Thursday, October 10, 2024

Today's Scripture
Psalm 51

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

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.

Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

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. (NRSV)

Reflection

Ring-around-the-rosy was a popular pastime back in the ’80s. We kids would grab hands in a circle, spinning into a tizzy until we received the prompt to “all fall DOWN!” I couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old when one of my classmates, who happened to be White, recoiled when I’d taken his hand, shouting, “Ew! You’re gonna get your Black all over me!”

“Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” David carried the weight of his kingdom on his shoulders, and as a chronic overachiever (precocious child who felled a giant, etc.) and likely perfectionist, he was keenly aware of his shortcomings. Begging for divine deliverance from his sinfulness and a “clean slate” before God, David’s metaphor for God’s redemption was inspired by newly fallen snow — precipitation — the product of weather patterns.

Over millennia and the accumulation of humankind’s iniquity, however, this weather-based metaphor has often been appropriated to impose skin-based systems of racial superiority. If whiteness equals purity, and blackness equals iniquity, then white and black skin must mirror these attributes, according to these distortions of God’s word.

Psalm 51 most commonly appears in our liturgies during Ash Wednesday, as we prepare ourselves for penitence and reflection in the season of Lent. Apart from Lent, however, we continue to confront aspects of ourselves that are in deep need of acknowledgment, introspection, examination of intent versus impact, and transformation.

Ironically enough, the psalmist’s ancient words speak to the iniquities of our day, including problems of race and other challenges that divide us by inviting us to be courageous before God in acknowledging our need for repentance and transformation.

Prayer
Create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew right spirits within us, that we may behold all of your children as you see us. Amen.

Written by Nancy Benson-Nicol, Associate Pastor for Caring Ministries and Spiritual Formation