Email preparing for Sunday, January 24, 2021
Dear Psalms friends,
After focusing on Psalm 32 for the first time in our group last Sunday, it seems timely to focus on Psalm 51 this coming Sunday. These are the most well-known of the penitential psalms. In our January lectionary readings, we have also recently read Psalms 6 and 38, two other penitential psalms. How can we actually use these penitential psalms as penitence? And what is penitence anyway?
I think that a deep understanding of penitence, sorrow and remorse for sin, must start with comprehending our dignity and value/worth as humans created in the image of God, and then grasping God’s character of unfailing love and unlimited power with His bias toward love, mercy and grace and forgiveness. One definition of sin is independence from God, human autonomy—living in distrust of God and refusing to depend on and entrust my life to his care. How do you define sin, and (Doug’s favorite question!) how has that changed over time? Ask yourself the same questions about repentance.
As I type, I’m asking God to continue to reveal to each of us who our Triune God is and who we are as his creations and, in Christ, his adopted children. In the security/shelter/refuge of the love and grace of God in Christ, we can step into reality with God and start looking increasingly realistically at our wounds and our sins (specific attitudes, thoughts and actions and the self-absorbed patterns they become over time).
We humans tend to protect ourselves from the hurt and pain of sin (both our own sin and that of others) with coping mechanisms like denial, minimizing, justifying, and rationalizing. God knows our hearts, our real selves, and knows what we need to “wake up to” next in our lives. Let’s notice the “unrest” in ourselves. What prevents me and you from loving and serving God with a “quiet mind”? (BCP, p. 13) Those restless thoughts and feelings, when not projected onto others but owned as our own, can lead us into new awareness, new grief, new repentance, and ongoing transformation and freedom in Christ. Change is marvelously, miraculously, wonderfully possible!
“God, I invite your searching gaze into my heart. Examine me through and through; find out everything that may be hidden within me. Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares. See if there is any path of pain I’m walking on, and lead me back to your glorious, everlasting ways—the path that brings me back to you.” Psalm 139:23-24 (The Passion Translation)
Look for your Psalm 51 lesson tomorrow. Read 2 Samuel 11-12 to understand the superscription relating this prayer to David’s confession of murder and adultery, remembering that Psalm 51’s purpose is personal, to help each of us move through our own blindness to increasing light in Christ.
Reflect on this old hymn, “The Light of the World Is Jesus,” in Epiphanytide, as we inwardly digest Psalm 51:
The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin,
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Like sunshine at noonday, His glory shone in;
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Refrain:
Come to the light, ’tis shining for thee;
Sweetly the light has dawned upon me;
Once I was blind, but now I can see:
The Light of the world is Jesus!
No darkness have we who in Jesus abide;
The Light of the world is Jesus!
We walk in the light when we follow our Guide!
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Ye dwellers in darkness with sin-blinded eyes,
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Go, wash at His bidding, and light will arise;
The Light of the world is Jesus!
No need of the sunlight in Heaven we’re told;
The Light of the world is Jesus!
The Lamb is the Light in the city of gold,
The Light of the world is Jesus!
In his love and light,
Toni