Sermon
LENT V
March 29, 2009
Jodie Boyer Hatlem
The 51st Psalm has been as central part of Christian Lenten Reflection for more than 1400 years. Traditionally the Psalm is read during the first week of Lent. Because of the Psalm’s central place in the keeping of Lent it has been suggested that the 51st Psalm has been recited in more Christian services than any other Psalm.
This Psalm is familiar to many of us. We have heard the words. Sung the words. Perhaps, read the words in private. Because of this the word comes easily to our tongues. But, it is more difficult for us to understand these words as our words, especially in the context of a communal, liturgical prayer. As words that express our thinking and longing. Words that express our own sorrow and contrition.
Yet, traditionally Psalms have been the PRAYERS of God’s people. We are meant to be instructed in the Psalms by praying them.
This is in part because there is a doubleness to the Psalms—they are both God’s words while they are also meant to be or to become our words. Christ when he offered up his most anguished prayers and most fevered supplications in his humanness and for our humanity echoed the Psalms. These prayers of God, to God, are filled with Scripture’s most potent praises and pleas; laments and accusations; exaltations and abjections. They express the height and depth and breadth of what we might say about God and to God and with God.
There is then danger and delight; light and darkness; hope and violence and extraordinary power in praying the Psalms.
When we begin to pray a Psalm the experience is both one of recognition—That’s me! I see myself. I have felt that! And a process of disorientation—that is NOT me! I have never felt that! I do not recognize myself here. Anyone who has ever tried to pray through the Psalms and gotten as far as Psalm 137’s request that enemies’ babies’ brains be dashed on stones, understands what I mean.
The Psalms are meant to instruct through participation. So let’s pray this Psalm together and see where we recognize ourselves and where we do not. Where we find orientation and where we find disorientation.
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
3For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
7Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
10Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
I can pray quite forthrightly with all my heart many words of the Psalms. When I say these words I can recognize the movement of God’s spirit within me. Some especially resonant words:
My SIN IS ever before me. [more on that later]
Cast me not from your presence.
Take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the Joy of your Salvation
Renew a truthful Spirit within me.
Let me hear Joy and Gladness! Let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
Yet, there are also things that disorient me. There are several places where this Psalm seems especially distance from me.
(1) The intensity of the language
(2) The focus on Sin: For me it is not that I can’t imagine that I am sinful. It just that I don’t really know what to do with the knowledge anymore.
(3) Claim that our sins are ONLY against God: I simply know this is not true. I am sure we have all seen the concentric circles of destructions that our sins can unleash.
First, The Intensity of the language.
The Revised Common Lectionary leaves out the Psalmist request to “deliver me from bloodshed.” But, even with that part of the passage left out. I still am not sure that I can get myself into the fevered pitch that the author is in as he writes this Psalm.
Purge
Wash
Fill
Hide
Create
Put
Cast NOT
Take not
Restore
Uphold
Deliver
The urgency of the language interrupts the natural rhythm of the prayer and the flow of ideas.
The writing starts off sounding measured. Like a Psalm
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin
But, it is almost as if the Psalmist cannot bear this measured tone one more second. The tone switches to chest beating sorrow by verse three.
Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
He doesn’t seem to get back to the original thought or metre for three more verses.
The desperateness of the language makes sense in light of the tradition of attribution. Tradition tells us that this is not only a Song written by King David—it is not just one of David’s penitential Psalms—it is the Pentiential psalm David composed while the Prophet Nathan’s condemnatory words “YOU ARE THE MAN” still echoed in his head. As he struggled with his own mendacity for killing and adultery… for sins that the prophet Nathan showed him were not only remarkable in their severity but in the egregious selfishness of David’s intent. In the radical injustice of a man with 99 wives and concubines murdering a man so he could add yet another to his flock.
However, even if David didn’t compose the Psalm. The tradition that attributed this cry of help to him recognized that this was no ordinary penitence. This was not someone confessing sins of omission, secret sins, or even the normal sense that God is high and mighty and we are mere mortal filled with our petty jealously and pride: forged in the fires of human passion. No, the author seems confident that what is being confessed here is the absolute depth of human misery.
