Heart Cries, Heart Prayers


Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
Lent 5B, Evening Lenten Community Service
Warsaw United Methodist Church, Warsaw
Psalm 51:1-12

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.

It was late March, 1988, near as I can remember. The text was Luke 15, the story of the man with two sons. That is how Jesus introduces the parable: “There was a man who had two sons” … it’s commonly known as the parable of the prodigal son … but the main character is the father.

The speaker was Steve Shoemaker; the location was Crescent Hill Baptist Church, on Frankfort Avenue in Louisville, KY. That morning, the worship service seemed to have zeroed in on me personally, for the full hour and fifteen minutes that it lasted. I was not raised in a tradition that observed or practiced worship liturgy in the sense that we are observing this evening – the prayers, the collect, the confession, the pastoral prayer, in Chilean Baptist tradition, you start the service with a 45 minute song service, followed by a 45 minute prayer service, and ending with an hour or more preaching service. So when I began attending Crescent Hill, and joined in the congregational prayers and readings, and listening to the pastoral prayers intentionally crafted to address the needs of the congregation, they struck a chord deep inside, and on that particular morning the worship seemed to be tuned to my heart specifically.

***

Don’t you think it’s interesting that in the Psalm, the writer does not specifically name his or her sin? Yes, we have the superscription, the explanatory subtitle assigning it to David, as having been written by him after Nathan exposed him to himself with regards to the adulterous affair he had with Bathsheba, which we can find in all it’s sordid detail in 2 Samuel 12, but in the text of the psalm itself, there is no spelling out of what sin the author has committed. What is most evident in the reading of the psalm is that the author is VERY aware of the WRONGNESS of what he has done, of the RIGHTNESS with which God would judge, and the inevitability of that judgment.

We speak of hellfire and brimstone preaching, and in some circles, it is frowned on … even demeaned, made fun of. While it is not “my cup of tea”, there is something to be said for it. It makes us aware, if we are at a place where it touches on our life, of just how slimy we can be. Of just how broken we are. Of just how far from the mark we can fall. We are very good at separating our actions and motives from those we observe in others, however similar the outcome may be. We leave the timber in our own eyes to point out the splinter in our brothers’ and sisters’.

We all judge. As much as we may fight against it, and even train ourselves not to, we stratify ourselves and those around us. Just listen, sometime, to the inner dialogue that takes place while we’re watching the news on TV, or listening to it on the radio, or reading the story in the paper. The dialogue is usually sprinkled liberally with phrases like “I would never” … “what were they thinking?” … “I can’t imagine…” … “If they’d only STOPPED …”

There’s an element of objectivity that we can all develop, that we can all employ, but there is an equally strong element of SUBjectivity to which we are all susceptible, of which we are not necesarilly aware, which plays into our sense of self-worth, to boost our ego, more often than not. It plays itself out most readily when we try to rationalize something we want to do but are less than certain of its ethicality, to not say outright sure of it being the WRONG thing to do. And yet we do it.

And that is where the author of the Psalm was on point when he did not mention the sin. He did not mention it because the sin itself was immaterial. The attitude TOWARD the sin, the fact that it was recognized that, as John Durham wrote,

“Whatever its motivation, its passion, its effect, in self and in others, it is always basically and finally a sin against God, against God alone. As it is God who is the norm and reason for humanity’s righteousness, so it is God against whom every sin is an attack, to whom every sin is an affront. This is not to say, of course, that no others are hurt by the sin, one’s self, indeed most damaged of all. It is to say that whatever the harm to neighbor or self, it is God who suffers most of all and always … it anticipates the concept of the Servant-Redeemer who suffers, and indeed Christ’s death on Calvary as well.”

The writer knows God. One might argue the fact, based on the acts, if they were noted, but they are not. So we find ourselves sneaking our own experience into the text. “THAT’S how I feel about having done thus and such or about having said this and that … about NOT having spoken up in that meeting when I KNEW I should have …” it is that element of universality that draws us into the Psalmist’s lament.

How do we know he knows God? It’s in the first verse of the prayer:

“According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy” …

This person knew whom he was approaching … and knew the condition in which he was approaching. If it WAS David, then he realized how horribly he had acted. When it IS us, then we are so very, very aware of just how much wrong we’ve done. And yet, we call on the goodness of God, on the love and mercy of the one who made us and called us his own.

What is it that brings us to the point of recognizing our sinfulness? A dear friend quoted a saying to me earlier this week: “when you get to the end of your rope, you tie a knot and hang on”. It is a somewhat overused and trite saying, but only for those who have not felt that scratchy, rough rope slipping through their hands at what sometimes feels like an ever-increasing speed.

Several months ago, I was driving to one of our Hispanic friend’s house in the Hague area, and as I turned down her road, I noticed a woman walking toward the main highway. After stopping at the destination, I headed back up the road, and passed the same woman walking determinedly towards the highway. I stopped and asked if I could give her a ride anywhere. She asked if I would take her to the gas station just a few miles down the road. As we drove down the road, I found out that the reason she was going there was to try and find a ride into Richmond for an urgent errand. As it worked out, I was able to free up the afternoon and make that run with her. She was at the end of HER rope, and by stepping out and walking down that road, God set in motion a way to bring her some relief. The conversation to and from Richmond ranged the gamut of human experience, from the joys and frustrations of child rearing to the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, as Shakespeare wrote.

I think we all have similar stories to tell – times when we weren’t planning on being somewhere, or doing something, and yet, in finding ourselves in that particular place at that particular time, we end up being in the presence of Grace, or if we are fortunate, we find ourselves being the CONDUIT of that Grace, or maybe even, possibly, if we are VERY fortunate, the RECIPIENTS of that Grace.

It is comforting to me to know that King David is still considered the greatest king Israel ever had. He is still referred to as ‘A man after God’s own heart.’ Sometimes we stop and shake our heads … and wonder how that could apply – after some of the things David did … not just the episode here ascribed, but other things as well, the rages, the murders, the lying … you wonder if God might have set the bar a little low by setting the definition by David.

That was what I experienced that Sunday morning in the spring of 1988. As Steve told the story of the prodigal son, the dialogue that was going on inside me was one that more closely followed the psalmist’s plea as we’ve read here tonight. I was made aware in the course of that hour that it was God whom I’d sinned against, ultimately. It was God from whom I needed to seek forgiveness, in addition to setting things right in the relationships involved. “And when his son was still a long way off, the father saw him and ran to him and threw his arms around him” and covered his face with kisses … and the calf was slaughtered, and the celebration ensued…

The truth is, David isn’t the one defining who is a person after God’s own heart. He’s just an example. The point of the moniker is to highlight the fact that we can all be ‘after God’s own heart’ – whatever our particular mistake, misstep, error in judgment, loss of perspective, however we want to euphemize our sin, we find ourselves approaching the presence of the Holy one and seeking forgiveness and redemption. We all have the chance to utter this cry, this prayer from our heart of hearts – our ‘secret heart’ as the psalmist wrote.

And the mystery is that we can, and the mystery is that God will, and the holiness of the moment is translated into joy and gladness, cleansing, and communion.

Lets pray.