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)

 

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.