Psalm 51

Preached at Saint James Church, Fairhaven

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

When I was growing up, I went each year to the Saint Michael’s Conference, a one week retreat for high school and college age Episcopalians, led by about a dozen Anglo-Catholic clergy in New England. One of the things that we were taught how to do at Saint Michael’s was how to give our sacramental confession. We were taught to examine ourselves and make a list of all of our sins. When we felt that we had thoroughly examined ourselves, we made our confessions. I always felt much fresher and cleaner after going to Confession at Saint Michael’s because I was able to do a very thorough examination of my soul and confess to God everything that I could remember – not just the really bad things, but also the everyday sins and habits that might not weigh so heavily on me. It was sort of like that feeling you get on a beautiful summer day when you have just taken a shower and you feel refreshed, happy, and care free.

Today is the last Sunday of Lent. Lent is the season of repentance leading up to Easter. The readings and liturgy for Lent stresses this idea, so that by the time Easter arrives we have been given ample opportunity to examine ourselves. You may have noticed that each week we say the Confession at the start of the service. You may also have noticed that today’s Psalm was read at the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday. It is very fitting therefore that we again read Psalm 51 as Lent comes to a close. Today let’s take a careful look at confession, repentance, and forgiveness.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses. Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” Sin separates us from God. When we sin we are putting our own wishes before those of God. The first step in repentance is examining ourselves and knowing our transgressions. The psalm writes: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” It is impossible to repent unless you can identify your sins. Do you remember the story of King David and Bathsheba? In this story, David, the king of Israel does some pretty bad stuff. He sleeps with a married woman and gets her pregnant and he has the woman’s husband, Uriah, sent to frontlines of the ongoing war where he is killed. However, when David is confronted about this he admits his guilt and says: “I have sinned against the Lord.”

When we sin, we must recognize and admit that we have sinned. When we say the general confession we say: “we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” God knows everything, and He knows what we have done and what we have not done. Even though God knows what we have done, we still must admit what we have done. In the case of David, he admitted that he had sinned. In our own lives, we apologize to others for wrongs we have done to them. When we are mean to our friends, we apologize. We say: “I’m sorry for saying such mean things to you, I was wrong to do that.” We must do the same with God. We must confess what we have done.
Confession of what we have done is only the first part. We must also repent. When we repent, we turn from the life of sin we have been living and we point ourselves toward God. At some point in our lives, all of us have gotten lost. Whether we are driving or walking around in an unfamiliar place, we have all at some point gotten lost. When we are lost we try to find our way to somewhere where we know or we try to get ourselves on the right road or going in the right direction. Once when I was driving to wedding in Utica, I took a wrong turn at Albany and instead of heading west, I headed north for about an hour. As soon as I figured out I was going the wrong way, I turned my car around and I went the right way.

Repentance is just like this. Once we realize that the sin we have committed is separating us from God, we turn and follow a path that will not separate us from God. It isn’t enough simply to say, I have sinned, and continue business as usual. Imagine if instead of turning around I had just kept going north until I had left New York, left the United States, and come into Canada. I would never had made it to the wedding and my trip would have been a huge waste of time. Nobody keeps going the wrong way when he finds out that he is going away from where he wants. Nobody intending to fly to Denver, yet finding herself on a plane to Detroit would stay on the plane. We would all get off and make sure we were headed in the right direction. Why should we act any different when our life and soul are concerned? When we say the Confession, or when we go to individual sacramental confession, we must not only identify our sins, we must also intend not to do them again. We must intend to amend ourselves and attempt to live a more Godly life.

Yet, it is hard, we all sin and we all struggle through our lives trying to avoid sin. We all struggle with certain sins which we really don’t want to stop. My father, who is an Episcopal priest once taught a confession class at Saint Michael’s Conference. When someone asked him, “Well, what about all of those things that I confess as sins but I know I am going to go right out and do them as soon as I can. Not only that, but I want to go out and do them.” My father responded that there were many levels of intention. You can intend to intend to stop doing those things. You can even intend to intend to intend to stop something. Our sins