The psalm for this day, Psalm 51, calls for a story. The scribes who assembled the poetry, prayers and songs that grew into the collection we know as the book of Psalms, added a brief introductory note to this one, “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”
That is quite a story—about power, desire, and deception. It begins in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle – but that year king David sent his generals out and he himself stayed in Jerusalem.
Late one afternoon, he rose from his couch and, walking about on the roof terrace, he saw a woman bathing, a very beautiful woman. He sent one of his aides to find out who she was, learned that her husband was out with the army, and sent for her.
She came over, and perhaps they had a couple of drinks; the record doesn’t go into details. They made love, and perhaps that’s not the right choice of words, assuming that Bathsheba likely had little say in the matter. She went home, and a few weeks later, there was a message for the king. I imagine it was a handwritten note David himself opened and read. It was brief and to the point: “I’m pregnant. Bathsheba.”
Right away the king concocted a plan to hide the consequences of his adulterous affair. He called Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah back from the front lines. Scheming to make him think the child was his own, he told him, “Go home, take a break, spend some time with your beautiful wife.” But Uriah refused; he told his king that he couldn’t indulge himself while his men were in battle. The king resorted to making him drunk, yet Uriah, ever the good soldier, still resisted the comfort of his wife’s bed; he spent the night camping out with the other officers.
Now David stepped even deeper into the morass he himself had created. He gave secret orders that Uriah be put in the front lines where the fighting was fiercest, and to make sure he died there for king and country. And so it happened. Word came that Uriah had been killed in action.
On hearing the news of her husband’s death, Bathsheba lamented; the record doesn’t reveal if she was heartbroken or merely going through the motions. All we’re told is that, after the period of mourning was over, David sent for her and she became his wife.
End of story? Not quite. The prophet Nathan came to the palace, and he told the king of a rich man who stole a poor man’s only lamb and slaughtered it for dinner. David was furious, “That is an outrage! Not in my kingdom! The man who has done this deserves to die!” After that forceful royal declaration, Nathan didn’t have much to add. “You are the man,” he told the king.[1]
That was when the fog lifted, the fog of self-absorption, entitlement and abuse, and David finally saw what he had done. This psalm, the learned scribes wrote in the margins of their scrolls, this psalm is the sort of prayer that fits such a moment. A moment of sudden, painful clarity when you see yourself without the usual filters, when you see yourself as the person your actions betray you to be, rather than the person you imagine yourself to be, or the person you try to project to the public. The words of this psalm, the learned scribes suggest, are more appropriate for such a moment than the carefully composed apologetic press releases which kings, presidents, governors, and CEOs have their aides release after accusations can no longer simply be ignored or dismissed. Psalm 51 is an invitation to honest reflection, a “liturgy of the broken heart.”[2]
Just about every word from the vocabulary of human sinfulness is listed in the opening lines: my transgressions, my iniquity, my sin, the evil I have done in your sight – it’s like there aren’t enough words for the horror, the guilt, and the shame. We are listening to the voice of a grown up man who reflects on his capacity to do evil. The “I”, though, that speaks in this psalm is not only David, as the scribes suggest—“I” is every reader, every listener who recognizes their own self in these words, “I” is all of us, at the moment when the fog of illusion and denial lifts and we realize our capacity for being who we do not want to be and doing what we do not want to do.
However, this prayer doesn’t invite us to wallow in guilt or fall into despair; it encourages us to see ourselves in the light of God who heals what is broken between us and within us. Before the litany of sin that dominates the opening verses, the prayer appeals to the character of God who is merciful and whose steadfast love and tender compassion have been affirmed by generations of God’s people. The place to reflect on our sin, according to this psalm, is in the light of God’s grace. Much of what sin entails cannot be seen in the dim shadows of a guilty conscience or a disillusioned self-image, but only in the bright, unflattering light of grace.
