Fifth Sunday in Lent: God’s Word against Us
Meets God's Word for Us
Jer
31.31-34; Psa
51.1-12; Heb
5.5-10; John
12.20-33
Prayer of Invocation
Father, you alone can bring
into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace
to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and
varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true
joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Prayer of Illumination
Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of
your Holy Spirit, that as the Scriptures are reflected upon and your Word
is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you have to say to us today. Amen.
Proclamation
We entered this season of Lent with a courageous
prayer: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me, and know my thoughts! See
if there be any idolatrous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psa
139.23-24)!”
And in this season of Lent we have sought to
take God’s word to us seriously. For Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany have
reminded us about what we pray most weeks in our orienting prayer: “You have
the words of eternal life.” Christ not only has given us words that are meant
as an authoritative guide for us to live in ways that please Him, bring
Him glory, and bring blessing to others, they are also words that bring healing
and restoration even as they confront us, even as they are against us in our
rebellion and waywardness.
In this season, we have turned these words that
God has spoken to us into questions--questions with which we examine our lives
with God:
What
makes us doubt the goodness of God?
Do
we love our enemies?
Who
do we serve?
What
are we searching for?
What
do we worry about?
In
what ways do we hide from God and others?
What
do we deny ourselves?
Do
we serve more than one master?
Are
we using our gifts for the body of Christ?
Are
we hearers and doers of the word?
Are
we angry with God and others?
Does
our lifestyle contradict the gospel?
Are
we hospitable and welcoming?
Are
there signs of greed in our lives?
What
do we complain about?
Have
we lost our first love?
Do
we love God and neighbor?
Are
we more concerned with being successful than faithful?
What
do we really want?
What
do we feed on in order to feel better?
With these questions, we come to God to face our
sin: our waywardness, our failure, and our rebellion as it relates to God and
His word to us. And in so doing, we find that we do not measure up. We fall
short. Although we are a people who claim to know the truth, a people who
aspire to be faithful to God in attitude, word, and deed, when we are honest
with ourselves and with God, we come to realize that we are also a people who
fail, who are unfaithful, who fall short of God’s desire for us. This is part of
what it means to be a people who “speaks the truth”. Sometimes we are in the
right, but often we are in the wrong.
How do we respond when we are confronted by God?
What happens when we encounter God’s word such that it finds us in rebellion? What
do we do when God’s word is against us? What do we do when we do not measure up
to God’s will, to God’s words of life for us? What happens when we are
confronted with our sin, a concept that is unpalatable in our modern
world.
Too often, we minimize our sin by comparing
ourselves with others (“at least I’m not as bad as that person”), or we justify
our sin (“I was tired, I was wronged, this comes from my rough upbringing, it’s
not my fault, it’s not that bad”), or we simply do not take the time to examine
our lives for fear of what we might find.
Psalm 51 offers us a model for what to do when
we are confronted with our sin by God’s word to us. We start by meeting God’s
word with God’s word:
“Have
mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your
abundant mercy (Ps 51.1)
We appeal to God on the basis of His own
self-revelation: “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the
LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast
love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands of generations,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin (Exod 34.6-7).’” When we are
confronted by our sin, we appeal to God in the way He has characterized Himself
to us in His word: His mercy, His compassion, and His commitment to show
steadfast love. We meet God’s convicting word, God’s word of judgment against
us, with His promise of mercy and compassion for us. And in doing this,
we see how God’s convicting word to us is also a word of life.
One of the more striking lessons we learn from
this prayer of David, is that God not only invites us to acknowledge our sin
and appeal to His mercy, He also encourages us to ask for restoration, a remake
of our whole being. Technically, in Psalm 51 David doesn’t actually ask for
forgiveness in this psalm, though it is no doubt under the surface. Instead, he
asks for something more radical, more enduring: he asks to be made new.
He asks that his transgressions be blotted out, erased, washed, cleansed:
“Blot
out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from
my sin! (Ps 51.1b-2)
He asks that he be purged, washed clean, whiter
than snow (51.7). He asks that he hear once again joy and gladness (51.8). He
asks that God would create in him a clean heart, and renew a right spirit
within him (51.10); that he restore unto him the joy of his salvation and
uphold him with a willing spirit (51.12). What David wants is more than just
acquittal from wrong-doing; he wants to be made whole. He wants to be healed at
the root. He wants to be a different kind of person, have a different kind of
being in the world.
