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CONTENTS
--Housing --People Christian Education --PYC
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Preached by O. Benjamin Sparks, Pastor Second Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia Ash Wednesday, March 1, 2006
MY SIN IS EVER BEFORE ME
Psalm 51: 1 – 12, 17; Matthew 6:1, 7 – 8, and 16 - 18
My sin is ever before me, wrote the psalmist, and before us in Richmond these past two months, death has been ever before us – in car crashes and in murder most foul. Death, Paul tells us, is the wages of sin, and sin is the denial of the human destiny that has been given us by God. We deny our own destiny, and we drive too fast and crash into our neighbor’s car and cut off the destiny of young people with all their years before them. The wages of sin is death – and if sin is too strong a word, then surely we may speak of the consequences of irresponsible behavior that destroys the God-intended destiny of another. Whether it shows forth as pride and arrogance, trying to escape the boundaries of human life appointed by the Creator; or whether it is self-abnegation and a servility that refuses to lay hold upon a rightful place in the community; it is sin. It is often easier to be a victim than to assume responsibility. It is often more tempting to run roughshod over those around us than to give each one her due, and tame what one writer has called our “fat relentless egos.” (1) We are not a people any longer (perhaps we once were) who speak easily about sin. We leave that word to the Christians we look down on and laugh at. Our liturgies and lectionary texts often give us permission to avoid the unpleasant facts of human existence. My friend tells the story of using a Prayer of Confession from the now over 10 year old Book of Common Worship for the first time in her congregation. She printed the prayer in the bulletin, not really focusing on its differences from the original. The prayer is a revision (some might say expurgated version) of what has long been known as the General Confession. Most of us know it: “ Almighty and merciful God, we have erred and strayed from our ways like lost sheep. . .we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts . . ..” (2) Evidently there was a wandering Episcopalian in that Presbyterian congregation that morning. He confronted the preacher at the door after worship, and wanted to know why she had changed the prayer. “Who gave you the right to tamper with those words that have been spoken by the church for over three hundred year?’ He wanted and answer and he wanted it then. He said, “I learned it this way: ‘We have left undone the things we ought to have done, and we have done those things we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.’” He said, “You left that out.” “But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders,’ and you left that out, too. Who changed this prayer? Did you change the prayer? How could you leave out the most important parts?” I took my friend a moment to figure out what in the world was going on, but finally she realized that he was accustomed to the 1940’s edition of Common Prayer, and she had used an updated version. Miserable offenders. No health in us. My sin is ever before me, O Lord blot it out! Are these changes just matters of liturgical fashion? Or are they evidence of changing philosophical fashion? Do they betray a too precious view of ourselves as human creatures? When we come up against the tragedy and death of recent weeks in this city, then we’re apt to believe that the human condition – apart from God’s mercy – is indeed miserable, and that we’re all of us – through apathy and fear and the refusal to speak and vote and act and fight – guilty for the conditions that allow crime to be rampant, traffic laws to be unenforceable, and internet pornography and video game violence to be two of the most profitable ventures in the world. And car crashes all too common. And we appear to be helpless. Or else we simply accept as inevitable that some death must result from too many and too big automobiles, and too much wallowing in violence, and too much speed and too much drinking and driving. I mean our freedoms, which we prize above human safety, require at least some human sacrifice. Thus we are complicitly miserable offenders, and even if there is heath in some of us and in some of our communities (and there is, thank God) our general culture is awash in good old-fashioned, 1940’s-Common-Prayer- book sin. Our sin is ever before us. One supposes that Paul, well trained Pharisee that he was, knew this psalm well, knew what Jews and Christians have claimed about it from the earliest days, that it was David’s song of deep lament and abjection – seeing all around him, as he did, the consequences of his adultery with Bathsheba and his arranged murder of her husband, Uriah the Hittite. For Paul himself was able to write the church in Rome (sounds just like this psalm) that the good he wanted to do and that he knew he was supposed to do – he could not manage, and the evil he wanted to avoid – from that, too, he could not restrain himself. Paul, like his ancestor David, knew what it meant to experience a failure of will, and knew that without God’s mercy and help he was bound for perdition. Like Peter, the impulsive apostle, Paul knew that sin was like a roaring lion, looking for prey, crouching at the door, waiting to pounce – not only in something abjectly wrong or evil – but in failures of courage, and failures of will. Peter, forgiven, would never forget that night in the courtyard of the High Priest’s house: “Didn’t I see you with him?” “Aren’t you one of his followers?” Then came Peter’s craven answer; “I never knew the man.” Once he even insisted on his ignorance with curses. And the gospel writers have never let the church forget. I’ve been reading a book of Reformed Prayers, compiled and introduced by Lamar Williamson and Howard Rice. In their introduction to the volume, they write of the distinctives of our praying in the Calvinist tradition. In these prayers, gathered from four centuries, the themes that repeat themselves are reverence and awe, a strong sense of God’s glory and providence, deep gratitude for the gift of life and creation, and language that mimics the scriptures and psalms. But there is also this: “Reformed Christians tend to be realistic, if not pessimistic, about the human condition. As a part of the exercise of self-examination, prayer is a way to gain perspective . . . . Reformed people did not need to pretend that all is well.” (3) Miserable offenders. There is no health in us. Is this too pessimistic about the human condition? If so, the alternative is not too much optimism, nor is it a culture of lies where our leaders try to convince us that they have done good things for us when they do us grave harm – grave irreparable harm. Listen, my vigorous claim about the reality of sin tonight is not based on psychological assumptions – and certainly not about our feelings. The claim invites us all to an honest, reflective appraisal of the human condition in which even the redeemed are caught up. Bad things don’t just happen by chance; people don’t starve to death because they are unlucky and we are lucky because we have a glut of food; automobile crashes are rarely accidental – though it may help us to use the term. Every wreck I’ve ever had has been a failure of attention – on my part or the other driver’s. Murders are planned, or driven by turf battles in the drug wars, or the result of fear and loathing, or explosions of anger. Yes, parents and young people have choices, but the culture and the internet are sewers, and if this is freedom, I dare not think what enslavement looks like. Neither is my claim about sin and invitation to wallow in despair. This is an appeal to open our minds and hearts to the reality of the human condition: We are all of us afflicted: enemies and friends, Palestinians and Israelis, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan, terrorists and law abiding citizens. We can escape the reality of our condition – and when we mark it, and see it for what it is, and see God’s infinite mercy towards us. Then we truly begin to live in freedom. When I come to have the ashes imposed, I am freely admitting that, but for God’s almighty power in the death and resurrection of Jesus, death would be all there is. The ashes remind us that we are indeed fallen and we can’t get up on our own. (4) We need God’s help. We need God’s forgiveness for our sin. We need God’s healing power for our sickness. We need God’s love, like a mother who gathers her children, for nourishment and protection. The ashes remind us that individually and corporately we are miserable offenders, and that by God’s grace we are pardoned and invited into the true and gracious liberty of the sisters and brothers of Jesus. When the ashes mark us – they remind us that even in our condition – God’s love has reached us to lift us up, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God. (5) My sin is ever before me, yes; but that is not the last word of the psalm: Create in me a clean heart, O God; and put a new and right spirit within me. Restore me to the joy of your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit. (Psalm 51)
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