Psalm 51 has a historicizing superscription (v. 1 in the Hebrew), which, like all the psalm superscriptions, is a later addition. In this case, the superscription attempts to link the theme of private sin with one of the most notorious (and, ironically, best known) events in David's life: his adulterous affair with Bathsheba (II Samuel 12). The superscription does not mention the murder of Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. This attempt to link the psalm to a specific event in the life of David (as we find also in psalms 52, 54, 56, and 57, among others) is successful only to a point. The superscription also attributes the psalm “To the leader,” presumably the leader of the temple musicians.
Psalm 51 grasps the depth of sin and shows a path toward forgiveness, which will bring true communion with God. Psalm 51 is unusual for a high degree of psychological realism it depicts from the perspective of an individual. This penitential prayer psalm gives voice to our own individual and corporate prayers of repentance. It yearns for forgiveness from God, restoration, and holiness. When we become alert to our own need, we may use this prayer. We can let parts of Psalm 51 teach us how to acknowledge our guilt, to repent (to turn from sin and to God), and to ask for the loving mercy of God, forgiveness, joyful restoration, and inner strength to live a holy life. Barth will discuss this psalm under the topic of the beginning of justification. He finds it easy to understand because it is a simple prayer in I-Thou form. The prayer a prayer of confession. The confession of sin in verses 5-7 have a unified structure, while the prayer for forgiveness and the prayer for renewal inter-cross each other.[1]
Human community, whether between two people or between nations, cannot exist without forgiveness. America is rapidly becoming two nations, not because of economic class, not because of race or gender, but because of a political ideological divide. Positions have hardened, due to the growing number of Americans willing to support a radical critique of American history. Can Americans learn to love their country again, even while praying and working toward mending its flaws? I am not sure. Among the gifts Christianity offers human community is an emphasis upon human sinfulness and the consequent need for human beings to extend forgiveness to each other. Yet, Christians and churches can so embed themselves into one side of the ideological divide that they no longer can offer a legitimate place for self-knowledge, repentance, confession, and forgiveness.
We have need of forgiveness. We have done that which we ought not to have done. We have rebelled against what God wants. We have not loved God with all that we are. We have not extended to others the love God has for them. We have not shown in our word and deed the love that God has for the world. We need forgiveness.
We also need to forgive others. This can be hard. We often invest our thought and behavior into resentment toward people who have done us wrong. Much of our sense of who we are can include that which we resent. Further, other people, who truly need forgiveness from us, often do not ask for it. Some people, who do ask for forgiveness, will do so repeatedly. In other words, they do not mean it when they ask forgiveness, for if they did, they would change their behavior.
God wants to bring healing into our lives. Among the ways God wants to do this is to give us the heart of forgiving persons. We hurt ourselves when we hold resentment in our hearts. We bring healing to our lives when we open ourselves to our need for forgiveness, and the need we have to forgive others.
Psalm 51: 1-2 express the first plea for help as forgiveness, mercy, cleansing. We find a similar emphasis in verse 7 and verse 9. 1 Have mercy (found more frequently in the Psalter than in any other book) on me, O God (Elohim, the preferred divine name in the second book of the Psalter, Psalms 42-72), the only time this phrase occurs in the Hebrew Bible, according to your steadfast love (chesed, kindness of a superior toward an inferior) and according to your abundant mercy. We see here the covenant loyalty, faithfulness, favor, and graciousness of God. One could hardly pray in the way this psalm prays without such confidence. This psalm asks for specific manifestations of kindness for which the psalmist requests. Blot out [from the book] my transgressions or rebellion. 2 Wash (the stain from) me thoroughly (kavas, as in wash vigorously) from my iniquity (perversity), and cleanse me from my sin (missing the mark). Reflect upon what we have learned that the author of this psalm knows. This author knows four things. He knows something intolerable is in his life, this intolerable thing needs to be gone, the removal belongs to God rather than himself, and that he can turn to God with this request because God is merciful. Such knowledge is the beginning of justification.[2]
