Psalm 51:1-11

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses.

2 Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

4 Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

5 And so you are justified when you speak and upright in your judgment.

6 Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth, a sinner from my mother's womb.

7 For behold, you look for truth deep within me, and will make me understand wisdom secretly.

8 Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.

9 Make me hear of joy and gladness, that the body you have broken may rejoice.

10 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.

11 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

I know a rector who has his congregation sing Joy to the World in the middle of August. It’s always startling. But it makes the point that the truth of our story, the truths of the gospel reflected in the liturgical seasons should be on our mind all year long.

Along those lines, we heard a portion of Psalm 51 yesterday in church. (We’ve reprinted it in this email.) It’s a psalm usually associated with Lent, specifically Ash Wednesday. When I noticed that the psalm also appeared in the daily lectionary last Friday, I thought maybe someone was telling me to disregard the season and to reflect on this psalm this morning, months away from Lent.

The psalm conveys some hard truths about ourselves, truths that St. Paul noted in his letter to the Romans when he said that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. A friend who is a rabbi told me that he understood the concept of sin in terms of archery. It was about missing the mark. A cursory scan of the daily newspaper or social media will confirm that individually and collectively we miss the mark.

What strikes me about the psalm, being a good church-going kind of guy, is that the psalm talks not about notorious, egregious sinners out there, those bad people. It talks about us, and the venality of our inner lives. Anne Lamott (a favorite go-to person on matters spiritual) made this confession: I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.

In the teaching of Jesus, we hear more about the inner life. In the Sermon on the Mount, he talks about the ways in which anger or lust or betrayal have root in the heart, and are related to hateful actions. He says elsewhere that it is what comes out of person that causes corruption. When he said that, he was talking to the most religious people of the day. 

All of which makes the prayer of Psalm 51 so important. The psalmist prays: Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. How do we get that clean heart? How do we get that right spirit?

The first step is admitting that there is in fact a need to have a scrubbing of our hearts. There is no motive that is not mixed (thank you, Bishop Alan Gates, for that insight.) That’s why this opening sentence from Morning Prayer matters: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. So many, too many meditations of my heart are far from acceptable in God’s sight. Frankly, in anyone’s sight.

The second step is to recognize that we can’t do that internal spiritual house cleaning work on our own. One paraphrase of the first beatitude (Blessed are the poor in spirit) renders it this way: Blessed are those who know their need of God. Whether I’m cussing out another driver who failed to signal change of lanes, or fulminating at our leaders as I watch the news, I often feel a lack of control of my own thoughts. I need help. Or as the prayer book puts it, Lord, have mercy.

The third step is to believe that help is available, that God is in the business of making us new. Again, let’s hear from St. Paul, who noted the following in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. (Again, that’s a reading we often hear on Ash Wednesday.)

A suggestion: Whenever you sense that your words and meditations are going to a place you don’t want them to go, whenever you sense that monkey mind is drawing your attention to resentment or covetousness or irritation, try this as a centering prayer. Breathe in: Create in me a clean heart. Maybe hold your breath for a few seconds. Then breathe out: Renew a right spirit within me.

Perhaps the promise of renewal that comes with the season of Lent can be realized all year long.

 -Jay Sidebotham