Let us pray: O God, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Your praise. Amen.
I was an incredibly clumsy, distracted, forgetful, and generally frustrating teenager. Some of you are finding that hard to believe. Those of you who know me better are thinking, "was?" I lost homework and lists of chores. I forgot errands I had agreed to run. My family knew that if I was looking directly into their eyes, there was about a 50% chance that I would do what they were asking. Without eye contact they would have had better luck asking the dog.
The phrase that came out of my mouth most frequently in those days was "I'm sorry." It was my talisman, the magic words that would guarantee sympathy, understanding and grace. "I'm sorry" was supposed to let me get the hog house cleaned when I wanted to do it, not when it needed to be done. "I'm sorry" was supposed to let me eat up all the candy bars I was supposed to sell for NHS and then beg off the money I owed the group. "I'm sorry" was the skeleton key to unlock the hearts of all those people who were just so demanding of me.
My father is an wise man sometimes. He doesn't say an awful lot, and sometimes what he says isn't really all that important, but in moments of genuine frustration his words carry a lot of weight. One afternoon when I had finally tested his patience to the limit with yet another litany of excuses and apologies, he looked at me and said, "You know, I wish you'd say 'I'm sorry' a lot less and act like you mean it a lot more."
In a fairy tale, of course, this would be the moment when all the weight of my many sins would have landed squarely on my shoulders. In a fairy tale, I would have vowed then and there to change my life forever, and I would have become as dependable as the Postal Service. In a fairy tale, I would have become a paragon of punctuality and maturity, steady and unmoving as the Rock of Gibraltar. But this is real life, not a fairy tale – and I'm still clumsy, distracted, forgetful, and generally frustrating. The only thing that has changed is my age.
I mention all of this as a means of getting at the idea of repentance, the first of our themes from the Psalms for this Lenten Season. There are a lot of ideas out there about repentance, some good and some bad. Our psalm tonight reminds us that repentance is, in the end, not a matter of our choosing – it is a matter of God's mercy, even though it may not feel like mercy when we begin to get repented.
The person who wrote this psalm was a person overwhelmed by a sense of his or her own sinfulness. Tradition tells us that David wrote this psalm in his agony after the Bathsheba affair. Just to refresh your memory, here's the story: David saw Bathsheba bathing and decided that even though she was married, he had to have her for himself. So they spent an afternoon between the sheets and Bathsheba became pregnant. Piling sin upon sin, David invited Bathsheba's husband Uriah back home from the battlefield, hoping that Uriah would go home, celebrate his brief leave with his wife, and thereby cover up their sin. But faithful Uriah refused to go to his home and his wife when his fellow soldiers went without on the battlefield. So David had Uriah killed on the battlefield. After Bathsheba had finished mourning the death of her husband, David took her as one of his wives.
Let me read to you from II Samuel what happened next:
…the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, 1and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, ‘There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor. 2The rich man had very many flocks and herds; 3but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meagre fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. 4Now there came a traveller to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.’ 5Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; 6he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.’
Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; 8I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. 9Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.
Nathan was called by God to confront David in his sin and expose the affair for what it was. In the light of Nathan's confrontation, David's eyes were opened to see the darkness of his own sin and the depth to which he had fallen. It was no longer a matter of turning over a new leaf: David was dead in his sins. No amount of excuses, apologies or promises to do better could ever pay the debt that David owed to those he wronged. Before David could even begin to consider repentance, he needed God's loving care – he needed a whole new life.
There are three words for sin in Psalm 51. The word transgression is a word that also means rebellion; a deliberate step against the authority in one's life. The word iniquity is a word that also means twisted, or bent out of shape; what was once good and pure has been reshaped into something flawed, twisted, even deformed. Finally, the word sin is a word that is best translated as missing the mark; an archer who has not hit the target. The psalmist confesses complete sinfulness – a three-fold litany that has led to utter separation from God.
This is someone who is doing exactly what my dad wanted from me – someone saying "I'm sorry" and being absolutely truthful about it. Not "I'm sorry" with the hidden hope of forgiveness, but "I'm sorry" as a description: 'I am a sorry excuse for a human being.'
The British preacher Charles Spurgeon said that: 'after the Christian confesses sin, he offers no promise that he will of [his own ability] behave better.' Some, when they make confessions to God, say, "Lord, if you forgive me I will not sin again;" but God's penitents never say that. When they come before him they say, "Lord, once I promised, once I made resolves, but I dare not make them now, for they would be so soon broken…I can only say, if you will create in me a clean heart, I will be thankful for it, and will sing [your] praise for ever; but I cannot promise that I will live without sin, or work out a righteousness of my own. I dare not promise, my Father, that I will never go astray again…"
But the writer of Psalm 51 shows remarkable faith in God, because against that three-fold litany of transgression, iniquity and sin, the psalmist also has a three-fold litany of hope. "Blot out my transgressions," the psalmist says, asking God to wipe away rebellion like a parent wipes away our tears. "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity," the psalmist says, asking God to scour away this bent, twisted and deformed life. "Cleanse me from my sin," the psalmist says, asking God to make him as clean and white and pure as Jesus was on the mountain at His transfiguration. The psalmist knows that God's hesed, God's steadfast love, will bring mercy where no one could expect to receive it. The psalmist trusts that God's love for God's children overwhelms the disasters we call our lives.
The psalmist prays, "Create in me a clean heart, O God." In the entire Old Testament, creation is ascribed to only one being: God the Creator. Only God creates. Only God takes the dust that is us and breathes into it ruah, the Holy Spirit that brings life. Only God can take what is sorry, twisted, off the mark and rebellious in our lives and wipe it off, wash it away and make us clean again. Only God can purge us, teach us, restore us and sustain us with the Holy Spirit. And even after all this, we cannot even praise God out of our own ability: only God can open our lips so that our mouths may declare God's praise.
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