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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Imagine the scandal! A national leader has a sexual relationship with a married woman other than his own wife, she becomes pregnant, and he essentially murders her husband to conceal the misdeeds. If such things happened in our time, the non-stop, 24-hour news‑cycle would likely make the national leader’s continuing in office virtually impossible, the scandal unrecoverable. Yet, such events, which we do not have to imagine because the Bible reports them (2 Samuel 11:1-12:25), actually took place some three-thousand years ago, and the national leader, King David, survived in his office, no doubt in large part because he repented of his sin and was forgiven. Coming from that context is Psalm 51, the psalm with which we began tonight’s service, and the first of the seven of what are usually called “Penitential Psalms” on which we will focus tonight, the following five Wednesdays, and Maundy Thursday, continuing a tradition appropriate for the penitential season of Lent now underway.
After Psalm 23, Psalm 51 may be the best‑known of all the psalms, or at least parts of it may be best-known, as they are used for the Offertories of the old Lutheran Hymnal and still today in Lutheran Service Book’s Divine Service, Setting Three, and parts of Psalm 51 are used for versicles and responses in Matins and Vespers. Different commentators divide the psalm into different parts, but they probably all would agree that the whole of the psalm forms a prayer of true penitence, with sorrow over sin, trust that God will forgive the sin, and even a desire to bring forth the fruits of such repentance.
There is at least one current candidate for our top national office who is quick to point out the sins of others but seems to be unwilling to admit much, if any, of his own sin at all. To some extent we all may be like him, seeing the speck in another person’s eye but blind to the log in our own eye (Matthew 7:3-5). King David had no such qualms in today’s Psalm. In the Psalm he readily and repeatedly refers to his transgressions, iniquity, and sin as debt, dirt, and a corruption that goes back to the moment he was conceived. And, as in King David’s case, so also in our cases: original sin leads to countless actual sins, and possibly even to what are called “mortal” or “deadly” sins such as adultery and murder, which mortal sins drive the Holy Spirit away from believers and require them to be re‑converted to repentance and faith, with such good works that should naturally flow from repentance and faith. Regardless of whether or not our actual sins are that heinous, we all share the same sinful nature, and we all are accountable for our sin from the moment of our conceptions. Like King David, we sin primarily against God, even as we sin against our neighbors. For our sin, we deserve death now in time (to return to the dust from which we were created), and we deserve the torment of hell for eternity.
Out of His great mercy, love, and compassion, God sent the prophet Nathan in order to call King David to repentance and faith; God sent the prophet Joel, as we heard in the Old Testament Reading and Verse (Joel 2:12-19), in order to call the people of Jerusalem and Judah to repentance and faith; God sent the apostle Paul, as we heard in the Epistle Reading (2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10) in order to call the Corinthians to repentance and faith; and so God also sends pastors today in order to call us to repentance and faith. As we, led by the Holy Spirit, genuinely pray Psalm 51, we, like King David, confess not only knowledge of our sin that is ever before us but also sorrow over our sin and trust in God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake. And, so, as He forgave King David, God forgives us. When we so repent and believe, then God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever it might be, not because of our confession but for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ.
No amount of other sacrifices or burnt offerings can make up for our sin before God, only the sacrifice of His sinless Son brings about our forgiveness. God in human flesh, Jesus Christ was sacrificed once on the cross for all people, including you and me. Jesus’s resurrection from the grave showed that God the Father accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. For Jesus’s sake, God the Father does not despise our broken spirits and contrite hearts. For Jesus’s sake, God the Father blots out our transgression. For Jesus’s sake, God the Father washes us thoroughly from our iniquity. For Jesus’s sake, God the Father cleanses us from our sin. As the words of today’s Gradual put it (Psalm 103:8-14), the Lord remembers that we are dust, shows compassion to those who believe in Him, and removes our sin from us as far as the east is from the west.
One commentator suggests that Psalm 51 “shows us how [King] David struggle[d] to gain an inward and conscious certainty of the forgiveness of sin, which was announced to him by [the prophet] Nathan” (Keil-Delitzsch, 134). We might add that the Psalm also shows us that King David had a general idea of how to gain that “inward and conscious certainty”: namely God’s external and objective means of grace. For example, in the Psalm King David refers to being purged and washed by hyssop, a plant whose hairy branches were used both with the Old Testament’s water of cleansing (Numbers 19:1-22) and with the blood of the Passover lamb (TLSB, 896) and other sacrifices. You and I receive the forgiveness of sins and gain “inward and conscious certainty” of that forgiveness by the New Testament’s water and blood, and other means of grace. We are washed and cleaned in the water of Holy Baptism. As King David privately confessed his sins to the prophet Nathan and was individually absolved (2 Samuel 12:13), so do we privately confess the sins that we know and feel in our hearts for our pastors to individually absolve us. So baptized and absolved, we are admitted to this Altar, from where we receive bread that is Christ’s Body and wine that is Christ’s Blood, given and shed for you and for me for the forgiveness of our sins. In all these ways we may have “inward and conscious certainty” that God forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
The ashes that many of us now wear are hardly a means of grace such as Holy Baptism, individual Holy Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar, and we do not wear the ashes hypocritically, as Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading accuses some of doing (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21). But, the ashes we wear genuinely relate to our confession both of the death we deserve on account of our sin and of the forgiveness we receive through God’s means of grace, and we recognize that, through those means of grace, God creates in us clean hearts, renews within us right and willing spirits, and restores to us the joy of His salvation. Likewise, through His Word and Sacraments, God places His truth in our inward beings and teaches us wisdom in the secret places of our hearts, minds, and consciences. God opens our lips, and we, in the Divine Service and elsewhere, bring forth the sacrifices of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His Name (Hebrews 13:15), including who we are in relationship to Him and including our prayers for His people everywhere, and even prayers for our national leader.
Another current candidate for our top national office last night was quick to confess at least his own failing in regard to the debate last week that apparently contributed to his fifth place finish in New Hampshire. To some extent we can be grateful for that candidate’s admission and the accompanying vow never to let that happen again, but we probably also know that not only do candidates for political office regularly break their promises, but also to the extent that we are all sinful by nature we all will continue to sin, all too often in the same way that we have sinned before. This Ash Wednesday, this season of Lent, and always, we thank and praise God that He enables us to live in the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, and we thank and praise God that by His means of grace he enables us to be inwardly and consciously sure of His forgiveness unto eternal life with Him in heaven.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +