1Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love!
Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion!
2Wash me completely clean of my guilt;
purify me from my sin!
3Because I know my wrongdoings,
my sin is always right in front of me.
4I’ve sinned against you—you alone.
I’ve committed evil in your sight.
That’s why you are justified when you render your verdict,
completely correct when you issue your judgment.
5Yes, I was born in guilt, in sin,
from the moment my mother conceived me.
6And yes, you want truth in the most hidden places;
you teach me wisdom in the most secret space.
7Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean;
wash me and I will be whiter than snow.
8Let me hear joy and celebration again;
let the bones you crushed rejoice once more.
9Hide your face from my sins;
wipe away all my guilty deeds!
10Create a clean heart for me, God;
put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!
11Please don’t throw me out of your presence;
please don’t take your holy spirit away from me.
12Return the joy of your salvation to me
and sustain me with a willing spirit.
13Then I will teach wrongdoers your ways,
and sinners will come back to you.
14Deliver me from violence, God, God of my salvation,
so that my tongue can sing of your righteousness.
15Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
16You don’t want sacrifices.
If I gave an entirely burned offering,
you wouldn’t be pleased.
17A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God.
You won’t despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed.
In Psalm 51 we wade into an ever-rolling stream of confession. Confession of sin is a Christian practice that first acknowledges that we are created beings, good but not perfect. And even in our goodness we are sinful (sin-full).
I find that this is a very foreign concept for most Americans to grasp, even Americans who have been Christians their whole lives (not to mention Lutheran Christians, who sorta have a monopoly on the fully sinner/saint language). We like to believe that we are pretty much good, most of the time. Well, you know, not always, but sorta, I guess kinda good. Right?
Yes and no. We are sinful; from our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, until the tiniest, newest born baby. Sin is the condition under which we are born; we are brought into the world sinful. It is, I admit, difficult to look at your innocent little newborn and say, you are sinful, you are mortal, and this means that you must die someday.
Even more difficult, perhaps, is when we mark our very young and very old in worship on Ash Wednesday with a cross of ashes. That stark symbol of sin and mortality, the cruel cross, placed on the forehead of our very young and our frail old is in stark contrast to the way Americans typically view themselves.
When we convince ourselves that we are mostly good, most of the time, without acknowledging our condition of sin, the cross seems like only a cruel instrument of torture rather than the instrument of our salvation. We convince ourselves that our sin does not, in fact, lead to our death. And so we begin to think that we are also immortal (though I've never heard anyone admit this to me outright).
The cross on our foreheads is a reminder that we are dust and we will return to dust. We are created beings, locked in a world of sin and we are sinful, ourselves. And that sin leads us to death. Our death. The one we don't like to talk about.
That is why, I think, Ash Wednesday is so important. You have a preacher (whether it be a pastor or some other person) physically impose the ashes on your forehead and mark you with the cross and force into your ears the words, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." There is no escape. You are mortal, sinful. You are a creature, not the Creator.
The carbon of ash and the carbon of live, human cells meet in the cross.
The cross is placed on the forehead, together with the truth that we are dust and we will return to it. And so, I think, Ash Wednesday is a good place for confession and Psalm 51.
"Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love! Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion!"
Today I confess:
:: Lord, I don't trust you. I'm afraid of losing my job at the church I serve.
:: Lord, I don't trust you. I'm afraid that my family will not follow and serve you.
:: Lord, I don't trust you. I'm afraid that we won't have enough money to pay our bills.
:: Lord, I don't trust you. I'm afraid that the whole Christian church on earth is collapsing and there is nothing that can be done about it.
:: Lord, I don't trust you. I'm afraid of death and losing all of the good things I have here on earth.
:: Lord, I've wronged you. I've said things about people that are unkind, mean-spirited, and just plain lies.
:: Lord, I've wronged you. I've not taken care of the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, the frail, the homeless, the sad and brokenhearted.
:: Lord, I've wronged you. I've not prayed like I ought. I've not read Scripture like I ought. I've not proclaimed your Word through word and deed like I ought.
:: Lord, I've wronged you. I've not not praised you when you should have been praised.
:: Lord, forgive me. For those things that I have not named, the lies that I've told myself, the things I've left hidden because I am too ashamed to speak them aloud.
:: Lord, forgive me. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Today, I invite you to remember your mortality. I invite you to recall your sin. I invite you to confess. And when you do, know that the absolution is soon to follow:
In the name of Jesus Christ, your sin is forgiven. Amen.
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