Begin with Mercy

In this Lent reflection written for First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor’s Lenten devotional series, I revisit Psalm 51 as a prayer that begins with a bold plea for God’s mercy, which is itself the first sign that grace is already at work. Drawing on Karl Barth, I suggest that contrition and truthful confession are not prerequisites for God’s turning toward us, but consequences of God’s prior turning toward sinners “in the midst of” sin; the psalm’s movement from plea to confession to joy to commission names repentance as an event in which God meets us, creates what we cannot produce, and restores us for witness and service now.

Scripture

Psalm 51 (NRSVue)

To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

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

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

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

4 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem;

19 then you will delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Devotional

Psalm 51 has long been one of the church’s most trusted prayers in Lent. It is often called a penitential psalm. Its opening line has been prayed for centuries by people who knew they could not fix themselves. The psalm’s heading connects it to King David, after the prophet Nathan confronts him over his serious offenses (2 Samuel 11–12). Whether or not the psalm was written in that moment, the story gives the prayer a human face. A powerful person has done grave harm. He is exposed, yet he is led to speak the truth.

Psalm 51 is also carefully shaped. It moves. Karl Barth once drew attention to something easy to miss: the psalm does not begin with confession, but with a plea for mercy. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.” That is the first move. It is also the first sign of hope. The psalm does not start by proving how sorry David is. It starts with God. That order is grace. The very fact that the psalmist dares to ask shows that God is already at work. God has already turned toward the sinner. God has already opened a door. And it is only as the psalmist steps through that door, only as he makes the request for mercy, that he finds the freedom to confess what he has done. Confession is not a prerequisite for grace. It is a consequence of grace. You do not earn the right to approach God by being sufficiently contrite. You discover contrition because God has already approached you.

Lent asks us to remember what is true about us, about our limits and about the places we have tried to hide. But Lent also teaches us where to stand while we remember. We stand inside God’s mercy. Repentance for us is an event. God acts. God opens the mouth that was shut. And we find ourselves speaking the truth not because we summoned the courage but because we were met by the One before whom silence finally becomes impossible.

Barth says justification begins “in the midst of” sin, and not after we get cleaned up. We are made right before God right in the middle of a story that seems to have gone off the rails. God meets the sinner here, and God does not wait for the sinner to become impressive. This is why confession and forgiveness belong together: they are part of one encounter with the living God. That can sound abstract, so let me say it plainly. We confess because God has already made it possible to confess. We tell the truth because God has already refused to abandon us. This is why Psalm 51 can be so honest. It does not protect the ego or try to bargain with God.

When the psalm talks about a “broken and contrite heart,” it is naming what it looks like when our defenses finally fall, when we stop pretending and managing our image. God does not despise that. God welcomes it. But the psalm does not linger here. It turns quickly from confession to joy. “Let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.” This quick turn reflects our faith that God’s mercy does not move slowly because we are slow learners. There is no graduated program of spiritual recovery that must be completed before the sinner is allowed to hope. God’s mercy is decisive. God’s mercy restores life where there has been ruin.

Beyond forgiveness, God also re-makes. “Create in me a clean heart.” Create. Not help or improve but create. We ask for something we cannot produce. We ask God to do a new thing in us. God wants truth in the inward being. God wants a person restored to love and therefore restored to service. Repentance is what it looks like when God’s purpose breaks into our real life and starts to become true. Not someday in the future, but now. “Then I will teach transgressors your ways.” Restoration leads to witness. Forgiveness leads to a changed life, and – importantly – not just in the inner life. A forgiven person becomes someone who can tell the truth without fear and who can serve without using service as a disguise.

Lent is not finally a project of interior improvement. It is the season when God meets us in truth and restores us for life. The psalmist who has confessed and been restored is sent out to speak. That is the shape of the whole psalm: from plea, to confession, to joy, to commission. As we enter the season of ashes and honesty, Psalm 51 gives us a way to pray that is truly unflinching yet rigorously hopeful. Do not rush past what is broken. But do not stay there, either. Ask boldly, as someone who has been invited. And then go out, because the God who restores is also the God who sends.

Prayer

Lord, God, our Father, we thank you that here with each other we can call on you and listen to you. Before you, we are all equal. You know the life, thoughts, path, and heart of each of us, down to the smallest and most hidden detail, and before your eyes none is righteous, no, not one. But you have not forgotten, rejected, or condemned a single one of us. Quite the opposite: you love each one of us; you know what we need, will grant it to us, will look at nothing but the empty hands that we stretch out to you, in order that they might be filled—not sparingly, but richly. In the suffering and death of Jesus, your dear Son, you were gracious and exceedingly helpful when you took our place, you took our darkness and laments on yourself, and you have made us free to come to your light and rejoice as your children. In his name, we ask that you now give each of us something of your good Holy Spirit, so that in this hour we may understand you, ourselves, and each other a little better, and that thereby we may be quickened and encouraged to take a step forward along the path that you have set for all of us, whether we know it or not—both then, as Jesus, hanging on the cross, bowed his head and died, and from all eternity. Amen.

— Karl Barth, Fifty Prayers, trans. David Carl Stassen (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 19–20.