Practicing a Holy Lent
Grant me grace, God, as befits Your kindness,
with Your great mercy wipe away my crimes.
Thoroughly wash my transgressions away
and cleanse me from my offense.
For my crimes I know,
and my offense is before me always.
You alone have I offended,
and what is evil in Your eyes I have done.
So You are just in Your sentence,
You are right when You judge.
Look, in transgression was I conceived,
and in offense my mother spawned me.
Look, You desired truth in what is hidden;
in what is concealed make wisdom known to me.
Purify me with a hyssop, that I may be clean.
Wash me, that I be whiter than snow.
-Psalm 5:1-19 (Robert Alter’s The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary)
In every year of the Revised Common Lectionary’s three-year cycle, Psalm 51:1-17 is an appointed scripture reading for Ash Wednesday worship services. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking prayer that we traditionally ascribe to King David. In the Psalm, we imagine that David has just taken Bathsheba as his own possession and arranged for the death of Bathsheba’s husband. It is not until David’s confidante, the prophet Nathan, points out the desperate shame of David’s actions that David realizes the havoc that his passions have caused. This havoc is not only evident in the shattered lives that surround David’s sins, but also in the heart for God that David is said to possess.
We use Psalm 51 during Ash Wednesday because it reminds us of our own crimes or transgressions against our neighbors and against God. It reminds us of our mortality – that we are dust and to dust we shall return. It reminds us that it is through penitent words and actions seeking God’s forgiveness that mercy is shown to us. If this reminder at Ash Wednesday is uncomfortable for you, it should be. This day in the Christian year is intended to begin the penitential season of Lent – 40 days (not including the 6 Sundays that are considered to be “feast days”) of contemplation and fasting that lead up to the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ at Easter.
Psalm 51 captures the idea of penitence well. Penitence is a deeply felt sense of contrition or sorrow for our actions or omissions. A penitent or contrite heart is a heart that understands that our sins have separated us from God. This sense of separation is not a factual separation – we can never be separated from the Hound of Heaven who seeks us continually. This sense of separation is better viewed as a wall or barrier that we erect around ourselves to try to keep God out of our lives. The question for the Lenten season truly is this: What do you do to separate yourself from God?
What I mean by this question is complicated. For each person, the question will have a completely different answer. I often resist praying for my own situations. I know that to sit before the throne of God is dangerous: God often requires change in us and in our situations when we sit before God’s throne. Sometimes I feel like a petulant child with hands tightly covering my ears lest I hear what God is trying to say to me. Maybe you feel the same way?
Our attempts to keep God out are feeble, as King David painfully learned. During this Lenten season, prayerfully and thoughtfully consider what barriers you are putting up around yourself. As always, my door is open for conversation.
Friends in Christ, I invite you to practice a holy Lent.
