Scripture Reading Psalm 51, selected verses
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
in your great compassion, blot out my offenses.
Wash me through and through from my wickedness,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my offenses, and my sin is ever before me.
Indeed, you delight in truth deep within me,
and would have me know wisdom deep within.
Remove my sins with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be purer than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness,
that the body you have broken may rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my wickedness.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain me with your bountiful spirit.
Meditation
The psalm we have just read together, Psalm 51, is always the psalm of the day for Ash Wednesday. I think that’s because there isn’t another psalm that so fully devotes itself to a discussion of sin. It’s believed that this psalm was written by David in the aftermath of what you might call the Bathsheba Debacle.
To refresh your memory: David, who is King, and who already has (or has had) at least seven wives, is restless and bored and no longer going into battle with his troops. While they are away, he spies Bathsheba bathing on the roof of her house. She is beautiful, and David wants her. He sends for her, and he has relations with her. After she becomes pregnant, he does everything he can to hide what he has done (which, at the least, is adultery, and very likely, is rape). Ultimately, he has Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, killed, and then takes her as his eighth wife.
But this displeased the Lord. This was sin, and sin again.
Nathan the prophet knows. He calls the king out through use of a parable. At the end, David is raging against the evil protagonist of the story. And Nathan says, “You are the man.” David repents in sackcloth and ashes, but Nathan has already pronounced the sentence against him. It affects the rest of his life. It affects the rest of his children’s lives.
So, it’s believed that, during his time of repentance, David wrote Psalm 51. This psalm tells us a lot about David’s understanding of both God and himself:
David believes that God is merciful, and full of steadfast love.
David believes that he can be forgiven.
David thinks about his sin all the time.
David believes that God wants him to be better, wiser. To make good choices, as we so often urge our children.
David believes God can give him a clean heart and renew a righteous spirit within him.
David believes God can restore his joy and restore him, with God’s own spirit.
I can’t argue with any of David’s beliefs. If I were to fault anything about this Psalm it’s that it has a very definite understanding of sin that we have somewhat lost track of.
Help me now. What is sin?
From the congregation:
Yes, thank you for all that. The one I want to highlight is the Biblical understanding of sin, in both testaments. The Hebrew and Greek words for sin are both terms of archery; sin means, “missing the mark,” or the “measure by which you missed the mark.”
This is incredibly important for us to remember. The biblical assumption about sin is that it is not necessarily something we do out of malice, but most often, a situation where we tried and failed to do the right thing. Could David’s situation with Bathsheba fall into that category? Probably not. Hard to say. That’s between David and God. But for us, who may be weighted down with guilt, or even, as Martin Luther had, scruples—that is, self-criticism that becomes an unhealthy obsession—for us, the understanding of our ancestors in faith can be liberating. It can help us to think of our failures as failures, and it can also help us to understand when we have crossed that line into malice.
This is why it’s so important that we tune our hearts to God’s as Lent begins, and ever afterward. David is beautifully attuned to God’s heart:
God is kind and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
God is loving and forgiving.
God wants to share divine wisdom with us.
God wants to renew us and strengthen us.
God wants to share the Spirit with us.
God wants us to have joy.
All these are reflected beautifully in the lyrics of our opening hymn:
Love that fills the night with wonder,
Love that warms the weary soul,
Love that bursts all chains asunder,
Set us free and make us whole.
This Lent, in deciding what you may choose to do or choose not to do as a Lenten practice, prioritize tuning your heart with God’s. Remind yourselves, over and over, of the God who is love and mercy, the God who seeks to warm our weary souls, the God who seeks to set us free.
Thanks be to God. Amen.