Sermon for March 29th

Many times, the joke is, when the gospel text and the Epistle, the second reading, is too difficult to talk about, pastors will choose to preach on the psalm. Well, think what you will, but honestly, today’s psalm is just too wonderful to pass up. During the midweek Lenten services, we have been going through the Lord’s Prayer and learning what we can about how praying affect our lives and our relationship to God and one another. Today we’ll be learning from another prayer, from the prayer of King David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheeba.

Do you remember the story? King David is considered to be the best king in Israelite history. He was the youngest boy in his family when God called him to be king through the prophet Samuel though he wouldn’t actually take the throne until Isreal’s first king, Saul, had died. King David brought peace to his country and brought all of the tribes of Israel together through defeating the dreaded Philistines and making Jerusalem the capital and a symbol of national unity. God brought peace to his people through king David.

But David found a way to create a problem even in the midst of peace. Though he had been faithful to God’s word and followed in God’s ways, in a moment of weakness he happened to catch a glimpse of the bathing beauty Bathsheeba as she was naked upon a nearby rooftop. When he saw her, he had to have her, and so he called her to him and slept with her. He was the wonderful king David after all! But she became pregnant and, oh yes, I forgot to mention it, but she was already married. So, what did David do? Well, he killed her husband.

David was the best king Israel ever had! He was also an adulterer and a murderer. But God wouldn’t stand idly by while people were being killed and marriages defiled even if it was by his most beloved and righteous servant David. So, God sent the prophet Nathan to have a chat with the king. Nathan told David a story, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little 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 food, and drink from his cup, and lie in his lap, and it was like a daughter to him. One day, the rich man was going to have a visitor, but he didn’t want to take one of his own flock of lambs to prepare for dinner. So, that rich man took the poor man’s lamb and made it for dinner instead.” After telling this story, Nathan asked King David, what should be done about all this? King David said to Nathan, “That rich man who has done this deserves to die!”

Nathan said to David. “You are the rich man! You had everything given to you from God. You’re the king for goodness sake! You had as many wives as you would ever need, you had money and you had peace in your kingdom. Whatever you wanted, God would have given it to you. But instead, you took matters into your own hands. Not only destroying the marriage of two good people, but killing a man just to get what you wanted.”

Sometime after this, maybe it was the very next second, maybe it was the next week, but sometime after Nathan called David out for his sin, it appears that David wrote down a prayer to God, our psalm for today, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” It’s interesting to note something about these lines. After all the things David did to get into this mess, he’s not listing off what he’s going to do to get out of it? God is the subject of all these verbs. YOU have mercy on me O God. YOU blot out my transgressions. YOU wash me and cleanse me from my sin. David teaches us something very important about asking for forgiveness: it’s not going to happen because you made everything better. Forgiveness comes from God alone.

“For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”

David realizes that even if Bathsheeba forgives him, even if he does all the penance he can and makes it up as much as possible to the family of Uriah, he can’t make his sin and guilt go away. He has sinned against God and all his efforts, though important for reconciling himself to others, can’t reconcile him with God.

You can hear David’s despair, “my sin is ever before me.” He is standing face to face with his sin every time he looks at Bathsheeba, every time he looks in the mirror, every time someone tells him what a great king he is, every time he prays. His mistakes are either right on the front of his mind or lurking somewhere just beneath the surface.

In fact, his despair has become so palpable, that it has moved its way into his conscience. He realizes that not only did he sin against Bathsheeba and her husband Uriah, but he has sinned against God. He realies that not only did he sin against God this one time, but ever since he was born he has been sinning. He realizes that there was not a moment in his life when he was righteous, ever since his very conception, he’s been rebelling against God.

Maybe some of you recognize this pattern of thinking. When you do something wrong and start beating up on yourself, it starts seeping into every part of your life. Not only did you unintentionally yell at your child once, but you are a bad parent. Not only are you a bad parent, but you are a bad spouse. Not only are you a bad spouse, but you are a bad person. The sin stops being about a one time event, but starts defining every event in your life until it defines you. Not only did you sin, but you are a sinner.

Sometimes, even in the life of a Christian, sins can lead to unthinkable consequences. People who have driven a vehicle recklessly or under the influence of alcohol or drugs sometimes find themselves in accidents with fatalies that they were the cause of. They know that their relationship with God has been changed and they don’t know how to make it better. It doesn’t take long for the statement, “I am lucky to be alive” to change into, “I shouldn’t still be alive” and then finally become, “I don’t have a right to be alive.” Their sin is always before them and they can’t see anything else.

The next section of David’s prayer is a cry for help again from the depths of his despair, “You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.” David realizes what must be done. He cannot just justify his sin or learn to live with it. His sin must be erased. Blotted out. Hidden from his eyes and from God’s eyes in order for life to become livable again.

In the story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner, there is a woman whose car breaks down when three men stop by the road to help her. The woman is talking and talking and talking and being very annoying saying how one of the men looks just like her son. The men aren’t really there to help her at all but are convicts as we find out. At the end of the story, we discover that the man she thinks looks like her son IS actually her son, but he is so annoyed with her that he shoots her in the head. When questioned about it by another one of the men he says, “She needed to be shot in the head every day of her life.”

Now, I know that this might be a very dark way of looking at things, but in much the same way, we need to be shot in the head every day of our lives. We need God to, “put us out of our misery” so to speak by forgiving us so that our sin is no longer right in front of our face. So that he can hide his face from our sin and wash us cleaner than snow. King David couldn’t see past his own sin and neither can we, so God must do something for us.

“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.”

If God shoots us in the head, then he’s got to give us a new one. If he crushes our bones he needs to raise us up to new life. Here, as at the beginning of the psalm, all the verbs again have God as their subject. David doesn’t ask God to “fix him” so that he’ll run better like a tuned up sportscar. He doesn’t ask God to help him live a better life. David asks to be made NEW. Give me a new me David says because the old me is a pile of junk. Create in me a clean heart and give me a new spirit.

When you are fighting with a friend, or a family member, or a spouse, the worst part is the estrangement. Sometimes it’s so difficult just to be patient and wait for everything to get back to normal. David knew what it was to be loved by God and faithful to God’s Word and here he prays that God would make that a reality again. Not by fixing the old King David that used to follow God’s laws, but by making a new creation, a new King David. That’s really the key; you see, we aren’t trying to change history here. Sin has happened. There’s no going back. God deals with sin by creating you new. You don’t have to go back in history and change it. In fact, you can’t. So God makes sin history and gives you a future through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Even Jesus had a history after his resurrection or else you wouldn’t know it was him. He shows up with the wounds still visible and touchable on his hands and feet. God knows that when he gives you a new heart and a new spirit that you’ll still have a history too. In fact, we pray that Jesus remembers every one of our sins so that he doesn’t forget to forgive a single one of them. But, we also pray that on the last day, he remembers that they are history. We pray, just as David did, that God hides his face from our past and only sees the new future he has in store for us.

Finally, God does more than listen to David’s prayer. He sends Nathan to forgive his sinful king. After David admits his sin, Nathan says this, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.” Nathan admits that yes David deserves to die, but that death is not the final word. There were consequences for King David as there will be for us from our sinning, but God’s forgiveness is the last word. God also has a last word for you. “You sins are forgiven. God has hidden his face from them. You are new in God’s eyes. God has separated you from your sins, calling you new and calling your sins ancient history. God restores you now to the joy of his salvation. Your sins are forgiven and your life is made new. Amen.