For a study guide see page 22.
I can confess that it’s my faith in Jesus Christ that saved my sin-sick soul.
delicious to the soul and, so as not to con- fuse things, they just settled on all fl avors of confession as good soul food.
As people of faith we oſt en associate
confession with the admission of sins. T e Merriam-Webster dictionary defi nes confes- sion in two ways as it relates to religion: a disclosure of one’s sins in the rite of reconcili- ation, and a formal statement of religious beliefs. Likewise, the Bible speaks of confession in the same
two ways. So if the Bible speaks of two types of con- fession, exactly which is good, better or best for the soul? If I had to choose I’d likely go with the latter, not because I’m sinless and therefore don’t need to confess but because I believe the act on the cross covered all of my sins—2,000 years before I even committed them. I can’t compete with that. But I can confess that it’s my faith in Jesus Christ that saved my sin-sick soul. So confession is indeed good for the soul, not to
feed our need to assuage our guilt but to proclaim the goodness of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, who lived and died and lived again for the atonement of our sins—past, present and future. Now that’s what I call good soul food.
Author bio: Ulysses Burley is program associate with the ELCA Strategy on HIV/AIDS.
suff er in the way theirs did from can- cer. Soldiers want to fi ght on so their comrades’ sacrifi ce is not in vain. We hate the suff ering and death that has come to our neighbors and nation. We must do something to redeem their deaths from meaninglessness. I’ve also come to understand that
No work but God’s can
redeem our beloved’s death.
nothing I do—or all of us do together—will ever be able to make good the deaths of our beloved. Grieved parents can work for the rest of their lives to end cancer, but they know that not all the work in the world will equal the life of their dear child. An entire town can mobilize to prevent more murders, but we know the dead are dead. Yet let us cling to God in Jesus Christ, who is victori-
They didn’t die in vain From community vigils where we gather to pray and
grieve when someone has been murdered, to charity runs inspired by cancer victims, to nations directing military policy spurred by the deaths of heroes, my stomach churns when someone urges us to act in the memory of our beloved dead so they will not have “died in vain.” I share the grief that urges survivors to more and bet- ter works of service. Parents never want another child to
ous over sin and death. No work but God’s can redeem our beloved’s death. Instead of vain attempts to make right the senselessness of sin and death, in Christ our works become praise for the one who truly brings life out of death. “T erefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
Author bio: Michael Wilker is pastor of Lutheran Church of the Reformation, Washington, D.C.
July 2015 17
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