RipRap 42

Caitlin Sellnow KYRIE “Dearly Beloved,” Pastor Alice said, opening her arms wide to the congregation, “let us confess our sins.” She stood in front of the altar in a long white robe. I was in the third pew from the front. We were following the traditional, Episcopal service as it was printed in our red vinyl hymnals. The spine of my book was cracked so that it fell open to the confession as soon as I picked it up. At the pastor’s cue, we dutifully read out loud together: Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed…

This was my first visit back to this church in Baltimore since I finished my Lutheran Volunteer Corps term, five years earlier. The sanctuary was just like I left it. The heat wasn’t working, and the windows were covered with swirling, blue-green paint. It gave the whole place a chilly, underwater feel. A large wooden cross hung over the altar between two green banners. Toys, cleaning supplies, plastic tableware and folding chairs nestled in various corners. As people came in, they could help themselves to coffee from a pot set up on top of a dresser next to the door.

The pews slanted towards each other across the aisle. Pastor Alice once told me that they rearranged them after a beloved member died. “We had to do something,” she said. Everyone seemed so sad and helpless after it happened, staring at the backs of each other’s heads. So, the day of the funeral, they unscrewed all the pews and folded them slightly inward.

There were about 25 people there for worship. I didn’t recognize many of them, but the general mix of bohemians, bleeding hearts and misfits was familiar. A black woman in a long coat with a handkerchief knotted in the center of her forehead stood near the back, talking energetically to herself. A white woman with a toddler in a stroller sat a few rows behind me. She would not be out of place in the vitamin supplement section of a Whole Foods.

All of us continued our confession together: We have sinned against you by what we have done, and by what we have left undone…

I was raised Lutheran, not Episcopalian. But the denominations are close enough that I know, from confirmation class, why we began this way. In the middle ages the Catholic Church used to charge money for the service of absolving sins. Martin Luther, who was a Catholic monk at the time, thought that was wrong. In 1517, he drew up a list of 95 reasons why. Basically, he thought The Bible made it clear that God’s forgiveness is free. Humans don’t have to do or pay anything to earn it. He called it the mystery of grace. According to legend, Luther nailed these 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg castle in the dead of night. Really, he might have just sent it to the archbishop. Either way, he meant it as constructive criticism. The church took it as heresy. So, Martin Luther founded his own 51