Dust We Are
Scripture: Psalm 51:1-17
51 Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love!
Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion!
2 Wash me completely clean of my guilt;
purify me from my sin!
3 Because I know my wrongdoings,
my sin is always right in front of me.
4 I’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.
5 Yes, I was born in guilt, in sin,
from the moment my mother conceived me.
6 And yes, you want truth in the most hidden places;
you teach me wisdom in the most secret space.[a]
7 Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean;
wash me and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and celebration again;
let the bones you crushed rejoice once more.
9 Hide your face from my sins;
wipe away all my guilty deeds!
10 Create a clean heart for me, God;
put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!
11 Please don’t throw me out of your presence;
please don’t take your holy spirit away from me.
12 Return the joy of your salvation to me
and sustain me with a willing spirit.
13 Then I will teach wrongdoers your ways,
and sinners will come back to you.
14 Deliver me from violence, God, God of my salvation,
so that my tongue can sing of your righteousness.
15 Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
16 You don’t want sacrifices.
If I gave an entirely burned offering,
you wouldn’t be pleased.
17 A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God.[b]
You won’t despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed.
Homily:
In our scripture, King David writes this psalm of lament, a psalm of forgiveness, after he does one of the most egregious things of his life. This thing is really the thing that opens up the door to a lifetime of heavy mistakes.
King David was really kind of a terrible guy. This psalm is a response to being visited by the Prophet Nathan, who tunes David’s heart to his wrongdoings. David had single-handedly created infidelity in a marriage and exploited his place of power to fulfill his lust; he then worked to cover up the evidence through voluntary manslaughter; he enlisted and incriminated others in his sin also. I know David says
4 I’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.
To our modern eyes, when we are talking about the story of David’s exploitation of Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, we can point to this as a sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, but to David, he was king, all of these people were in service to him, he did not see his actions against them but it is quite convicted of his sin against God as the one that God had anointed to be their leader.
3 Because I know my wrongdoings,
my sin is always right in front of me.
David speaks to this inclination that I think many of us have which is to give ourselves guilt when we do something wrong. Nathan calls David not to guilt but to repentance. To a change, of course, a retuning of David’s heart and priorities. David asks God to
2 Wash me completely clean of my guilt;
purify me from my sin!
Clean from guilt – not just clean in some celestial ledger or trial of eternal judgement – David’s pleas for a washing away from his guilt – not just the sin but also how he feels weighted down and heavy by this sin – now, in the present, in his life.
8 Let me hear joy and celebration again;
let the bones you crushed rejoice once more.
9 Hide your face from my sins;
wipe away all my guilty deeds!
10 Create a clean heart for me, God;
put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!
David, flawed as he is, even though this is really just the beginning of some of his worst choices and leastwise judgments, repents. He genuinely asks God to help him. And God does. God takes this terrible situation and makes the best out of it. King Solomon is said to be the result of these bad choices. Solomon who is the king who builds the Temple where the spirit of God dwells. Solomon is the wisest and is an icon of peace and leadership.
David repents and God gives him a clean heart – a clean heart to live well in the here and now. Ash Wednesday is to remind us of our mortality, it is to be a steering of our attention on the lives we are living.
Ash Wednesday is a time set aside to acknowledge the things that you need to let go of guilt over – the things that you need to be cleansed of, forgiven of – both by yourself and by God.
So many times, we are eager to acknowledge our own shortcomings but neglect this second step, where we let ourselves be cleansed of them. That’s what David did too. That’s what made him keep coming back to not living in wisdom. His guilt and the weight of his bad choices piled up on him and weighed him down. Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are human. We live. We make mistakes. We will die. But we don’t have to live or die defined by our mistakes. That’s the good news of the Gospel of Christ. Our sins are already atoned for – all we need to do is accept that grace. It’s already been given to us.
Take the time you need to truly let go, let God’s forgiveness seep into your life and clean you of sin and guilt. Sin AND guilt. Ash Wednesday is to remind us we live in the here and now