Doug talked to me as I was preparing this sermon of a friend of his on the street who spent over a decade incarcerated for first degree murder. His sense of guilt is so profound that every time he is robbed or beat up by police he feels like he is getting what he deserves. In his mind his body can never absorb enough punishment to absolve him of his wickedness. The penitent in this Psalm is not making an overarching statement about original sin being passed from mother to child. He thinks he is worthless enough to have never been born. Just as Doug’s friend at times suggests that that the world would have been better off without him. The language of this Psalm certainly bears this kind of urgency. And it is good to know that the God who suffers with us and speaks with us in the Psalms has a prayer that can be prayed by someone like Doug’s friend or like King David.
How can we possibly relate to this kind of depth of self-hating? How do we deal with this intensity?
How do we make sense of this language for ourselves? I would be tempted to suggest something simple.
We don’t.
Except that the tradition dictates that this verse be part of our Lenten exploration. And I am quite sure it has not been placed in the centre of our worship so that we can say, Oh, GOD, maker of the Universe I am glad that I am not like these other women or men!
Yet, let us not cheapen the experience of Doug’s friend by suggesting that we know exactly what he is feeling. Because, most of us don’t. And because of this there is some disorientation when we attempt to pray this Psalm.
So, I have to admit that I have a hard time dealing with the degree of GUILT.
Guilt! I admit to coming to this Psalm with a great deal of personal weariness. My soul feels exhausted from introspection upon introspection. The thought of confession even more than the thought of my sins is bone-crushing.
I suspect that many join me with load of guilt that is so large, about everything from our prayer life to our recycling habits and exercise habits, that it almost seems that one more piece of guilt would make the very pew collapse under us.
I am not resistant to the idea that I am a sinner. It is just that I have found very little redemption in searching my secret heart or my inner spirit. One way of reading this Psalm is to engage in an esoteric search for my own motives. Where in my heart can I find its darkest, dankest possible thought. Where can I find my most primal depravities. My hidden hells. The fumes of my own selfish rage. But, I don’t think that I have ever quite found this particular process redemptive. I HAVE prayed this Psalm many times as MY OWN CONFESSION and I have FELT the depth of my sinfulness, and yet, I am not entirely convinced that those times were completely truthful.
Indeed, cannot too much self-reflection and self-examination become sinful? I mean can’t self-reflection itself very easily become self-ce
nteredness?
Also, aren’t there some clear possible dangers in seeing ourselves too clearly in this text.
When I read this Psalm I am reminded of the distinction that some feminist theologians including Barbara Brown Taylor have made. Barbara Brown Taylor has argued against the notion that sin always manifests itself exhibits in self-aggrandizement, pride, usurpation, taking more than your fair share of power or responsibility. Sin might also exhibit self in self-abnegation, self-destruction, in a refusing to take one’s rightful place in the community.
Now, I am going to resist the degree to which some feminist theologians consider the sin of Pride a stereotypical male sin and the sin of self-abnegation a stereotypical female sin. I think that I know enough men who sin through their self-condemnation and consistently reject their leadership potential because of their self-abuse.
There is danger in NOT being able to see yourself in this text!
But, there also might be a danger in too readily seeing yourself in this text.
Verbs of knowing and words of truth and knowledge are repeated again and again…
The writer says I want to know the truth about myself.
I am ready to speak the truth about myself.
I am ready to engage in a process in which you lay bare the depth of my heart.
All the Gory details and I CAN SAY with all my heart that I believe that you are a RIGHTEOUS and true JUDGE OH Lord.
The passage affirms that:
God, requires Truth in our inward being.
To speak the truth.
But, if what I said is right. That our process to scour our hearts for secret motivations might be wrongly directed, then how do we learn the truth about ourselves?
To hear the truth?
To speak the truth is a difficult thing. To hear it is even more difficult. It is difficult to hear words of correction and scourging. But, I contend that for many of us, it is much more difficult to hear words of love and comfort and grace. One of the speakers in a workshop at Street Level this last week said she sometimes prays, “God, allow me to believe the truth you tell me about myself, no matter how beautiful it is.” What does it mean to be prepared to hear the truth about yourself? Even if the truth is so beautiful that you cannot stand it?
