Grace Presbyterian Church
February 10, 2016, Ash Wednesday C
Psalm 51:1-17
Truth In the Inward Being
We don’t like to
look at ourselves too closely.
It’s uncomfortable
to look inside of our own minds, or especially our own souls. It’s dark in
there.
Far easier, in the
modern world, to distract attention from the darkness and fallenness of our own
person. Easier to point and blame. Look at that person. Look how awful they
are. Even better if that other person is famous somehow – a celebrity of some
sort; singer, actor, athlete, politician. That way we can all gang up on them
safely, without fear of being called, and especially without fear of having to
look inside ourselves, examine our motives, see our own darkness.
The author of this
psalm must have been in agony.
In most Bibles Psalm
51 carries a heading suggesting it was “A Psalm of David, when the prophet
Nathan had come to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” While the heading
is certainly evocative, and the situation it mentions certainly is in keeping
with the content of the psalm, there are two main problems with it.
Historically, the heading doesn’t seem to have come with the psalm, originally;
it seems instead to have been added at least four hundred years later, well
after David was dead. That doesn’t necessarily mean the psalm wasn’t associated
with David, but it’s a little troubling.
The bigger, more
theological problem with the heading is that it surreptitiously encourages us
to think that we don’t need to engage in the self-examination and repentance
portrayed in the psalm unless we’ve just committed one big whopper of a
misdeed.
And that’s a
tremendous problem. We all have “fallenness” in common. Our need to cry out
with the psalmist, as in verse 5, that we have been sinners since before we can
remember is not dependent on having just been caught in a major infraction. We
can and should always be able to acknowledge that, as verse 3 says, “my sin is ever before me.”
God sees this in
us. As much as God loves us and longs to draw us ever closer, God never see us
without that sinfulness in us, no matter how the psalmist might beg in verse 8.
Because God loves us so, God wants us to see in ourselves what separates us
from all that God is and wants us to have and to be. Thus, the psalmist cries
out to God to be cleansed – no, more than cleansed; to be purged, to be
purified, to be “de-sinned” – to have all that horror show of fallenness and
separation extracted from us once and for all. But that can never happen until
we see it; thus in verse 6 – a wholly remarkable verse – the psalmist hits upon
this: “You desire truth in the inward
being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.” That’s a curious
phrase – “secret heart” – and the
word actually used here warrants an explanation. We Americans are likely to see
“heart” as a metaphor for the source of love, particularly aided by that other
holiday coming up on Sunday. Hebrew thinking, though, understood the heart as
the center of will, or of decision-making. The psalmist is asking to be made
wise in the inmost and deepest part of himself or herself in order to live
rightly, wisely, and truthfully – as in that earlier phrase “truth in the inward being.”
“Truth in the inward being.” God desires
us to be truthful – not merely in the sense of distinguishing facts from
falsehoods, although that’s always a good thing, but in being true. Living true. The
word goes much deeper than even such words as “faithfulness”; living in
complete coherence and inseparability with the Source of all our living.
And then, when we
have learned truth in the inward being, when we have been purged and
“de-sinned” and made clean and had a “new
and right spirit” put within us, then we will live in the joy of salvation,
we will be the ones who show others how to live – not merely with words but
with our lives – and we will sing our praise to God in a way that transcends even
the most noble of sacrifices. The “broken” spirit – the one no longer hinged on
our pride but on that truth in the inward being – is the sacrifice God loves.
But it starts with
that “truth in the inward being.” It starts with self-examination and repentance
of our fallenness, and of the way we cling to that fallenness. And sometimes
that means we have to stop with the pointing fingers at others without looking
into the darker corners of our own souls.
I’m not much for
telling people they have to “give up something” for Lent. If we’re not careful
it doesn’t necessarily help, and can even become a source of self-righteousness
that accomplishes exactly the opposite of what we need in a season of
self-examination and repentance. But here’s something I plan to do this year,
and maybe some of you might find it helpful too. I’ve got verse 6 written down
on a post-it note. It’s going to be on or beside my laptop at all times. I
might also post it in my car somewhere (when I have one again), or any other
places where I might be tempted to lash out at some other figure caught in
public approbation. With any luck I’ll be challenged to engage in the
self-examination and repentance I know I need in this season first.
If it works out, I
may not have much time or energy to lash out at others. And maybe there will be
something more like “truth in the inward being” and “wisdom in my secret
heart.”
For the pain and
cleansing of repentance, Thanks be to
God. Amen.
Hymns "O For a Closer Walk With God" (PH 396); Psalm 51 (PH 196); "Jesus Knows the Inmost Heart" (GtG 427)
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