Lent 1 Text: Psalm 51

One of the things the Psalms give us is language to speak in a way that breaks things loose.
If ever you find yourself so despondent that there are no words to express what it is or how it is for you, go to the Psalms.
If ever you find yourself so burning with rage that you could kill, go to the Psalms.
If ever you find yourself so filled with awe, bursting with the wonder of it all, yet speechless, go to the Psalms.
If ever life seems so unfair that you just want to have it out with God but who are you to question or contradict, even offend the Almighty, go to the Psalms.
One of the things the Psalms give us is language to speak in a way that breaks things loose because there, in the Psalms, we find companions who have been this way before us … who have found and risked and ventured bold, even dangerous words … companions who talk their way to a place beyond where they began … companions who model daring leaps of faith.

This Lent I thought we would go to the Psalms for they offer us such a rich way into that heartfelt conversation with God and with our own souls … conversations that we may, for whatever reasons, be reluctant to have. And because the Psalms arise from the depths of human experience, they also have a way of opening our awareness to others whose experience may be foreign to us … and so the Psalms become a way for us to grow in empathy.

So what might it be for us to pray the Psalms this Lent … not to simply read them through but to pray them … beginning with the one we’ve read this morning --Psalm 51. How might we do that?
Well having read it, we’ve already begun. We read it through first of all to get a sense of what do we have here? who do we have here? In this case we don’t have to go very far to know we’re in the company of someone who is haunted by something they‘ve done or been part of that‘s wrong -- something harmful or hurtful, a violation of some sort … and it’s sitting there like a stone on the heart, a wrench in the gut and it’s not going away.

So we read it through and we discover this is what’s up … this is who is speaking. It might even, if we let it, evoke some of our own experiences of having been in that hard, sickening place … where what is done is done and there’s no turning the clock back.
So we come back to the Psalm … to these words … perhaps bringing with us where we’ve been … and what do we find here? In this case what we find is “have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.”

Who would have thought we could begin there! From this place of sickening regret, how does the love and mercy of God even come into view … where does the impetus come from to call upon that generosity? Who knows! … but that’s what came for this person … and that’s what he or she extends to us … opens up to us … offers to us to utter from our own lips. And so we hear our own selves say it … we let our own selves be met by, of all things, God’s loving kindness. There’s this awful weight, this bitter taste, this hard hard thing that we can’t get rid of …nor should we--it’s what we get for what we’ve done. Right? Except here’s this asking “blot out my transgressions … cleanse me from my sin.” Who would have thought to ask? In case it didn’t occur to us to bring our sin sick self to God … in case we didn’t think we could or should … here it is offered to us … even the words given to us!
This is what can happen when we pray the Psalms!

As we keep going, we come upon, ‘create in me a clean heart O God; put a new and right spirit within me.’
This is the voice of someone who knows how God has been at work among people … God’s promise: “a new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and remove from you a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” We’re in the company of someone who is not only trusting in what he or she has known of God’s way in the past; but who is bold enough to imagine: if then, so now; if for them, so also for me.

As this person goes further in their conversation with God --and in doing so finds herself, it seems, drawing closer to the heart of God--it’s as though she glimpses something of God’s desire for her: that there could be joy again! And so she prays “restore to me the joy of your salvation.” Somehow we’ve journeyed from that place of the sin sick soul to this vision of joy once more! It invites us to wonder how does a person, how do we open to this gift of joy that is present even in the midst of brokenness? … how do we welcome this joy that is part of how God works within us to put the broken pieces together.
Praying the Psalms can surface some of the most beautiful, life-giving questions for us to consider.

Before we come to the end, there is this most freeing affirmation:
“The offering acceptable to God is a broken spirit.
A broken and contrite heart O God you will not despise.”
Do you hear it? … there’s something about a heart that has been shattered, broken open, rendered contrite by failure that God will not resist. A heart that is truthful about its limit, it’s lack, will always be intimately accompanied by the Mercy of God.

We might not have known that … we might not have even begun to imagine it, let alone trust it, without this Psalm. Indeed, God’s Word is Life!

This morning, along with this Psalm, we have ash.
Sign and symbol of our failure, of our frailty.
Sign and symbol of our common humanity …out of the dust of the earth God formed the human creature … we’re all made of the same stuff. And so sign and symbol as well of our essential connection with the earth.
And as from the earth we have come, so to the earth we return …
and so this ash reminds us of our mortality … connects us with those who have died before us.

But ash is not all that we have.

Here too is oil … oil of blessing … oil of healing … oil of gladness.
It is God’s way to draw these together.

Somehow out of death ~ God brings Life
Somehow out of total loss ~ a new beginning
Somehow out of sorrowful regret ~ new found freedom and joy
Somehow out of failure ~ redemption

This morning we are invited into this ritual of receiving an ashen cross on our forehead or on our hand …
This is about surrendering ourselves to God’s unending mercy.

Let us be marked
not for sorrow
And let us be marked
not for shame
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or thinking we are less than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust
within the dirt  [1]
within our frail, earthy and earthly lives

May we claim this day what God can do with ash.

As we receive the marking of the sign of the cross,
as we feel the tracing of this ash and oil together
may it ground us in the promise of God’s abundant mercy …
God’s transforming grace.

[1] Jan Richardson, Blessing the Dust, Painted Prayerbook. 

 

 

 

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