Ash Wednesday
February 26, 2020
Psalm 51
“Create
in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me! Cast me not away
from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the
joy of your salvation, and uphold me with your free spirit.” [LWB Setting 1]
You
may recognize that tune and of course those words from LBW Setting 1. That’s
the hymnal I grew up with, and those are the words and tune that are written on
my heart and always will be. We sing that each week here, though usually with a
different tune. It is the standard offertory hymn, generally sung as the
offering is brought forward and we prepare for communion. During Lent, though,
this ancient text serves for us a different purpose. We heard it today as our
Psalm reading – as we do every Ash Wednesday and every Holy Week and sometimes
at some other point during Lent. And this is with good reason, because Psalm 51
is the quintessential Lenten Psalm, because of its deeply penitential nature.
Tradition says that King David wrote this Psalm after being confronted
regarding his series of mishaps in which he coveted someone else’s wife
(Bathsheba) as she bathed on the roof, then arranged to have her husband Uriah
killed in battle, then took Bathsheba as his own wife. (It’s a great story for
teaching confirmation students about the 10 Commandments, because David epically
breaks so many of them in so short a time!) When David’s prophet Nathan
confronts him, David is deeply contrite, and he writes this Psalm.
Well,
it may or may not have happened just that way, but I always found it very
useful that this Psalm had a whole story to go with it. It helped me enter into
it more deeply, to relate it to real life events. And it helped me to realize:
whether or not that’s what really happened, Psalms are always connected to a
story – whether it is someone’s story from hundreds or thousands of years ago,
or my own story, or yours, right now.
This
year, the story it is connected to for me is the story of how we, as a
congregation, are going to strive to live more simply during Lent this year,
and specifically to my own efforts at this, which I’ll say more about later. I
am particularly drawn to that line, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” That
word, “create,” is the same one used in Genesis when God creates the universe.
It is a uniquely divine activity. And the heart, in Hebrew anthropology, is understood
as the place from which one’s will and desires come. So in asking God to
“create in me a clean heart,” the Psalmist is asking God to create in him a
heart that is oriented toward God’s will, not his own.
And that’s just what
Lent is about, right? It is about our attempts at personal reflection and
evaluation, and considering the things in our lives that hinder our
relationship with God, and trying to eliminate those barriers. And it
is also about recognizing that in the end, only God can create in us clean
hearts. Only God’s divine action can recreate our will.
And so spiritual growth
becomes something we do together, God and us. For our part, we engage in
activities such as giving up over-indulgence and excess, being more generous to
those in need, or taking on a prayer practice. We participate in such
activities with the hope that in doing so we are preparing our hearts to be
created anew by a God who loves us too much to let us stay the way we are. We
use these tactics, these disciplines, to open ourselves up to the possibility
of change, and then God, in His creative power, creates in us clean hearts that
are oriented toward God’s will and way.
To
me, this is an essential way to approach the practice of living simply. So much
of striving to live more simply has to do with overcoming old habits, habits
that may work for us in our personal bubble (or may not!), but regardless, may
have serious consequences when considered for their broader effect. Take, for
example: plastic bags. As you know, the plastic bag ban in NY State goes into
effect on Sunday. Wegmans has already rolled out the ban. Shortly after they
did, I asked the checker, “So how’s the bag thing going?” He quickly said, “Please
don’t ask me that.” That well, huh? I have heard much grumbling about this
move, as well as much rejoicing. So, let’s look at the simplicity and the faith
implications of this ban.
Maybe you, like many,
feel that it works just fine for us to go to the grocery store and bring home
food for our families in plastic bags. After all, we use those bags for garbage
can liners and to pick up pet waste, or maybe we even go so far as to recycle
the unused bags. So, no problem, right? We’re doing our part. Why
ban them?
Well, looking upstream,
what about all the petroleum used to make those bags? What about the land and
air that is destroyed or polluted to make those factories? What about the
workers who breathe in those toxic chemicals? What about the trucks that
transport the bags to your local Wegmans? And then looking downstream, what about
the stray bags that get caught up in the trees and pollute our lovely
streets? What about the sea
turtles who
mistake plastic bags floating in the sea for the jellyfish they love to eat?
