Communal Confession

 

In Holy Scripture, Confession always has a corporate dimension.

 Ezra 10:9-12

Then all the people of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days; it was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. All the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and the heavy rain.

 Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, ‘You have trespassed and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now make confession to the Lord the God of your ancestors, and do his will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.’ Then all the assembly answered loudly, ‘It is so; we must do as you have said'.

 The people of Judah had returned from their time in captivity and had come to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Having only been in the land briefly, they discovered many caught up in disobedience to the Lord. While in earlier verses, Ezra prays personally on behalf of all of the people; now it is the people themselves who gather in assembly. They confess that they have sinned, and later each tribe’s leader comes to engage in ceremonial confession before the priests of God on behalf of their people. When these tribal leaders leave, it is with a plan to rectify their disobedience and change their ways.

 In the New Testament, when people came to John the Baptist for baptism and repentance, they did so individually yet in a communal context for all to see. This is in keeping with the type of repentance that the people of God would have expected. This same behavior continues in the book of Acts. Confession has a public dimension to it.

 In England, before the Reformation, there had been some forms in the Medieval Sarum Rite that were used in confession and absolution and adapted for the General Confession of Sin in the Eucharistic Rites of the Book of Common Prayer. The Roman Catholic and the Anglican services of Holy Communion assume that the Mass was (and is) for communal confession.