of-fact — like Nathan to David: "You are the man." Gentle, quiet — you've condemned yourself. Where we get in trouble with it is when we try to pile on. And, you know, the old Adam in the neighbor immediately says that you're getting a little bit too much. But to say, "Here's the problem" — that's a good thing, a real good thing.

[Question:] Thank you.

[Schuyler:] Yeah. Over to you — okay, good. Time for me. I want to just say, before you go, a word of thanks to you as pastors. You understand that this is a real part of me. We're in a terrible ordeal in our church, in the ELCA, and for me, this has literally been coming in from the cold, and to hear you so conscientiously carrying out your office in the love of God's word, and to sing with you, to hear the word from you, has been, for me, just rest.

Oh, thanks very much.