The Psalmist challenges us to be open to the truths about ourselves. If our sin is pride, then we need to hear the truth. However, if our sin is self-loathing than we need to hear the truth as well. I firmly believe that we cannot know the truth of ourselves by ourselves. Lent requires an exploration of the self. But, this exploration should be before God and before our neighbor.
For both the proud and the self-hating need to hear the truth about themselves from their fellow Christians.
I think it is for this reason that scripture calls us to both admonish one another and to encourage one another. Both are part of the essential task of speaking the truth to one another and living the truth together.
It is precisely in the places where the Psalm rubs a sore spot that we can find the most hope. So, let us move next to the part of the text that I find the most troubling and disorienting.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
I think that our church has a robust understanding of the social nature of our sins.
Because we have a robust notion of collective sin it is not surprising that we have a knee jerk reaction to the Psalmist proclamation that my sins are against God and against God only.
We know too many people that can’t even begin to theologically account for a notion of collective sin or collective guilt. For this reason they can’t even begin to imagine how red sludge flowing into a river is sin or economic disparity between the global North and South offends God.
Yet, I don’t think that this kind of individualistic, personal view of sin is what is going on in this passage. And even if it were we could clearly compare it to myriad of other passages –that we dearly love—in which the relationship flows the other way where God speaks of sins against the weak and the sins against the land as personal affronts and in so doing leaves no room for us to doubt the profound seriousness of these sin. The Bible is very clear that loving God and loving my neighbor occur symbiotically, in tandem with each other, in a relationship of mutual dependence. The only way to show my proper love towards God is by loving my neighbor.
There is something hopeful in this affirmation-that my sins are before God and before God alone.
The Psalmist point is not that I do not hurt others when I sin. Or that sins don’t effect other people. But that rather sin is a theological concept. If there wasn’t a God there would not be “sin.” This doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be other categories to speak about transgression. I might still be a bad neighbor, and overbearing parent, a greedy business person, a real SOB or you know what… But, with out God, I wouldn’t be a sinner.
My Sins are wholly before God.
Maimodes, the great Jewish Philosopher says be willing to hear the truth from whomever speaks it. And I will admit that I have been hearing some Truth from ….
Tupac.
Doug’s sister has been trying to get me to appreciate hip-hop and she has put some songs on my IPod. One of the songs has a line something like “Only God can Judge me/Everyone else
get the Ugh out of the way.”
Confession. So, there is a part of me that really exults in this line. But, it is not the part of me that thinks I am not responsible to my community or to other people. It is the part of me that realizes that others can sometimes unfairly judge us.
Just a short, hardly significant or exhaustive list of things I feel judged about.
That I had epidurals when I delivered my babies.
That we vaccinated our kids for most childhood diseases.
That we didn’t vacinnate them for chicken pox.
That Johanna had a cavities.
That we are sending Johanna to French Immersion School.
That Johanna and Simeon participate in our coop daycare.
That I am not working enough on my disseration.
That I do not do enough with Doug’s work.
That I, um…
I know you might say you think about these things too much, Jodie. That some of these judgments are in your head. But, Aha! There we go with more judgment, again. Even in giving a list of these peccadilloes I worry that I have opened myself to judgment.
That my list—and many of your lists of things you feel judged about or feel guilty about—could go into next week and on and on to well past when Jesus exits the tomb on Easter Sunday in two weeks should give us all pause.
It is in such a context that the notion: My sin is before God. In the face of God. An affront to God – is quite a reality check.
The part of me that exults in Tupac’s statement is the part of me that recognizes that much of what I feel guilty about are not actually sins.
The idea that my real SINs are before God; that they are sins against love and justice and friendship and faithfulness; that they are not all the personal failings and personality failings that dog us through the day IS PROFOUNDLY FREEING!
