This morning instead of worshipping and learning at Newberg Friends Church, I’m traveling home from Denver. But I do know what the message is about. Last Monday my pastor told me he would be talking about poverty on Sunday. I think he’ll go with what the Bible says is our responsibility to the poor. He asked me if I would give the closing prayer after the sermon. “Fools rush in . . .”—I actually told him I would do it if I were going to be in town. I expect the prayer would have taken the form of a personal confession such as the following:

I confess, Lord, that I’m comfortable with the thing I should be afraid of and afraid of what should be normal. I use the wrong preposition. I’m arrogant, self-centered, and middle class.

I don’t want to be arrogant and self-centered, but I do want to be middle class. I like my comfortable house, new-enough cars, medical insurance, and my retirement account. I’m not thinking about giving these up. If you see it different Lord, you better bring a big stick, a really big stick.

Now about that self-centered arrogance: I think I’d like myself better if I were quicker to think of others. In the background I have a self-interest calculator that figures: If I do “this” then ultimately I will receive “that.” I’d like to be less concerned about the balance of trade.

I work at hiding my arrogance, but you see right through me. I confess I look down on some people.

Lord, I think I can handle ministry to the poor. I’ll give to the canned food drives, I’ll make tax-deductible contributions, and I’ll talk the talk about helping the needy. But I get scared when I think about ministry with the poor. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds messy.

Prayer of Confession by Howard Childers: “O Lord, that we dare confess anything at all to You before our brothers and sisters here in this church today is proof that we believe that You already know us as we are; that we believe that You are able to do something about it; and that we are willing to step from our worlds of pretense, fantasy and illusion into a kind of “facing-up-to-things-as-they-are” where You can touch us, and forgive us, and love us, and accept us and make us new. This is hard, Lord, but here we are.”

Assurance of Pardon by Kenneth Working: “This statement is completely reliable and should be universally accepted: Christ Jesus entered the world to rescue sinners. He personally bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might be dead to sin and be alive to all that is good. God’s mercy never ends. I tell you, in the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.”