The Power of “Me Too”
A Reflection on Finding Grace in the Company of Fellow Sinners
There is a story, often told about Sir Winston Churchill, that I have always loved—not because it tells us something profound about politics, but because it reveals something profound about human nature.
The story goes that in 1952, Winston Churchill had just returned as Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth II had only recently ascended the throne, and Buckingham Palace was hosting a grand state banquet. Partway through the evening, a member of the royal staff quietly approached the Queen and Churchill with a delicate problem. One of the distinguished guests, it seemed, had stolen one of the antique salt shakers from the table.
These were no ordinary salt shakers. They were solid gold, several centuries old, and worth a small fortune. Recovering them mattered. But accusing one of the honored guests of theft would create an international diplomatic embarrassment.
Churchill reportedly smiled and said, “Leave this to me.”
He casually slipped the matching pepper pot into his own jacket pocket.
When dinner concluded, he noticed the suspected guest standing alone near a window. Churchill wandered over, pulled the pepper pot from his pocket just enough for the other guest to see it, and quietly remarked, “I think we’ve both been spotted. We’d better put these back.” Without a word of accusation, without humiliation or public embarrassment, the stolen salt shaker quietly found its way back to the table.
Whether every detail of the story unfolded exactly this way matters less to me than the extraordinary wisdom behind it.
Churchill didn’t approach the guest as an accuser. He approached as a fellow offender. By presenting himself as someone who shared the same predicament—even if only by implication—he transformed what could have been an encounter marked by shame into one marked by solidarity. The emotional response was no longer defensive. The guest was no longer standing opposite an accuser, but beside a companion. And that changed everything.
There is something deeply Christian hidden inside that story.
Every Sunday in the Episcopal Church, before we come to the Lord’s Table, we do something rather remarkable. We don’t confess my sins. We confess our sins.
“Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed…”
That little word—we—may be one of the most important words in our entire liturgy.
The Apostle Paul reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Not some. Not the especially broken. Not only those whose failures have become public. All. Which means none of us walks into church carrying a burden no one else, in one form or another, also carries. We may have different stories, different failures, different wounds, but every one of us comes before God in need of the very same thing: grace.
Yet so many of us live as though we are the exception. We quietly fear that we are one revelation away from rejection, one confession away from losing everyone’s respect, one uncovered secret away from proving we never truly belonged. Shame thrives in isolation. It whispers, “If they really knew you…”
The Gospel answers with two simple words:
“Me too.”
I’ve heard this same dynamic described over and over by friends in addiction recovery. One of the most difficult moments in the Twelve Steps comes after acknowledging that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. Participants are asked to admit to God, to themselves, and to another human being the exact nature of their wrongs. Many never make it through that step because the vulnerability feels unbearable. The possibility of rejection seems overwhelming.
But those who do almost always describe the same surprise.
The healing doesn’t begin because they finally “got it off their chest.” It begins because the person listening rarely responds with horror. Instead, the response is often some version of, “Me too.” Not necessarily the same story. Not necessarily the same mistakes. But the same brokenness. The same dependence upon mercy. The same realization that none of us stands before God on the strength of our own righteousness.
I wonder if that’s why corporate confession has endured in Christian worship for centuries. Its greatest power isn’t found in the confession itself. It is found in the community making it together.
Week after week, we stand shoulder to shoulder with people whose lives seem so different from our own. Some are grieving. Some are carrying addictions. Some are wrestling with broken marriages, financial fears, anger, loneliness, pride, despair, or doubt. Some are carrying sins no one else knows. Before any of us can imagine that we are uniquely broken, the entire congregation speaks with one voice:
“We have sinned.”
No one is singled out. No one is left behind. No one has to pretend.
The Church becomes one of the few places left in our world where we don’t gather because we’ve mastered holiness. We gather because we all need mercy. The irony is that confession doesn’t diminish our dignity—it restores it. When I no longer have to maintain the exhausting illusion that I have everything together, I become free to receive the grace that has been waiting for me all along.
Perhaps that is why the Church places confession before Communion. Before we receive Christ’s Body and Blood, we are reminded that every person kneeling beside us has arrived the very same way we have—not through accomplishment, but through grace. There is no “better” Christian at the altar rail. There are only forgiven sinners learning, day by day, to become saints.
Churchill’s quiet brilliance lay in making one frightened person realize they were no longer standing alone.
The Church does something even greater.
Every Sunday, it reminds us that we never were.
And then, having confessed together, we hear the astonishing words of absolution—not because we have earned them, not because we have finally become worthy, but because the God who already knows us completely has chosen, in Jesus Christ, to love us completely anyway.
Thanks be to God for that.
Amen.
Pax et Bonum!
Fr. Ben