Psalm 51:3-5 express the rationale for the request for help amid his deep awareness of sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Such a notion is not typical of the mainstream of the religious thought of Israel. 4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight. Sin and guilt so overwhelm the writer that he uses every word he can think of to express what he feels. This thought seems to clash with the original story referenced in the historicizing superscription, in which David sinned not only against God but also against Bathsheba and Uriah. The result is that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. The writer realizes that sin is a disruption of the divine and human relationship. 5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. Given his confidence in divine mercy, he now has the freedom to confess his sinfulness. He shows no attempt to hide the sin. Psalm 32:1-5 and I John 1:8-10 suggest the same orientation. He fully acknowledges it. Theological controversy revolves around the interpretation of this verse. He seems to acknowledge that the entire orientation of his life is toward sin. He is aware of the radical nature of his sin that reaches to the core of every person. What we find here is a focus not on a particular transgression, but a whole life conditioned by sin from its beginning. Sin conditions his whole life from the beginning. He is a sinner by his very existence.[3]
Psalm 51: 6 is the first wisdom interlude. 6 You desire truth (ongoing trustworthiness) in the inward being.[4]Therefore, teach me wisdom in my secret heart, by which he means the inmost core of the individual and the most private seat of internal deliberation. The request for forgiveness in verses 1-2 corresponds to the situation of the one who makes the request. He is the one who has sinned against God, done what is displeasing to God, and against whom God is in the right. He is wrong and guilty. This suggests that human beings are in the position expressed here. They are with God and in the presence of God and have transgressed against God, who can only displease God, not just on the surface but to the very core. Such a confession of sin is a discovery of the true situation of human beings before God. Such awareness of the need for mercy is the beginning of justification, but justification has not yet found its completion.[5]
Psalm 51: 7-12 express the second plea for help in cleansing and pardon. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be (ritually) clean; wash (thoroughly, ritually) me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. Rejoicing reverses the divine crushing. 9 Hide your face from my sins, also the theme of Psalm 103:8-18, Micah 7:18-20, Jeremiah 31:34 = Hebrews 10:17, and blot out (to wipe something clear) all my iniquities. In the wider biblical context, God would forgive, but the consequences would endure. 10 Create (bara') in me a clean heart, (the source of both thoughts and inclinations in the anthropology of the Hebrew Bible) O God (elohim), and put a new and right spirit within me. The author has said that sin is part of human nature, so that the only way to overcome it would be a new act of God in the heart. Such a notion relies upon the Old Testament notion that sin is transgression. Thus, the idea of a new heart is that it is in harmony with the command of God.[6] 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, even though he has said that would be a just judgment, and do not take your holy spirit (only here and Isaiah 63:10-11) from me. The story of Saul is one in which of the Lord removing the divine spirit from the king in I Samuel 16:13-14. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation. In the requests for joy and gladness, we find that from the experience of forgiveness and confession, he enters the light of a new situation in the presence of God. He is reaching toward this supreme gift, but he does not yet have it. One can look forward to a new heart and spirit, rather than backward to a time when it happened.[7] This section of the Psalm concludes with the prayer that God sustain in me a willing spirit.
The psalm has a profound conviction of the sinfulness of something he had done, and as a result, he did not like where he was now living — separated from God. He felt alone and apart; that he and God not only were not in the same room, but they were not in the same universe. He says so plainly: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” In other words, he was his own stigma. From the Greek, stigma refers to a mark made on the skin with a sharp instrument. The ancients used such a “brand” to mark undesirables and became known as a brand of shame. (The marks on the hands and feet of Christ made by the nails of the cross were known as the “stigmata.”) The psalmist feels his sin as something that has burned a brand of shame right through the skin and into the soul. He senses this soul shame keenly.
Sometimes what makes us feel like stigmatized property is not as definite as obvious acts of sin. In those cases, it is more like the houses in which the rumor is that something unsavory happened, but nobody knows for sure. The stigma from the past can distort our image of the present. Many men did not have a good and healthy relationship with their father. The father may have been absent from the family because of work, alcohol, or other problems. The result is that they find it difficult to relate to other men in mature and healthy ways. Some women grew up with mothers who exhibited hostility toward their husbands. Some women grew up with fathers who were absent emotionally, so they seek affirmation from the men in their lives through sex. Others experienced enough abuse from their father that they find it impossible to open their lives and trust the man they marry. In fact, marriage will often bring such difficulties to light.
The grace of God is greater than we can imagine. Prayers like Psalm 51 remind us that God readily answers them. In fact, that is the heart of the Christian gospel — that God can forgive our sins and that Christ can fully restore our connection with God. The redemption of God through Christ means that God removes the stigma of sin on our lives. God makes us spiritually whole and new. Stigmatized property will have its horror filled past. However, God can remove the stain and shame of sin.