They eat the bags and choke, or become too lethargic to migrate with the
seasons, or to mate, and they end up dying – not just that one turtle, but eventually,
the whole species. Suddenly, our innocent trip to get groceries has become a
part of a large, complex web of detriment.[1]
I’m
not trying to make everyone feel guilty, and it is impossible to think about
these things for everything single purchase and item. But starting to think
about just a few of them helps us be more aware of our impact. So, now that we
know these things happen, and that our habits contribute to them – what makes
us so resistant to changing our ways? Inconvenience? Laziness? Forgetfulness? (Oops,
my bags are in the car, oh well.) Ambivalence? (Eh, I’m only one person, what’s
the big deal?) Is a heart with these things as its value the sort of heart that
is ready to praise and worship God? If God were to create a clean heart, a new
heart, in us – what might it look like? Where might that clean heart’s will be
oriented?
Here’s
how I would answer that for myself. I’ve been interested in simplicity for
several years now. When I first started learning about it, one thing I decided
to work on was cutting way back on the amount of plastic I consume. I was
primarily concerned with single-use plastic, the stuff that I know is only a fleeting
part of my life before it ends up a part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an
island of plastic garbage twice the size of Texas in the Central North Pacific
Ocean. I learned about the toxins in plastic, which leach into our food and
water, the toxins taken in by the people who make the stuff, and the ways this
man-made substance, which cannot ever decompose, pollutes our world. As I learned,
I was horrified by the far-reaching consequences of this seemingly benign and
all to prevalent substance, and the many photos I saw of the havoc it has
wreaked. I was moved then to take some small steps – refusing a straw in
restaurants, or bringing my own, adding reusable produce bags to my grocery
trips, bringing them to every store, little things. I shared my learnings with
others, and did all I could reasonably do to reduce my personal plastic use.
It has not been an easy
journey, and I have failed mightily at many points – especially after having
kids and all the plastic that comes with them! Yet still, through my learning
and my small action steps, I have felt my heart being created anew. I
have found my will being reoriented into one that relishes in the beauty of the
eco-system God has created, instead of contributing to its destruction. I have
felt God use this to help me see other things with fresh eyes, whether it is
what I eat, how I spend my time, the clutter in my space, or how I view my
relationship with and responsibility to my neighbors, both the people I know
and the people I will never meet but who played an essential role in allowing
me to live the comfortable life with which I am familiar.
I
will tell you, I didn’t go into the effort to live more simply with the
intention of having God create a new heart in me – I went into it strictly with
my head, like I do most things, trying to learn and understand more about the
world. I didn’t intend to be changed because frankly, I thought I was doing
pretty well already. (I’ve been bringing my own bags since before it was cool!)
And I will also confess, that when God creates a new heart… it does hurt a
little. Finding habits that need to change can be a wonderful and healthy
thing, but it can also be frustrating, discouraging, and convicting.
As my heart continues to
be recreated by our loving God (because I’ll tell ya, God’s got a long way to
go yet on my heart!), it continues to hurt, but it also continues to bring new
life and new perspective. And that is why this prayer remains essential:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” It was
David’s prayer when he recognized the depth and reach of his sin. It has been
the prayer of many generations of Jews and Christians who have prayed this
Psalm. And it is our prayer, as we enter this Lenten season: that God would use
this time to open us to the possibility of newness and change. At the end of
Lent, we will see how God turns death and loss into life and victory through
Jesus Christ; and so, let us, as we pray these ancient words, also pray that
God would create life and victory in us.
Let us pray… Holy God, create in us clean hearts, and renew
a right spirit within us. Cast us not away from your presence, but bring us
ever closer to you, as we work to open ourselves to your life-changing
creativity in our lives. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
[1] I know, paper bags have their issues too,
especially with the water used to produce them and their increased weight and
cost in shipping. Even cloth bags have their negative impact, although it is
less the more times you use them. Consumerism causes damage to the environment,
no way around it!
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