Guide 3: Greed
Seven Deadly Sins
Review the practice so far (10 min)
Let’s begin tonight by pausing and reflecting on what God stirred in us through last week’s exercise of confession. As a group, let’s share briefly:
What was your experience of confession like last week?
What was one way you practiced confession intentionally this week?
Guide overview (3 min)
We’ve all come face-to-face with brokenness—ours and others’—and know the shame, frustration, and sadness that comes in the aftermath of not loving God or others with our whole hearts. Try as we might, though, willpower isn’t enough to make our sin go away. We need help to overcome what Jesus calls our slavery to sin. (John 8v34)—we need a Savior. The good news is that God has come to our rescue. John tells us that “if we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1v9). We partner with God in uprooting the corrosive power of sin in our lives through the practice of confession: telling the truth about what we’ve done so that we can receive God’s freely-given forgiveness.
During this series, we are exploring seven historically recognized root sins and inviting the light of God’s love to shine into our darkness by confessing our sin to him and to one another. While we may fear that confessing changes the way people see, respect, or even love us, hearing another person’s confession and praying God’s forgiveness over them is healing for both people. Sin is too strong for any one of us to defeat alone. But for us to confess together, we need to treat it with utmost care, which is why we’ve established some ground rules and are using an agreed upon framework each week to ensure safety, build trust, and grow together.
This week, we’re focusing on the sin of greed. Greed is the desire to have more and to acquire without consideration of one’s actual needs or those of other people. Greed replaces a love for God with an idolatry of created things, forming an insatiable craving for more.
So, tonight, we will continue in our aim to be a community of love and depth in a culture of individualism and superficiality through the practice of Community, by means of the exercise of confession.
Exercise for tonight (30 min)
One of the many reasons corporate confession is important is that it allows us to hold one another in the loving presence of God, preaching the good news of God’s forgiveness to each other that is often difficult to believe for ourselves. That said, it’s important to be on the same page about how we engage in our practice of corporate confession. As we experienced last week, every confession is vulnerable and sacred, so privacy and confidentiality matter as we keep building a sustainable rhythm together. To that end, we will use the same framework every week, beginning with reading our Shared Community Agreements for Safeguarding by talking about our posture, our promise, and our practice.
Our Posture: Every confession is sacred.
It is a privilege to witness the courage it takes to confess sin out loud. When someone confesses, we are witnessing the outpouring of God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness. We are on holy ground together. So each confession will be met with God’s compassion by responding with something like: “Thank you for sharing. God loves you with an everlasting love and joyfully forgives you.”
Our Promise: Every confession stays in this room.
We build trust and safety and maintain each other’s dignity by protecting confidentiality. A sin confessed by someone is released to Jesus and should not be repeated by any of us. If a Community member is absent during a confession, the only person who gets to fill them in—if they choose—is the person confessing. The only caveat to confidentiality is if the confession reveals a threat of harm—in which case the Community Leader will contact a Communities Pastor (if the threat is less urgent) or 911 (if the threat is urgent).
Our Practice: Everyone participates.
We will show our support for each other by all participating in confession. Simply observing doesn’t help create a safe and vulnerable environment. Each of us is committing to participate in confession and declaring God’s forgiveness.
Do we all agree to this?
(Leader note: Go around and have everyone agree.)
Thank you all. We will keep reading and committing to this each week to build trust together. As you know, our framework for the evening is: a shortened Examen with silent confession, corporate confession, and then communion.
So let’s all find ourselves in a comfortable, open posture of prayer, and then we’ll take 3 minutes to pray the Examen—asking the Spirit to search us and draw our attention to a moment this week where the sin of greed was present in our lives. As God brings something to mind, we’ll silently confess it to him, admitting where we sinned and asking for his forgiveness. And as we confess the fruit of our greed, explore with God the root—where did that greed originate?
A Condensed Examen. Holy Spirit, as we turn our attention now to the week we’ve lived so far, we ask for your help to guide us back through it with special attention to the particular sin of greed. Take us to a time when greed shifted from a desire for provision into a way of protecting ourselves, gaining control, or securing our future apart from trust in you. Take us to a moment when we held too tightly to money, possessions, opportunities or status, when “wanting more” began to distort our love and damage our relationships. Come, Holy Spirit. We yield to you. Guide our minds, memories, and imaginations—not just to how we were greedy, but why. As you bring something to mind, we will silently confess it back to you and ask for the forgiveness that you so freely offer.
(Leader note: Set a timer for 3 minutes.)
God, thank you for bringing up our sin so that you can forgive it. Thanks that it is your delight to forgive and restore us back to right relationship with you. Thank you for rescuing us. Amen.
Corporate Confession. Ok, now that we’ve prayed about our sin, we’re going to participate in corporate confession by sharing aloud with one another by going around, one at a time, and confessing out loud in one or two sentences the sin we just confessed to God in prayer.
A confession for tonight might sound like “I confess that I acted out of greed this week when I carried my lunch past a houseless person, too preoccupied with making sure I had enough” or “I confess the sin of greed when I was too conscious about my to-do list to check in on a coworker who knew I was having a hard time because I knew it would take longer than I wanted to give,” or “I confess that I acted out of greed by prioritizing my own comfort and weekend plans–staying home to relax and watch the game–instead of showing up to help a friend move.” We’ll go around in a circle—starting with me—and each make our confession. After each person confesses, the next person to go will begin by thanking that person for confessing and reminding them that God has forgiven them. This could be as simple as saying, “Thank you for your honesty. God loves you and God forgives you.” And then they will make their own confession.
(Leader note: Begin with your own confession. “I confess…” It’s possible that in the anxiety of the moment, someone may forget to thank the previous person for their confession or remind them of God’s forgiveness. If that happens, don’t interrupt them, but go back once they’ve finished to thank the previous person and remind them of God’s forgiveness. Once everyone has finished, move onto the next section.)
Absolution & Communion. As we have each confessed silently to God and aloud to one another, let’s take a moment in silence to come back to God’s loving presence to us—to the Father who runs to each of us, forgiving us and clothing us in robes of righteousness. Even now, draw your attention to his nearness to you.
(Leader note: Allow everyone about 30 seconds of silence, and then hand out the communion elements and speak these words of absolution before receiving communion together.)
Sisters and brothers, hear the good news: when we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He has removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. We have been washed clean of our sins by his love and restored to right relationship with him. Hallelujah! Thanks be to God! Take the body and blood of Christ, who poured out his love for us on the cross to freely forgive and restore us to himself. Let’s eat and drink and remember him.
Exercise for the week ahead (2 min)
Tonight we returned to the exercise of corporate confession and absolution—bringing our sin into the light with God and with others, and receiving his mercy and forgiveness. The exercise for the week ahead is to:
Stay committed to developing a personal rhythm of confession. Begin giving attention to what this practice of confession could look like in your everyday life, and let it lead you into greater freedom, honesty and forgiveness.
Choose generosity to counteract greed. Greed is taking more than we need for ourselves, regardless of how that affects others. This week consider where you can be generous. Ask yourself: What do I have more than enough of? And who could I share it with?
