Email to the Psalms Group preparing for Sunday, January 17, 2021
Dear Psalms friends,
The “way” we have been traveling the past 2 weeks—with Psalms 1 and 2 and then Psalms 15 and 24, plus hearing Fr. Paul’s sermon last Sunday calling us to repentance from contempt—makes a focus on Psalm 32 seem timely. Of course, it’s a well-known psalm of thanksgiving and wisdom instruction that poetically contemplates the joy of forgiveness. It teaches us about our sin’s destructiveness and how God awakens us to repentance and to confession of sin.
I like Tim Keller’s statement of the theme of Psalm 32: “The happiest (‘most blessed’ ) people in the world are those who not only know they need to be deeply forgiven but also have experienced it.” (Songs of Jesus, p. 59)
Here are 2 other quotes by famous Anglicans that I contemplated this week:
O plain, and easy, and simple way of salvation, wanting no subtleties of art or science, no borrowed learning, no refinements of reason, but all done by the simple natural motion of every heart, that truly longs after God. For no sooner is the finite desire of the creature in motion towards God, but the infinite desire of God is united with it, co-operates with it. And in this united desire of God, and the creature, is the salvation and life of the soul brought forth.
—William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Prayer
(God meets us more than halfway in any prayer or spiritual longing. Rest in the awareness of God’s longing for you.)
“What we are, what we have, even our salvation, all is gift, all is grace, not to be achieved but to be received as a gift freely given. God’s bias in favor of sinners is so immense that it is said we will be surprised at those we find in heaven whom we had not expected to encounter there.”
—Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, (2000)
Because of my own struggles both to stay in reality and also avoid self-contempt, I need these reminders of the relentless, unfailing love (hesed) of God that shows up again in Psalm 32:10. In the security and safety of God’s unfailing love (“his bias”), we can learn to speak truth about our sin. I’ll send you a lesson on Psalm 32 tomorrow.
[From Doug: Do you have a Book of Common Prayer (BCP)? If not, you can download a PDF version (great for searching!) from here from the ACNA website. BCP resources are coming next.]
Last week we looked briefly at the prayers of confession in the BCP on pp.12 and 130. Also check out the introduction to Confession of Sin on pp.11-12 in your BCP, as well as The Great Litany on pp. 91-97. These tools for confession in our BCP remind me how relieved I was back in 1999 when I first experienced Anglican worship and discovered that Anglicans recognize that sin patterns of the faithful remain disruptive in our transformation into the likeness of Jesus Christ.
Entrusting myself and each of you to God in Christ,
Toni