3-25-12
Jerusalem
Psalm 51
Have mercy on me, o God, according
to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my
transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from
my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned and
done with is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and
blameless when you pass judgment. Indeed,
I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
You desire truth in my inward being,
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret hear.
Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter
than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit
from me. Restore to me the joy of your
salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to
you. Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O
God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth
will declare your praise. For you have
no delight in sacrifice, if I were to give a burnt offering you would not be
pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God
is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Do
good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, then you
will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
While on internship, I was able to attend
the national youth gathering in New Orleans.
Thousands of Lutheran youth filled with Superdome, brought together by a
love of God and a desire to serve. One
of the speakers during the gathering was Jay Bakker, son of Tammy Faye and Jim
Bakker. One could easily tell that he
was nervous, being surrounded by so many people, but there he stood and let us
know how good we Lutherans have it. He
let us know that growing up he had never heard of the idea of grace. He had not heard that God loved him solely
because he is a child of God, he had only heard that he was not good enough and
had to be perfect in order for God to show him any mercy. Hearing of God’s grace, of God’s love and
mercy, which we take so much for granted having heard of it our entire lives,
was a life changing experience for Him, just as it was for Martin Luther, and
just as it can be for many others, if only they hear about God’s grace.
The psalmist for today’s psalm had much the
same experience as well. He knew that he
was a sinner from even in his mother’s womb, there as not a day that he was not
a sinner, much like us. None of us is
perfect, none of us can claim to be anything but a sinner. Our actions do nothing but heap condemnations
upon us, yet God still gives us grace and mercy, God still loves and cares for
us. It can be easy to believe ourselves
as better than this, as if we are good saints instead of sinners. We can cling to comparisons, saying that we
are better than Hitler or Manson or bank robbers, yet we are all still sinners,
all worthy of nothing but destruction.
Under our own power, we are worthy of nothing besides destruction. But God acts in order to save us from that
destruction, saves us from ourselves. Through
our Baptisms God makes us into new beings.
We die to the sinners that we were and are raised alongside Christ as
saints and we are filled with the Holy Spirit.
Each day this baptism is renewed by God, not through our own actions but
by God’s amazing grace. Each day we are
made new and our hearts are cleansed and we are given the joy of knowing our
salvation. Each and every day we are
shown forgiveness by our loving God .
And
yet it can be difficult for us to go and spread that good news of God’s love. It can be embarrassing or frightening to let
people know that we are Christians or that we are enthusiastic about God. We don’t want to be seen as some holy roller,
Jerry Falwell type that is out of touch with the world today. We don’t want to
break that rule that states that to have civil conversation, we can’t talk
about politics, money, or religion. All
we want to do is fit in, not stick out, because the nail that sticks out gets
the hammer. Yet what does the psalmist
say? O Lord open my lips and my mouth
will sing your praise. Outside of
worship, how often would we say those words, how often do we want to sing God’s
praise, how often do we want to go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ
has come and has saved us, that God Himself emptied himself, took upon himself
the life of a slave to all people, and has saved us through his sacrifice. It can be a very frightening thing, to share
our faith with people. There is a
constant fear of rejection, that we will be looked down upon or avoided. Yet we are called to do so, we are called to
rejoice in God’s mercy and to proclaim God’s love for us. Why?
Because people need to hear it, people need to know that they are love
and that there is hope for the future, not just the chance to become wormfood
in our coffins.
Yes
we are sinners, our very cores are filled with sin as is the world around
us. Sin reaches into every aspect of our
lives and corrupts and corrodes is. When
we do good works or are even asked to, we weigh them against the benefits that
we will receive as well. We look towards
our own pleasure, even when it means death and destruction for people that we
will never see, through our consumerism and ignorance. We take life and the world for granted,
instead of reveling in the wonder of God and the joy that God brings and the
majesty of God’s creation. We turn our
hearts continually away from God, with hardly a look back except for Sunday
mornings, and still God loves and cares for us, and still God has mercy upon us
because we are His beloved children. No
matter how royally we mess up in our lives, God is still there to support and
care for us, even if our families and our friends leave us behind and scorn us,
God is still there holding onto us and comforting us. When we see that hold upon us, when we see God’s love and
compassion for us, truly see and feel it, we are changed. In that instant we see God’s activity in our
lives and we see the changes and the cleansing that God has upon our hearts and
we are made new, we begin to live with the Spirit instead of fighting against
it. Only god has this power, this power
to change us from the sinner into the saint, the power to make our hearts whole
and our will to be in accordance with His, that we may care for our brothers
and sisters, but human and animal. It is
God, not us, who makes us into faithful people and followers of Christ,
it
is God and only God who has the power to push back the darkness of this world,
to break the bonds of Sin that hold us down and pulls us into doing that which
we do not wish to do, those things that we know are against God and yet we do
them, the gossiping and slandering and addictive behaviors and self-importance
that infects our lives and our hearts.
And God does these things out of love for us and out of God’s desire to
be close to us at all times, to suffer alongside us and to lift us up when all
hope appears to be lost.
This
is the message that so many need to hear, that there is one who will be with them
through everything, even beyond death God is there to care for us. It can seem to be too good to be true, that
God would love even the worst of us, yet it is.
And in thankfulness to God for loving us so much, we offer ourselves to
Him, we give God our hearts and our bodies in order that He may be
glorified. That is the meaning of God’s
Work, Our Hands. We do the work of God
because that is our truest offering to Him.
We love because God first loved us and we serve because god first served
us, not to earn anything for ourselves or to gain His love. We are given the gift of God’s grace freely,
free of any and all cost, because of love.
Could there possibly be anything more amazing that we should rejoice
about or that we should proclaim to others?
I think not, and I give thanks to God for all that He has done, for
cleansing our hearts, for making us alive in Him instead of dead in Sin, and
for supporting and loving us through it all.
May we now not be afraid and go out and open our mouths to sing God’s
praise and to help people see the joy that life has to offer in Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
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