Sin is not just a churchy word for not doing the right thing. Sin is a reality, a power. Sin is a fracture, a brokenness in our relationship with God, a brokenness that impacts how we relate to ourselves, to each other, and to the world. Sin distorts every aspect of our thinking, speaking, and doing, and sin reigns when we fail to know ourselves and one another as God’s own. It is like being completely out of tune in a creation that sings the glory of God.
Many prayers for help say, “Change my situation, so I may praise you.” But this Psalm teaches us to say, “Change me.” We know how to ask for a clean slate, for a new beginning, a second chance, or a third. This Psalm, though, rises from a place of deeper insight. Sin is not an occasional misstep, something we do or fail to do now and then; it’s bigger than that. It’s a reality that pervades our lives and distorts our entire being.
A young man goes and buys himself a gun, murder in his heart. He drives to three buildings and kills eight human beings. He holds female bodies responsible for his own thoughts and desires, and he eliminates the threat they pose in his mind, to his self-image, by murdering them. He is the one who pulled the trigger, who knows how many times, but the sin is not merely murder. He looked at other human beings and didn’t see fellow-creatures, made in the image of God, persons worthy of reverence and respect—he saw desirable and disposable objects. He had learned to see others that way, to think of them that way, and to treat them that way. Sin distorted his vision, his attitudes and thoughts, and, in the final consequence, his actions.
Perhaps the prosecution will ask for the death penalty, further continuing the myth of violence as a legitimate means in the pursuit of justice. And perhaps his conviction and execution will allow us to perpetuate the myth that he is, or rather, was, the problem, and that we don’t need to think or talk about the fact that it’s easier to buy a gun than a bottle of liquor, or the fact that so many mass shootings are committed by young, white men, or the fact that attacks against people of Asian descent, and particularly women, have increased dramatically over the past year.
Psalm 51 comes from a place where the fog lifts, and suddenly we see that we are not who we imagined ourselves to be. And it teaches us to pray, Wash me in your mercy. Bathe me in your healing grace. A clean slate will not do. Create in me a clean heart.
In this prayer, and in Scripture in general, heart does not refer merely to the organ that pumps blood through the body, supplying every cell with the oxygen and the nutrients it needs to thrive. “The ancient Israelites understood the heart as a faculty. They knew the heart as the seat of will, invention, reasoning, discernment, and judgment.”[3] They knew the heart as a hub where our sensibility and imagination, our mind and will come together to shape our perception and give direction to our actions. And the witness of Scripture is very consistent in pointing out that we have a heart problem.
We have hearts that gravitate toward pride and fear and idolatry. Jeremiah speaks of sin as “written with an iron pen” and “engraved on the tablet” of our hearts.[4] But Jeremiah also speaks of a renewed covenant, “when God will write God’s law upon the hearts of the people, [and] their hearts will embody and empower the true relationship they share with God and one another.”[5] Yes, human sinfulness is powerful, pervasive, and persistent, but God’s faithfulness is more encompassing than the reality of sin. And not only more encompassing, but also more powerful.
As we learn to pray with Psalm 51, we begin to envision ourselves and our communities no longer entangled in the cursed consequences of our sinfulness, but knit together by the creative possibilities of God. We begin to see beyond the habits and stereotypes that distort our perception, our imagination, and our actions.
The learned scribes of the past determined that this Psalm called for a story, and they drew the connections to David and Nathan, Bathsheba and Uriah. They encourage us to draw the connections to our own stories and to ask God to renew us, inside out. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. A spirit of honesty to sustain our efforts to reestablish truth and trust in our communities. A spirit of hope to strengthen our belief that change, though slow, painfully slow, is possible. A spirit of courage to surrender to God who makes all things new. This psalm calls for a people to pray it and live it, a people after God’s own heart. By the grace of God, may we belong to that people.
[1] 2 Samuel 11:1—12:7
[2] James L. Mays, Psalms, 202.
[3] Anathea Portier-Young https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/reformation-day/commentary-on-jeremiah-3131-34-11
[4] Jeremiah 17:1
[5] Portier-Young, see reference above.