Forsaking the Old Ways

Scripture  Psalm 51:1-12     (NRSV)

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.

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According to my Bible, this is the psalm David wrote after the prophet Nathan came to him with the story of the ewe lamb the rich man had stolen from the poor man - a parable he told so that David would understand the severity of his crime against Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, and also against God.  David suddenly understood what he had done as something other than just self-indulgence, but as actions that were not only against the Law, but greatly offensive to God.  His lust, his abuse of the privilege he held as king, his murder of an innocent man so that he could claim Uriah’s wife for himself, all of these sins were abhorrent to God and, quite frankly, to us, the readers of these stories.   We hear it said that David was greatly loved by God, and we wonder, because we know how sinful David was.  We know this story!  As well as many others told in Samuel and Kings and Chronicles.  How, we wonder, could such a flawed person continue to be God’s beloved? 

This psalm goes a long way toward explaining that.  Yes, he sinned.  He sinned egregiously against God, against Uriah and Bathsheba, and against the Laws of his people, the Laws God gave to Moses.  He was guilty of more than just unethical abuse of power.  He committed rape, adultery, and murder, and he forced others to participate in his sin, because he was, after all the king, and his orders and “invitations” could not be refused.  Perhaps he didn’t think about the severity of what he was embarking on when he told his men to go, get Bathsheba and bring her to him so he could enjoy an afternoon’s dalliance with a lovely woman.  But when he did finally realize the evil of that one, selfish action, he repented.  And then he cried out:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.

According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse from me my sin.  

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

Against you, you alone, have I sinned,  and done what is evil in your sight,

Coming before God to proclaim his sins and ask forgiveness, David was forgiven.  David remained greatly beloved of God, a man after God’s own heart.  And so it is for all of us.  

David said, “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.”  And this we still believe, for we know humans are inherently prone to error.  We have to work at doing what is right, and avoiding the wrong.  I grew up believing that my sinfulness was so deeply a part of who I was that there was no chance of heaven.  Even as a small child, confessing to the terrible sin of talking back to my mother, I knew that I was going to spend thousands of years being punished in Purgatory before I would ever know the joy of being in God’s presence.  It is, perhaps, no wonder that I left that church, rejecting God and God’s people.  It is probably not surprising that I chose to do whatever I felt like, since it really didn’t matter whether I was good or bad.  I believed I was going to Hell no matter what I did, and that was that.   It wasn’t until I was taught about a loving, caring and (especially) forgiving God in a 12 Step program that I started to believe that I too, like David, was a beloved child of God.   I had already made a decision to change my life, to give up the drugs and alcohol and other unacceptable behaviors.  But once I had God in my life - even before I returned to church - I was able to give up so much more than just the behaviors.  Once I was able to turn to God, I was able to give up the resentments, the anger, the things that drove me to that life I had been living.  I was able to forsake my old ways.  I was able to confess my transgressions and ask God to forgive me.

Giving up the old ways isn’t a small thing. It’s not simply a decision that one makes one day, and then it’s done.

It’s a process.

Not a once and done thing, but a daily struggle that becomes a daily part of life, snd soon, not a struggle at all.

But the decision to make that change is more than merely something that feels like a good idea at the time. 

It’s like an explosion in which suddenly your soul is freed from the claws of the way it’s always been - of bad decisions and guilt and giving up because you will never get it right, or be good enough. . . 

It’s that moment of epiphany when you become aware that you are free,

Like this dove exploding from its cage.

Many here will have grown up in the church, and never left, and never indulged in the sorts of unacceptable behavior that David did, or that I did.  Many here came to their baptism with a pretty clean heart to begin with.  For others, there may be (or have been) something that is (or was) a struggle.  There may be feelings of guilt or pain, resentment or simmering anger, of inadequacy, of worthlessness.   We may even feel guilty for feeling these things!  For all of us, I suspect, there are aspects of ourselves we would like to improve or change, in order to be more acceptable to God.  And so we read further in the psalm, to share David’s greatest desire, 

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; 

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

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

Create in me a clean heart, O God,  and put a new and right spirit within me.

How do we do this?   How do we make the changes that will accept that clean heart, and right spirit?  About 600 years ago, Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, wrote a series of Spiritual Exercises.  The very first of those exercises is called the Particular Examination of Conscience to be Made Every Day.  In this exercise one focuses on a particular sin or defect and makes note throughout the day of how well that feeling or behavior was avoided, or not.  The object is not to say “Oh, look how bad I am.”  Rather, this practice enables us to say to ourselves “Look at my improvement!”   It is the same thing we do when we change the way we eat, or add particular exercises to our lives, or any other major lifestyle change, if we want to be successful at that new thing.  When Leah started running, she didn’t berate herself because she could only run a short distance.  She measured today against yesterday, and celebrated every improvement.   When she doesn’t do as well as she would like, she makes the determination to do better tomorrow.  When I do this daily Spiritual exercise, I can look at it and see what I did well, and what I need to work on.  So, today I did not indulge in yelling at other drivers even one time.  Yay!  Today I only ate one cupcake, not all of them.  Yay!  Today I remembered to tell my friend how special she is to me.  And if I didn’t do very well today, there is always tomorrow.

It is a given that we will sin.  That we will make mistakes.  That we will trespass against others in one way or another.  We are human, and prone to error.  But, just as David was forgiven, and remained God’s beloved child, so too are we forgiven.  When we forsake our old ways, ask God’s forgiveness, and go forward with a willing spirit to make the changes that are necessary each day, God will create in us a clean heart, a new heart.   A heart that is dedicated to loving God, and teaching others the Good News of God’s love, compassion and especially, God’s forgiveness - the Good News that we have learned from God’s beloved son, our brother, Jesus the Christ.