We get the basis for this kind of prayer in Ps
51.3-6:
“For
I know that my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me (51.3).” I can’t
escape this propensity I have for waywardness and rebellion. It is with me at
every turn.
“Against
you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight (51.4).”
Though our sins are often against others, as in
the case of David who harmed Bathsheba, Uriah, and Israel, the ultimate offense
is against God who has called us to a life that brings blessing to others. Here
David reminds us that in our wounding of others, in our offenses against
others, we (1) commit evil, and (2) we ultimately wrong God. Our pride, our
jealousy, our slander, our despising of others, our hating our enemies, our
slothfulness, our injustice, our apathy, our lust and sexual immorality, our
worldliness, our discontentment, our ingratitude, our selfishness, our anxiety
and frustration, our impatience and irritability, our anger, and our greed not
only hurt us and others, they are also an affront against God--the giver of
life and all good things.
David acknowledges that his sinful act against
Bathsheba and Uriah, his adultery, rape, and murder, are only the tip of the
iceberg. Much more lies under the surface. “Behold, I was brought forth in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me (51.5). Sin is more than an
event, it is a condition, a disease that we are born with. It needs eradication
and healing. As you confront your own sin in this season of Lent, maybe you
feel like I do: where can I go to escape from this dire condition? How can I
free myself from my entangled web of sinfulness, from the layers of waywardness
and rebellion that seem to be at every corner of my being? How can I move forward
and not be overcome by despair as I get a glimpse of the depth of my sickness,
of my corruption, of my brokenness, as I languish in the radicality of my
waywardness, of how off the mark I am?
The hope is in God’s sustaining mercy and His
power to renew. David reminds himself that God delights in truth in the inward
being, and that He will teach wisdom in the secret place of the heart (51.6).
God desires to see us whole again. And he matches that desire with “abundant
mercy” and “steadfast, never-quitting love” (51.1). For this reason, David has
the courage to not only face his sin but also to hope and to pray: purge me,
wash me, blot out my iniquities, create in me a clean heart, renew a right
spirit within me, restore me, and uphold me.
We are not left alone to overcome our sin. It is
not that God has simply given us His words of life, and then left us to sort it
out on our own. He has given us His very self, in Jesus, our high priest (Heb
5.5-10). He is the source of our salvation, our deliverance from our dire
condition. Through Jesus, the author of Hebrews reminds us, we can go
with confidence to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace in our
time of need (Heb 4.16). And this mediator, this one who was sent to help us
can sympathize with our weaknesses because he too has been tempted as we are
(Heb 4.15).
What is more, He was without sin. So he can
offer Himself as a sacrifice of atonement on our behalf, that we might find the
purging, cleansing, and new creation that we hope for. He, like a seed, has
fallen to the ground and died in order to bear fruit in our lives (John 12.24).
For, as John 12 reminds us, He came for this very thing--to deal with our sin,
to atone for our waywardness, to cast out the ruler of this world--so that we
can be freed to love God and neighbor. This is the new covenant of Jer
31.31-34, made possible in the blood of Jesus.
Eucharist
So, as we come to this Table, we are on the one
hand confronted with God’s word against us, or at least against our sin: we are
sinners; we have rebelled against God; we have not been faithful to His call on
our lives. But we are also met with His word that reminds us of his steadfast
love and mercy: He has made a way for us to be purged, cleansed, for our sins
to be blotted out, for us to be a new creation. For in keeping with the New
Covenant promise, Jesus has provided a way for us to be forgiven, but even more
radically to be healed and restored. And this gives us the courage and the
confidence to continue to war against the sin that entangles us and weighs us
down. We do not need to pretend; we can face our waywardness and all the ways
we do not measure up. We can be sure that as we wrestle with the discouraging
reality of our sinfulness, God will meet us with mercy and restoration. Within
this framework, we can see that acknowledgement of sin is actually God’s grace
in our lives; by the Spirit God enables us to see ourselves as we are--wayward
and rebellious--so that we can see who we really are, beloved, forgiven,
healed, treasures of God. It is only by grace that we can say the kinds of
things that are modeled for us in this psalm. In a mysterious and beautiful
way, God, through his mercy, delights in truth in our inward being and He
teaches us wisdom--a truth and wisdom that comes to us as we on the one hand
receive His words of judgment that are met with His word of mercy and
healing.
Benediction
Now may the God of peace who brought again from
the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the
eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will,
working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to
whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment