March 6, 2014 Psalm
51
Thursday Jonah 3:1-10
Romans 1:1-7
Psalm 51 should sound familiar to us as
Lutherans as we use verses from it in a part of the liturgy that we sing in
some seasons – “Create in me a clean heart, O God”. David wrote this psalm
after coming to realize the full sinfulness of his act of adultery with
Bathsheba and subsequent arranged death of her husband Uriah. Admitting his
transgressions he pleads with God to clean him, have mercy, teach him the right
ways to live, and take him back in love and mercy. “Hide your face from my
sin”, he cries. “Don’t look at the evil I have done – look at me again when I
am clean and forgiven”.
But God doesn’t turn his face from us, even
when we are covered with the darkest stain of sin. It is at that time when we
seek his pardon that God reaches out to us to enable us to lift our faces to
God and see the love, forgiveness, welcome, and renewal that is ours through
Christ’s sacrifice for us. Like a loving parent, God cleans the smudges of sin
from our faces, brushes the dust of our willfulness from our shoulders, and
invites us again to take God’s hand in support of living our lives as we
should.
As David writes, “the sacrifice acceptable to
God is a broken spirit”. Our society associates the words “broken spirit” with
negative connotations of someone who has given up hope. But here God is looking
for us to break our spirit of stubbornness in pursuing our own ways over God’s,
looking for us to acknowledge that we are to conduct our lives according to
God’s commandments and God’s path for us. Breaking that spirit of willfulness
releases the spirit of hope and joy for our lives.
Mary Beth Commisso
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