A reflection on Psalm 51 for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

A reflection based on Psalm 51:1-12, which can be read here.

There is some beauty to the church year, in that during different seasons, we focus on different aspects of our understanding of the triune God and our relationship with God.  During the season of Christmas, we celebrate the incarnation.  During Epiphany, the light of Christ shining on all nations.  During Easter, resurrection.  During the Time after Pentecost, growth and vocation and learning.  During Lent, sin and forgiveness and reconciliation.  Some people find Lent depressing and long and dark.  Others find it refreshing and hopeful.  Saint and sinner, all of us, says Luther.  And Lent is certainly the season in which this becomes very clear.  

We sin.  It’s what we do.  We turn away from God and turn in on ourselves.  We sin knowingly and unknowingly.  We sin by doing and by not doing.  It’s part of life on this earth.  None of us can escape and none of us are completely innocent.  And, yet, we’re saints.  In baptism, we’re freed from sin’s power and brought to new life in Christ.  We’re cleansed and made whole.  We’re sinners who are forgiven.  We’re saints who still sin and find ourselves in need of forgiveness.  Simultaneously saint and sinner.  We’re both.  Every single one of us.  It’s the beauty of paradox.  It’s one of the things I love most about being Lutheran. 

www.oldlutheran.com

The website oldlutheran.com sells t-shirts, bags, and other items with all sorts of silly, Lutheran humor.  One of my favorites is a t-shirt designed by tattoo artist, Mark Palmer.  When worn, the people who see it on you see saint, but when you look down, you see sinner.  It is a beautiful design, but also a great reminder of the great need to look upon one another as saints, while still recognizing our own capacity to be sinners.  I think the world might be a different place if we looked at one another as saints, don’t you?  Don’t you think it might also be a different place if we recognized our own capacity for sin before pointing our fingers at another?  Sinner and saint, both.  Sinners in need of forgiveness, all.

Which brings us to today’s psalm.  The psalms are traditionally attributed to King David.  This one is supposedly written after the whole Bathsheba affair (remember that one--David saw Bathsheba on the roof, seduced and got her pregnant, then had her husband killed so he wouldn’t get busted, then their baby was born and died soon after).  Whether or not David actually wrote it, this much is certainly true--the writer understood the depth of sin and the despair.  The writer understood the longing for forgiveness.  The writer understood that he (or maybe even she) needed God because only God could offer the forgiveness he/she needed.  Only God could create the new thing--the new and clean heart.

The writer of this psalm knew how dark things could get.  He knew the weight of sin on his heart and mind and soul.  He knew those dark nights of the soul, of turning the thing over and over in his mind and trying over and over again to let it go.  And he knew that, alone, he could not free himself from the burdens of his sin.  He knew that, ultimately, he was desperately in need of the steadfast love, which can also be translated as undeserved love, that only God could give.  He knew that he had messed up terribly.  He knew he had rebelled and turned away from God.  He knew that he had hurt others by turning in on himself.  He knew that God’s mercy was the only thing that could possibly wash way the depth of his sin and allow him to start anew.  

In the Old Testament, the verb create has only one subject--God.  God is the only one who can create and the result of God’s creation is always something new.  How refreshing is that?  Create in me a clean heart, O God, prays the psalmist.  Make new in me a heart that is freed from the burden of this sin that I have brought upon myself.  Give me a fresh start.  Only God can really, truly forgive us from the burdens of our sins.

And yet, we know that God works in mysterious and wonderful ways.  We may experience God’s forgiveness by hearing the words “I forgive you,” from the one from whom we have turned away or from the pastor who proclaims the words during the absolution.  Those three simple words are powerful and have the capacity to give us new life.  Or perhaps we are called to be the ones to offer those words to someone who has hurt us.  Perhaps God is working on our hearts to forgive so that we, too, can experience the lifting of sin’s burden in our lives.  As any one of us who has struggled to forgive or has waited, with heavy heart, to be forgiven knows, it is not easy.  It is not easy to speak the words or to ask for them.  We really need God working in and through and around us to experience their healing effect.  We need God to work in and through and on our hearts to keep continually creating new hearts capable of love and grace and forgiveness.  We need God.  For everything.  Each and every single day of our lives.

Perhaps during Lent, we hear this the most clearly in church.  But Lent can happen at any time in our lives.  The all-to-real consequences of sin weigh heavy on our hearts and so we turn, sinners in need of forgiveness, back to the God whom we know to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  God frees us from our burdens, lifts us up out of the depths, creates in us newness, and allows us to see the promise of hope and grace around us.  Each and every single day, by God’s grace, God sees in us saints, the forgiven sinners we are. 

And so we pray today, and maybe everyday, with the psalmist:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.  Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.  Amen.