When I was preparing this sermon I kept reading commentators who talk about how in our contemporary culture the idea of sin is dead. Whatever happened to sin is a plaintive complaint. Everyone now takes from the world around them constant and continual affirmation. The world offers up comfort after comfort—you are okay! BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF! Have self-esteem. And in so doing we have destroyed the reality of our depravity and our sin.
Let me be very clear here. There is absolutely no possibility that we are going to live a life that is free of some sort of notion that we are transgressors.
I am going to name for right here and now the false the assumption that there is a choice between between Christian Guilt and some sort of therapeutic culture where we are told that we are okay all the time.
That is bogus. Sure, there is a strong cultural mantra of I am okay and you are okay… But, in fact, it is a very thin elixir for the overwhelming sense that we get from almost every corner of our lives that we are in fact NOT OKAY!
The choice is not between law and guilt and no law and no guilt. The choice is about whose law and whose standards are we going to stand under. Under what law am I willing to admit: “Yes, I am a Transgressor.” Because there are just as many books of Leviticus to be found in the check out aisle of the shopping market and the self-help section of Chapters. There we are told what to DREAD when we are expecting. What to FEAR the first year. Where we are initiated into practices of effectiveness… and winning influence… and……thinness and having a winsome personality…and in advancing in our career and expanding our intellect and, and being a better and better and better and better you.
In this context to say with Tupac, “Only God can Judge me and everyone else can get out of the way,” might be a faithful response.
If we feel like the pew might crash beneath us because of our overwhelming guilt, I wonder if we might be able to accept that it is our idols that demand that kind of pound of flesh from us and not God. That indeed, as this passage holds forth, God doesn’t expect that we live in a perpetual state of self-hatred but that indeed God wants to restore us to the joy of his salvation.
For this reason there is Hope to be found in the message of SIN:
Sin might be our only hope! All our talk about being free from hide bound notions sin and guilt ironically occurs in a context in which many of us to feel not one mite bit less guilty.
We all need to hear the truth about ourselves.
The truth might be that we have very unfairly taken up the judgments of this world. The sins that are ever before us might not actually be sins at all.
The truth might be that we are prideful. We might need to admit that we firmly believe in our deepest heart that goodness and truthfulness and faithfulness will not get us what we want. And we have decided in favor of what we want!
The truth might be that we are wrongfully self-abnegating. The truth about our souls might actually be achingly beautiful. God delights in us and made us precisely for this delight, and we are actually forsaking our rightful place in God’s kingdom when we lose sight of this. Perhaps, there are people for whom God wants to make us a blessing. And we are unable to be this blessing because we can see no health in ourselves.
Whatever, the truth is about ourselves the Psalmist writes that we should come to know it in the recognition that God is a God of Steadfast Love and abundant mercy.
I grew up in a religious context in which the ideal state for the saint was to be in a perpetual state of crisis and self-flagellation. To be a saint was to have your sins
constantly before you. To live in a constant state of bone crushing recognition of your own sinfulness.
I was struck this time when I read this Psalm with the degree to which the Psalmist is able to recognize that God rejoices in the offering of a contrite spirit. But, this is not a perpetual offering. Contrition is for the sake of restoration, recreation, and restitution. This restitution is not meant to be momentary or fleeting or in the future. The Psalmist prays that his bones might rejoice. That God might restore him to live in a new place, not a place where his sins are ever before him …
but, to live into the Joy of God’s salvation.
Similarly Lent is meant to be a season in the church. The word Lent is originally another word for Spring. It is a season of preparing the soil. It is a season of pruning.
Yes, we might need to pull ourselves towards the earth. To scratch closely to the very bedrock truth. To be drawn low like a seed. And like a seed to die to ourselves and to our own preoccupations and our sense that we are our own judges and our brother judges. But, forbid, that the seed stays dead in the ground! Forbid if we stay in a perpetual sense of our guilt and lowliness. For Easter is coming! So let the Lily’s bloom.
Let the bones that are crushed rejoice.
Open our Mouth, and Let God’s Praise Spring Forth
Let us hear Joy and Gladness
Restore unto US the JOY of Your Salvation and Renew a Truthful Spirit within us.