Psalm 51 is the best known of the penitential psalms, where individuals or a community come before God asking God’s forgiveness. It is also a type of lament because the worshiper comes to God and begins by expressing his life doesn’t mean much before God. Bonhoeffer calls psalms like these “psalms relating to guilt, and includes psalms 6, 32, 38, 102, 130 and 143 in this category. They turn our entire trust to the forgiving grace of God, so that Luther has quite rightly called them the ‘Pauline Psalms.’”
Attributed to King David, the heading indicates that the origin of this psalm is being prayed by him after committing the grievous sin of adultery with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11), and then going farther to sending her husband, Uriah, into battle to be killed. As Christians we relate it to our use at the most penitential service of the year, Ash Wednesday.
To really understand this psalm, you need to relate it to the darkest, lowest moment you have had in your life. I wouldn’t want to air any dirty laundry, but at that point I have felt worthless, having no self-esteem, and totally unworthy of any goodness. Like Luther in the latest movie I have felt like laying prostrate on the floor of the church.
It is interesting to me that the psalmist prays to be healed from the inside out. Certainly, what we need most is a different heart and spirit that will lead us not to sin in the same way. That changed “inside” can only come from God. We call it renewal for us, based on God’s grace.
“A clean heart means a new beginning, a capacity for new living.” (Brueggemann) This can only happen through the Holy Spirit, the presence of which we all have from the time of the Christian Pentecost.
Let us pray:
Holy One, help us to remember that we never can get, or be, too low so that your grace cannot reach us. Amen.
Pastor Roger
Monday: Psalm 46
