The Rev'd Jane Bearden
Year c Ash Wednesday
O Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. Amen
Each week as I prepare to say the ancient words to invoke God’s blessing on the bread and the wine that we share in the Eucharist, the assisting minister pours water over my hands in a ritual cleansing. As the water is poured over my hands, I pray the words of this Psalm, “Lord, Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin that I may be made worthy to approach Your altar”. I say that prayer for me and for all of us gathered in this place, asking God to welcome us into relationship, into community, because of God’s compassion and forgiveness and mercy. I am acknowledging to God I need his help in order to move beyond my human weaknesses and shortcomings to strength, perseverance, and openness of heart. My prayer says Lord, I have made a pretty big mess of things and you are my hope to help me recognize my true self and to act as the beautiful child you created me to be. You are our hope to help us be the faithful disciples who you have called us to be. Later tonight as each of us is marked with a sign of our mortality, we will read the Psalm, but I want to jump a little ahead of myself in the service tonight. If you will, grab a prayerbook (the ones we rarely use anymore) and turn to page 656. Follow along with me as I read. I am going to use the New Revised Standard version of the text so the wording will be a little different in places and it may not sound as poetic as the prayerbook version.
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 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. 5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. 6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 7 Purge 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 that you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. 17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
You might remember in Hebrew scripture the story of Nathan and King David. David had taken Bathsheba, the wife of one of his general’s, and had slept with her and had made her pregnant. When David found out he ordered that the faithful general come home from the battle, David tried to get him to go sleep with his wife so that everyone would believe that the child was his and not David’s, but Uriah would not betray his solidarity with his soldiers and so he refused to sleep with his wife. David was furious and ordered that Uriah be sent to the fiercest battle so that he would be killed. Nathan who was a prophet and had a way of being very blunt when it came to the sins of the king, so Nathan told King David a story about a very wealthy man who stole from his very poor neighbor and passed the stolen animal off as his own. Just as Nathan expected he would, David became enraged that a wealthy man would take all that the poor man had. Nathan had only to turn to David and say “You are the man” and David knew that not only had he committed adultery and caused the death of an innocent man, David had displeased God. This Psalm is David’s response to his sin. It is a piercing lament of his personal weakness that moves from confession - to petition for guidance - to seeking restoration not because he deserved to be restored, but because of God’s compassion and forgiveness. Then in the closing verses David professes his promise of faithfulness and worship of God. This is the story of a king whose heart was hardened by pride, greed, lust, and treachery, but whose heart was broken open through God’s faithful words in Nathan, his messenger.
Sin hardens our hearts. The sin to which Psalm 51 speaks is not some transgression like cursing the driver who cut you or me off on Main Street. Nor is it about the lie you told your neighbor about being busy when she asked you to jump start her car. Sin is allowing our own secret desires, those desires things that we hold really close to our chests - to be more important to us than God. Sin is when we allow our own selfishness or our own willfulness to turn us from God, then our hearts too will grow hard and unable to provide sustenance to the rest of the body.
Ash Wednesday calls us to stand naked before God and to consider who we are and whose we are, to take stock of our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God. Like David we are invited in this Psalm to a deep, deep introspection, a self- examination, our liturgy calls it, of what we allow to flow in to fill our hearts and what we send forth from our hearts into the world. “10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.“ We read this Psalm on Ash Wednesday because it is an entrance, a port-key for Potter fans, that once we grasp hold of it pulls us toward an honest, courageous exploration of the things that we allow to enter into our hearts and separate us from God.
So let’s take a few moments and imagine as we enter into this time of fasting and prayer, what is flowing in and what is flowing out of our hearts. I did this exercise too in our clergy retreat a few weeks ago. Get comfortable, let you feet rest on the floor. Feel the pew beneath you, feel how it touches your back, your shoulders. Be aware of the pain in your neck or in you back or your legs and then let that pain just be what it is, let it pass its way and not be the focus of your attention anymore. Feel the heaviness of your shoulders as they sag under the weight of your exhaled breath. Imagine your heart, the center of your spirit, taking in and pushing out. What is it that you are allowing to enter your heart. Look closely at it. What are the things that come in that create barriers to God. Is it anger over something that happened in your life that you wanted God to change? Is it hatred for another person who let you down and now consumes your heart. Is it fear of rejection that prevents you from opening your heart to receive God’s love? What is it? What is it that comes out of your heart when you are apart from God? Now imagine God’s love flowing in. What does that feel like? God’s love expands the walls of your heart beyond the limits of your chest. Imagine that in that love is compassion and forgiveness and mercy. How does it feel? What comes out of a heart that is loved so deeply.
When you are ready open your eyes. This is our invitation to a Holy Lent. It is our time to consider choosing to place God at the center of our lives by taking into our hearts that which is life-giving and lasting rather than that which rusts and corrodes and hardens. God is inviting us all to enter the inward journey to the center of our hearts and to allow it to be cleansed by God’s love and mercy.
Amen
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