Is Confession Good for the Soul?

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
15th August 2021

Psalm 51.1-17; Mark 1.4-9

Listen to this sermon here:

I’m one of the Trustees of the Christian Enquiry Agency,
            which runs the website www.christianity.org.uk
 
One of the features of this website,
            in addition to a large selection of excellent articles
            introducing people to different aspects of the Christian faith,
is that we offer an opportunity for people to send in their prayer requests.
 
Those of us who are trustees get these prayers requests through in real time,
            and they are also distributed more widely in anonymised form,
            in a monthly prayer email.
 
It is, I have to say, a fascinating insight into people’s prayer lives.
 
People often type their request
            in the form of the prayer they want to articulate to God,
            and these can be raw, profound, moving, and heartfelt.
 
I would say that most of the prayers fall into the category of intercession;
            people asking God for something for themselves, or for someone they love.
So there are prayers about financial stresses,
            relationship difficulties, and medical problems.
 
Much more rarely there are prayers of confession,
            and almost always these are related to sexual ethics,
            as people confess their sexual sins to God, seeking forgiveness.
 
Which makes me wonder
            what people think sin, confession, and forgiveness are about.
Is it only about lust, infidelity,
            and the actions that arise from these?
 
Well, as we come today to the latest instalment
            in our summer series looking at some of the Psalms,
we find ourselves at possibly the most famous prayer of confession ever uttered.
 
The normal heading for this Psalm is almost certainly a later addition,
            and it ascribes the Psalm to David,
                        as his prayer of confession for his adultery with Bathsheba
                        and his murder of her husband Uriah,
            uttered after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan.
 
Whether or not this is truly the origin of Psalm 51,
            it certainly works in this context,
and it locates the Psalm in the world of lust, infidelity,
            and the actions that arise from them.
 
What is interesting, I think, is how the Psalm develops from this starting point
            as it works its way through the theological themes
            of confession, repentance, and forgiveness.
 
So as we come now to look at this famous Psalm,
            I want to pose a couple of questions for us to consider:
What is a prayer of confession?
            And what do we think we’re doing when we pray one?
 
So, to Psalm 51.
 
The first couple of verses set in place
            the themes and vocabulary of confession
            that the rest of the Psalm will explore in more detail,
so let’s hear them again now:
 
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.
 
These are great words to hear at a baptism, aren’t they?
 
There is an interweaving in these two verses,
            of human action with God’s action,
an interplay between what we might call our cultic deeds and the divine response.
 
One of the cultic deeds of our faith is the act of baptism.
            It is a ritual, a symbol and a sign,
            a bit like the sharing of bread and wine at a communion service.
 
And in a moments of cultic action such as baptism or communion,
            we dare to believe that God is also active.
This is what makes bread, wine, and water
            into sacramental elements at the heart of our faith.
 
So as Lanze went down into the waters of the baptismal pool,
            we believe that God met him in those waters,
            according to God’s faithful promise.
 
In the act of baptism, as in these opening verses of the psalm,
            human need is laid bare:
we express publicly our longing
            for our transgressions to be blotted out,
            for our iniquity to be washed away,
            and our sins to be cleansed.
 
And in return God extends mercy,
            God reaches out to us in steadfast love.
 
And so we see both the human need and the divine response,
            we see cultic action and covenantal promise interwoven.
 
And in this interplay between our action and God’s action,
            we discover that forgiveness is always God’s action,
            forgiveness is always God’s initiative;
but we also discover that forgiveness always affects our own actions,
            as we respond to what God has done.
 
God’s action and our response are not mutually exclusive,
            rather they are inextricably intertwined,
as we enact in our lives the forgiveness that God offers,
            as God’s forgiveness becomes transformative in our lives.
 
Lanze spoke movingly earlier
            of wondering if he was not ‘good enough’ for baptism,
and as Martyn reminded us in his sermon last week:
             none of us ever are.
 
We always stand in need of forgiveness, never more so than at the moment of baptism.
 
And so Psalm 51 continues with its words of confession:
 
vv 3-4
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.
 
The insight of these verses is to do with the nature of sin,
            and it’s something I think we need to hear, and hear clearly.
 
Sin, according to Psalm 51, is a violation of our relationship with God.
 
It may have a social manifestation,
            such as David’s adultery with Bathsheba,
            and his murder of her husband Uriah,
but these are not the sin, they are the consequences of sin.
 
Sin, according to this Psalm, is always first and foremost a theological problem,
            it is not about moral, ethical, social, or psychological wrongdoing.
 
It may have moral, ethical, social, or psychological consequences,
            but sin is in essence theological,
                        it is the violation of God,
                        it is the fracturing of our relationship with God.
 
So the forgiveness of sin
            is primarily about the restoration of the sinner’s relationship with God.
And only secondarily about the restitution of wrongs,
            or the restoration of human relationships.
 
Sin is not the harmful actions we enact against other people,
            it is always the harm we do against God.
 
This is because sin is a theological concept, not an ethical one.
 
This isn’t to say that we don’t do wrong to others, of course we do.
            And we are called to seek their forgiveness,
            and to offer forgiveness to those who trespass against us.
 
But sin is something different: sin is always and only against God,
            and this means that forgiveness for sin is God’s prerogative alone.
 
Whether or not we are forgiven by those whom we have wronged
            is an independent issue to whether or not we are forgiven our sins by God.
 
This matters, and it matters a lot,
            because many of us live with guilt and shame for much of our lives.
 
We live with the consequences of our actions,
            and indeed of the actions of others towards us.
 
