Confession and Defense
By Carlyle Marney
I don`t know when Carlyle Marney first made this prayer. I think he may have first uttered it publicly in the late 1960s at a Christian Life Commission meeting which I invited him to address in our building at 460 James Robertson Parkway in Nashville, Tennessee. Being both smart and normal, he was afraid to fly. He had driven over the mountains from his Interpreter`s House at Lake Junaluska in North Carolina. And he preached "with the tongues of men and of angels" as he did for us, and to us, many times in those days. He used this prayer often after that, including it in his last published sermon which he preached at Chapel at Duke University. It was read at his funeral. I am indebted to my friend, Bruce McIver, for calling it again to my attention. And I am indebted to Marney who though "being dead yet speaketh."
If…I should enter God`s great assize hall tomorrow, called to account for myself, I should offer this confession and defense If, indeed, I could do more than fall down. But if able to give vocal response at all, I should say this:
Thou knowest, dear Lord of our loves, that for fifty of Thy-my years, in ignorance, zest, and sin, I lived as if creation and I had no limit. I lived, and wanted, and was, as if I had forever-without regard for time, or wit, or strength, or need, or limit or endurance, and as if sleep were a needless luxury and digestion an automatic process. But Thou, O Lord of real love, didst snatch my bits and ride me into Thy back-pasture and didst rub my nose in my vulnerability and didst split my lungs into acquiescence, and didst freeze my colon in grief loss, and didst press me into that long depression at the anger I directed against myself and didst press me to knee-drop where the only word of petition I could utter was a despair-ridden, "Open, Open," and thou didst read over my shoulder my diary of that long journey when I did melt before Thee as mere Creature. Thou, then, didst hear.
Hear, now, my pitiable defense: In all my sixty years I killed no creature of thine I did not need for food except for a few rattlesnakes, a turtle or two, two quail I left overlong in my coat, and three geese poisoned, before I shot them, on bad grain in Nebraska, plus one wood-duck in Korea. In all my years, I consciously battered no child-though my own claim much need to forgive me-and consciously misused no person. Thou knowest my air to treat no human as thing-not to hate overlong-to pass no child without his/her eye-and my innermost wish to love as Thou didst love by seeing no shade of color or class. And Thou didst long ago hear my cry to let me go from Paducah. Thou knowest my Covenant with Elizabeth in our youth and Thou knowest it has been kept better than my Covenant with Thee, and willst thou forgive? Indeed thou hast. Hear now my intention with Grace as if it were fact. I do and have intended to be responsible in Creation by Covenant, and where I have defaulted do Thou forgive. Forgive Thou my vicarious responsibility for all the defection from Thy purpose of all Thy responsible creatures, and accept Thou this my admission of utter dependence upon Thy mercy.
"Naked came I into the world." How I`m dressed at conclusion makes no difference: a pair of jeans or a Glasgow robe-it makes no difference. Meantime? I mow, I cut wood for winter, I clean drainage ditches, I preach what is happening and I listen, and wait, and want, and work, and look to see what God will do in the Earth, His limited Creation which asks for Covenant-response and glories in Redemption as a way-station enroute to Completion. Selah! I watch out always for babies, and little rabbits in front of my mower, and old folks near by, and black snakes worth preserving, and little puppies on the road and the young-old who stutter and lack, and can hear, too, the cry of us all.
Come, Lord Jesus.