Solutions to the stigmata of our lives are seldom straightforward. One partner in the marriage may not want counseling. Even with counseling, someone may get close to the truth about themselves, and then back away, because he or she does not want to face the changes the truth would bring. In the movie, Life as a House, Kevin Kline plays a character who receives a broken-down home from his father, a home he lived in and hated. After he loses his job, he decides to tear down the home and build a new one. He wants to build it with his son, who hates him and his ex-wife. At a key moment in the movie, the father gives his son some gloves and says, “Build this house with me.” His son says his father just wants to tear down the house because he wants to tear down his father. “Try it; it feels good,” Kline says. As they work on the new home together, they restore their relationship. In the last days of his life, Kline helps his family learn how to hug and care for each other again. The home we build with our lives can carry the serious load of sin. The load should make us feel uncomfortable living in the houses we call our lives. In case we cannot find the words to express the load we carry, the Bible even gives us the model prayer found in Psalm 51.
It seems appropriate to conclude with a brief reflection on sin, confession, and forgiveness.
I offer a simple reminder about sin. Each of us has made mistakes. We have made serious mistakes. Frankly, our hearts have committed sins that our hands have not yet gotten around to yet.[8] Pascal said that if everyone knew the innermost thoughts of everyone else, there would not be five friends left on Earth. Yet, our failure does not consist in morally falling. Our failure consists in staying down. Each of us can have a fresh start.[9] We will have tears over so many things. Losing romantic love is a popular one in our songs. We will have tears in the presence of suffering and death. We know how to cry. However, how often do we see ourselves as we truly are and weep? I suspect we do not very often. We have so many ways to justify our behavior. We usually view ourselves from the moral high ground. In fact, can we live in a post-modern culture even sin? We may make mistakes, of course, but do we really sin? Some sense of transgression a norm, of missing the mark morally, would be necessary to bring tears of guilt and self-recognition.
I offer a simple reminder about confession. We do not want to admit to the doctor the quite real problem we are having. In Gorgias, a dialogue by Plato, one of the questions Socrates asks is whether the wicked person is genuinely happy. Some thought that if the person never experienced punishment, the answer was yes. Socrates, however, connected virtue and goodness to a happy life. He thought the philosopher needed to be like a medical doctor. The goal is always health, but sometimes pain is the way to get there. Preachers must think that way. Churches must think that way. Prayers of confession have been painful to me at times. Their absolute statements have awakened me to times when I have fallen short of what God wanted in my life. Most churches encourage frequent confession of sin. Some do so every Sunday through a prayer of confession. Our sins are the same each week. To use an analogy, our homes are the same each week. The dirt is the same. Yet, we clean our homes. If we did not, the dirt will build up. We can say something similar about the condition of the soul. Sins build up. If we do not regularly confess our sins, we neglect the soul.[10]
We need to start acknowledging that deeply held political commitment to an ideology can lead people into sin of which so few will ever gain enough self-awareness to see or feel. One can embed oneself in the ideology that any opponent becomes morally reprehensible. This allows moral self-righteousness to become so much a part of us that we never see the harm we do to self or to others. Since the progressive political movement in America has so much power today, I will use it as an example. The progressive of today can claim that any opponent is a racist, traitor, etc. Half the country is morally reprehensible. They can also use that view of their opponent to remove basic constitutional freedoms. They may not even see what they are doing as hateful, self-righteous, and so on. Yet, the path to healing for the nation is for some such persons see themselves truly. They have lifted themselves on the social justice platform and have looked out at the world from the perspective of their virtue and righteousness. They have justified violence toward any with whom they disagree. For the sake of healing, the public admission of someone in prominence could go a long way toward healing the land. I do not expect that to happen.
[1] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 [61.3] 578-81.
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 [61.3] 578-9.
[3] James L. Mayes (Psalms Interpretation, 201).
[4] The Hebrew feminine plural noun “tuchot” occurs only twice in the OT (also Job 38:36). It derives from verb meaning to "overspread, overlay, coat, besmear."
[5] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 [61.3] 579.
[6] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 239
[7] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 [61.3] 580.
[8] Michael Horton, president of Christians United for Reformation, National & International Religion Report 10 (29 April 1996), 8.
[9] Mary Pickford inspired this thought.
[10] Inspired by an exchange Pope Benedict had with a boy regarding frequent confession.
[11] George Herbert (1593-1633), poet and cleric.
[12] Inspired by Frederick Buechner.
[13] The Faces of Forgiveness, LeRon Shults and Steven Sandage.
No comments:
Post a Comment