Last Sunday we explored Psalm 32. We began by considering whatthings we woiuld placve in our pursuit of happiness sack? On the surface it is easy to look ‘perfect’ and ‘happy’, but the Psalm today and Scripture at large remind us that what often fills our happiness sack are some things that deep down become such cravings that in actual fact they drive us, they cut us off from life. Lamentations 1 speaks of how God was 'woven my sins into a rope and harnessed me to captivities yoke' . We cling to our sack and forget God.
In Psalm 32 we are given an inside glimpse to someone’s inner life, to the bits that make them tick as person, v3-7 allow us to look inside the psalmists life – and there we discover a life that has been full of denials as to the real ‘life condition’, listen again, ‘when I kept it all bottled up inside, my bones turned to powder, my words groans all day long, the pressure never let up, all the juices of my life dried up.’
The word the Bible applies to such a life alienated form the source of Life who is God is SIN. He informs us then of the traumatic experience of unconfessed sin, due to stubborn silence, there were torments, like Lady Macbeth he suffered the guilt and agonies. Our culture has lost an awareness of sin and guilt. Our use of the word and the ways we label things ‘sinful’ have changed considerably.
The Bible is clear though in recognizing that human existence knows the experience of being cut off from life. For a long time, this experience of alienation from the source of life is summed up as sin. According to 1 John 1 v8 to claim that we have no sin is a great self-deception. So we look beneath the surface of his life and we see somewhat mirrored , if we are honest, we all fall far short. The point however is that the psalmist places this in the context of a God who is moved beyond such silence as the denial of sin in me. The psalm begins with acknowledging the ‘happiness’ the integrity, the honesty of those who make confession, they are the ones who are recipient of God’s benevolent action of forgiveness. – ‘Whose rebellion has been borne (by God)’ and ‘whose sin has been covered up (by God)’. Genuine ‘happiness’ is something God gives with God’s initiative, nothing earned, worked for but GRACE. The words used - ‘To carry’, ‘to cover’, ‘to impute’ emphasise the extent of God’s forgiveness; additionally, to avoid reducing human ‘sin or wrongdoing to cliché, 3 words for wrongdoing and deeds are used: each an aspect of sin; pasa = political term means to rebel; hatta = to miss the target; cawon = crooked act, also entails a persons conscience and so a sense of ‘guilt’.
But v5 is the turning point, the repentant turning in confession to the Lord. Indeed, it repeats the 3 common words from v1,2 for sin. And so the ‘pressure’ is lifted, guilt dissolved, sin disappeared. We suffer a demise of confession in our reformed tradition today, we have culturally assimilated and dismissed notions of sin. In liturgy perhaps especially, indeed the protestant form of confession is GOSSIP whereby we confess and point out our neighbours sin instead of our own. However you want to label it, if we stick with the biblical word sin for whatever the crime or pathology in todays terms. Robert Jenson refers to confession of sin being as necessary as taking out the rubbish/garbage.
‘Sin is like garbage. You don’t want to let it build up. Confessing sin is like taking out the garbage. You want to do that regularly because taking out the garbage is an extremely healthy thing to do.’ The psalmist urges and invites people to ‘yield’ repent, turn around to God, confession of sin, the practice of penitence before it is too late. The climax in v7 concludes that we can find shelter in the Lord. “You are my hiding place’, a place of refuge in the distress and threat of life and encircles him with shouts of deliverance at the celebration, all in sharp contrast to the immobilizing distress of v3,4. Finally, v8,9 provide further instruction. The image exhorts the psalmist and others not to be like the horse or stubborn mule that needs a bridle because they lack understanding’. Those who do not and persist in alienation will always find trouble and discontentment, in contrast to those who trust will be sheltered, covered, live under God’s hesed, covenant loyalty. Psalm 32 functions as a psalm that directs us in a new direction in/to life when we yield, confess our sin and trust in (see v1,2) He concludes with a resounding call to praise and celebrate God with honest, open hearts. We concluded with a time of COnfession inviting people to symbolically wash their hands in a bowl beneath the cross as a Taize Chant was played. It was confession as a people of God and as individuals.
Pentecost by Solomon Raj, India.
