To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
I’m assuming most of you are familiar with this story from 2nd Samuel. David saw Bathsheba and decided he had to have her, sent his minions over to bring her back to his palace where he raped her, and after he found out she was pregnant, he arranged to have her husband murdered, in an attempt to cover up his crime. And yes I use the word rape advisedly. He was the King and because of the power imbalance, she could not have declined his demands. This psalm then appears to be in the voice of David acknowledging and repenting of his sin and asking for God’s mercy and forgiveness, but there is a little more to it.
Importantly it begins where all confession begins - with God’s mercy and grace. The first words are
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
The Message version of this is
Generous in love—God, give grace!
Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record.
The psalm speaks of how how forgiveness works by using metaphors; the one we know best is the image of something dirty being made clean. The Message gives us some vigorous contemporary images
Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.
But this is not the only image we find
there is also: standing guilty before a judge
having a new heart created (not same as cleaning up a dirty one)
asking for one’s life to be revived.
Understanding confession and absolution as “Washing something dirty,” is not the only formula for forgiveness. For some people that is not helpful at all. And different images may be more helpful to us at different times in our lives or in varying circumstances. Together they build up a picture for us of something which is a great mystery and a miracle.
Why do we practice confession in our church? It’s not because forgiveness only occurs on Sunday mornings, but because it is a wonderful idea every day of our lives to say “I’m sorry” any time you have hurt someone. Our Spiritual practice on Sundays (& Wednesdays) models and shapes our daily behaviour.
We also practice receiving words of absolution - not because they are some kind of magic words which do the trick, but because this is a miracle of transformation - and that is what absolution is all about. One of our liturgies expresses this beautifully
God the Creator brings you new life,
forgives and redeems you.
Take hold of this forgiveness
and live your life
in the Spirit of Jesus.
Amen.
This transformation happens any time, all the time, as we are together as a community; spiritual formation is happening every time we understand and experience God’s forgiveness.
You could take those words from that absolution and reword them as a prayer for Lent
God our Creator please bring me new life
Forgive and redeem me
Help me to take hold of this forgiveness
and live my life
in the spirit of Jesus
Amen.
If David did indeed pen this psalm I have great difficulty with verse 4
Against you, you alone, have I sinned. Excuse me! What about Bathsheba and her husband Uriah and their children, what about the impact on his own wives and children, on the military folk he made complicit in his murder plan, and indeed on the whole nation of Israel???? But the notion of “private sin,” that neither concerns nor affects others, is not a concept contained in Scripture. So, this is not so much excluding all those others impacted by David’s sin as an acknowledgment that it was God who had called him to account.
The last 2 verses, which are not included in the lectionary reading for today, mention rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. This calls into question the the superscription of this as a psalm of David - when David was king Jerusalem had its walls, they were not breached until hundreds of years later. Perhaps this psalm was written by a scribe during the exile. Looking at it this way, Israel is using the story of David and Bathsheba as a lens to examine their own failings as a nation. And perhaps that is how we should read Ps 51 today, thinking of our national, societal and community failings.
Using ashes as a symbol of repentance has a growing poignancy in today’s world. The pictures of the wildfires in California recently are still fresh in our minds. Stories of fires around the world and here in New Zealand are growing as our world gets hotter. And we have an annual COP gathering where repentance and change is resisted by those most guilty of contributing to climate change and profiting from it.
This prayer confesses sinfulness not just individual sins. The Hebrew scriptures see much sin as corporate or communal sin. When a person says “I” in the confession, the pronoun is used in identity with the congregation and with all humanity. We continue to participate in societal sin today. What do our taxes go towards - do they support militarism which damages the environment? Where does the interest from our investments come from? Was someone hurt or exploited harvesting the coffee I drink, the chocolate I eat, mining minerals for the battery in my phone? Do my/our actions make climate change worse and thus contribute to climate injustice for others. and so on. As I am made aware of participating in these corporate sins, I ask for forgiveness and I seek help to transform my life and the society around me - whether that is in changing my own actions or in challenging unjust structures and policies. God is in the business of transformation and as his church so are we.
As we proceed with the Liturgy of penance and the imposition of ashes let us pray that God will indeed create a clean heart in us, one that has the will and the courage to change and challenge.
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