MAKE PEACE TO BE AT PEACE

A meditation by the Rev. Dr. James G. Kirk

Harundale Presbyterian Church

Glen Burnie, Maryland

August 3, 2003

Text: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” (Psalm 51:10

First Reading: 2 Samuel 11: 26-12:13a

Second Reading: John 6:24-35

Of all the characters of the Bible David is one of the most sordid. He sleeps with Bathsheba, gets her pregnant, and then tries to convince her husband to lie with her to hide his guilt. When that doesn’t happen he arranges to have her husband killed in battle so that he can take Bathsheba as his wife. Later on we hear how David’s son Amnon lusts after his sister Tamar, lures her into his bedroom pretending to be sick, rapes her and then throws her onto the street and all the while David does nothing about it. Instead he sends his other son Absalom into exile. Eventually Absalom kills his brother Amnon for raping the sister and then returns to lead a rebellion against David. So, the whole family is a classic story of dysfunctional relationships, yet David continues to get favorable press throughout the Bible.

But before we go there, Nathan’s story is interesting because in a very clever way he gets right to the point. There’s no doubt that David had a harem and could have his pick of any women in the land. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that he lusted after another man’s wife and slept with her, then had her husband killed. So here we get Nathan’s story about two men, one very rich and the other very poor. The rich man has large flocks with many sheep and the poor man has one little ewe. He loved the lamb very much. The children played with it; it even ate at the poor man’s table. Then along comes a “wayfarer.” Translate that a “street person,” in other words someone who doesn’t have much social standing.

The street person appears at the rich man’s house and requests a meal. Instead of taking one of his own sheep to prepare a meal, the rich man takes the poor man’s little ewe, kills it and feeds it to the street person. Of course, the poor man is devastated, but that doesn’t matter. When David hears the story, he cries out that the rich man ought to be put to death for such a heinous act. Then Nathan tells him that he’s the rich man and that’s exactly what he’s done to Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba’s husband. Instead of sleeping with one of his many wives who the Lord God had given him he had to sleep with poor Uriah’s little lamb Bathsheba and then to cover his guilt had Uriah killed.

Now, we get to the point why David gets such favorable press throughout the Bible. Psalm 51 makes much more sense when we know the kind of dysfunctional life David lived before he took to writing the poetry we find in the psalms. He honestly comes before God, lays out his misdeeds in the past and implores God to forgive him. Now it’s very interesting that God really doesn’t care about what someone has done in the past. God is more interested in what someone is going to do about it. The past is over and done. Hopefully, whoever it is has learned from their mistakes and wants to make a new beginning. That’s what we pick up in our psalm for the morning.

The psalm is a classic formula for forgiveness. It has all the necessary parts. First we hear how David wants to make a change in his life. No sense coming before God and asking for God’s forgiveness if there isn’t a willingness to live a different life. Again, it goes back to what we said last week. If you’re satisfied with what you see in the mirror then you don’t need to look out the window of opportunity. However, we don’t hear that from David. What we do hear is that he’s aware of what he’s done. He doesn’t like what he sees. He’s angered God and now wants to make amends.

Then there’s a long section of his confession. Some people say to forget the past and get on with the present and the future. But, there’s something to be said for rehearsing just what it is that you want to change. Alcoholics Anonymous makes a point of every introduction of stating your first name and that you’re an alcoholic. It rehearses their sickness and reinforces the changes they need to make. When we were on the cruise every evening at 5 o’clock there was an AA meeting. Why at 5 o’clock? Because they were rehearsing how the cocktail hour got them in trouble in the first place and reinforcing how meeting together at that time would help them to live sober.

After David’s desire to change and his confession to God he then seeks God’s forgiveness. “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow…Create in me a clean heart, O God.” The other day I was over to see Catherine Winter. She’s almost 90 years old and has lost all desire to eat. But she’s not afraid of death. She kept telling me how she’s made her peace with God and is now at peace. Knowing Catherine, you can hear her say how she wants to experience every bit of her dying. She recently went to hospital in an ambulance and loved every minute of it. She told me how loud the siren was and how the ambulance was like an operating room on wheels. She had gone into fibrillation and they had to shock her heart. They told her exactly what they were going to do; she kept waiting for them to do it. Finally she asked them and they told her it was over. They must have put her to sleep. She was so disappointed, because she wanted to experience everything. That’s just the way she is as she lies in her bed in the nursing facility. Like David, we can hear her say, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” She’s living her last days in the Spirit of the living God.

David concludes asking God to restore him to the joy of God’s salvation and the promise that he will become a change agent in other people’s lives. In other words, he’s going to show others how not to avoid making the same mistakes he made. He’s a changed person and that’s why the Bible is so good to him. We all make mistakes. There’s not a soul here that doesn’t need to come before God and be made whole. The beauty of David’s message is that God doesn’t bear grudges. God waits. God forgives. God makes whole again. Thanks be to God for the gift of new life. Amen