Dearest e-votees-
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…and to dust you shall return.
Peace,
Karl
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1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. 5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. 6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. 14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. 17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
This is the psalm appointed for Ash Wednesday. The designators of appointed readings omitted two things.
Verses 18-19 were left out which say:
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.
I suppose since we don’t practice animal sacrifice that was deemed not so necessary.
More troubling to me is the omission of the preface:
To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
The context of the psalm is revealed. David has committed a grievous sin which will result in the death of Uriah (Bathsheba’s husband) and the death of the son of David and Bathsheba. Nathan reveals to David his sin in a parable of a greedy king who deprives a commoner of his only sheep. (see 2 Samuel 11:27b-12:15)
But then again, maybe it is good to read the psalm without knowing the whole back story. It makes it such that it is easier to read David’s “me”s and “my”s and “I”s as our own. We, too, have sinned and transgressed. We, like Adam and Eve, have made choices that lean us hard into death. We, too, have been blessed by so much yet make choices that deprive the less wealthy. When we are honest about our sinfulness, our despair, our broken places and our contrition we find a receptive God to that sacrifice. God does not despise us but loves us and gives all in order that we might be renewed, restored and reborn.
The mark of ashes in the form of a cross perfectly weds our lamentation and God’s willingness to enter into our mortality to pull us out. Thanks be to God.
God, help us always to remember we are dust and to dust we shall return. Amen.
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