And human brokenness and fracturing of relationships
            are not something it is always within our power to resolve,
            even if we wanted to  which, if we are honest, is not always the case.
 
But our status before God,
            as those who are washed, cleansed, and eternally loved,
is a status that is independent of our other relationship complexities.
 
The forgiveness that we seek,
            the forgiveness that blots out our sin and shame and guilt,
            is God’s alone to give,
which means no human, no matter how powerful their hold over us,
            has the power to withhold God’s forgiveness from us.
 
And then we come to verse 5, and we need to spend a moment or two here,
            because it has an unhealthy and unhelpful history of interpretation.
 
St Augustine, the Christian Bishop from the 4^th century,
            developed a doctrine that came to be known as
            the doctrine of original sin.
 
This is the idea that everyone is born sinful,
            because everyone is born as the result of an act of sexual union,
            and sex is inherently sinful.
 
This means that everyone has a built-in urge to do bad things,
            and to disobey God.
 
I think it tells us a lot
            about how Augustine experienced his own sexuality and sexual desires,
and superficially you can see how it ties in with v5 of this Psalm:
 
The Psalmist says,
Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
 
However, we need to avoid overlaying
            Augustine’s wrestling with his own demons,
            onto this ancient Hebrew text.
 
This verse does not state that sex is sinful,
            and nor does it infer that the writer of the psalm has a corrupt beginning,
            and nor does it suggest that the writer’s mother is morally implicated
                        as the daughter of a sinful Eve.
 
Rather, to get to the heart of this,
            we need to again separate out sin, from ethical or moral behaviour.
 
Augustine’s sense of sinfulness
            was inextricably intertwined with sex, and sexual behaviour,
and as Western Christians, we are the heirs
            to that way of understanding sin.
 
But what if sinfulness is a theological state,
            rather than an ethical one?
 
If we go back to our definition of sin
            as a broken relationship with God,
then the Psalmist’s claim to have been born guilty
            takes on a very different connotation,
one which is theological rather than ethical.
 
The Psalmist is realising that there was never a time when he,
            and I think we regrettably have to assume this is a man,
there never was a time when he experienced himself
            as ‘right’ with God.
 
This is someone who knows from their own experience of life,
            that their relationship with their creator
            has always been in need of restoration;
and who has come to understand that by their own efforts
            they cannot, and have never been able to,
            ascend to the heights of God’s righteousness.
 
And this is a profound insight,
            because it takes us into another theological aspect of sin:
            that of idolatry.
 
When humans try to become like God,
            they end up constructing God in their own image,
            and in the end they simply end up worshipping themselves.
 
None of us, by our own efforts, can become righteous.
 
Rather, like this Psalmist, we need to realise
            that instead of making God in our image,
            we are made in God’s image,
and we are therefore created to have a relationship
            with the God who is beyond us, other to us,
but who nonetheless draws us inexorably into a relationship
            with the one who alone can declare us righteous, forgiven, and restored.
 
The Psalmist knows that they don’t measure up,
            and can never do so through their own efforts,
not to some human standard of behaviour
            but against God’s righteousness.
 
And so they look to God for help,
            asking that God will teach them wisdom in their inner heart,
that God will give them the gift of discernment,
            that will enable them to make new, truthful, faithful decisions.
 
The writer of this Psalm longs to be different,
            even if they know that the transformation will be a life-long process.
 
And they know that the impetus for change
            must come, ultimately, from God.
 
None of us can, by our own strength, attain righteousness.
            We all, like the Psalmist, stand in perpetual need of the grace of God.
 
And so the Psalmist asks, implores God to purge him, to fill him,
            he asks that God’s face will turn from his sins,
                        that God will blot out his iniquities,
            and that God will create in him a clean heart,
                        give him a new and right spirit.
He longs for God to not exclude him,
            that God will now withdraw the life-giving Spirit from him.
He wants a restoration of relationship with God,
            a resurgence of joy, deliverance from evil,
            and the strength to meet each new day.
 
To all of which, I am sure, each of us would say ‘Amen’.
 
Because we too know what the Psalmist is discovering,
            which is that confession and forgiveness is not a one-off event.
 
Those of us who have already been through the waters of baptism,
            who have already enacted in our lives the symbolism
                        of washing, purification, and resurrection,
we know that life goes on,
            and that despite our best efforts,
            we continue to fail to measure up to the righteousness of God.
 
The baptised stand as much in need of God’s mercy and grace
            as the unbaptised.
 
The difference is that we, like the Psalmist of old
            have committed ourselves publicly to the journey of faith.
 
We will keep on trying,
            even as we continue to stumble along the path.
 
The call here is to become people of hope.
 
Counter-intuitively, those who are most alert to their failings,
            to their sinfulness,
            to their deep alienation from God,
are those who have most cause to hope in the active grace of God.
 
Those who know they are empty,
            have most hope of being filled.
 
And so as the Psalm comes to its conclusion,
            the writer, despite all the anguish that has gone before,
is nonetheless able to turn their voice to praise.
 
Not in their own strength,
            but as a response to the faithfulness of God:
 
¹⁵ O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
 
The very lips which had previously been speaking
            words of self-abasement and hopeless resignation,
become the lips that exalt God.
 
Praise is the end result of a process,
            not its beginning.
 
Praise is what emerges once we have encountered God
            in all God’s righteousness and in all our sinfulness.
 
Praise is the product of a restored relationship
            with the God or righteousness.
 
Praise speaks always of God’s grace, God’s action,
            God’s outreaching into our lives
            to draw us into the eternal embrace of forgiveness and acceptance.
 
As Walter Brueggemann puts it,
            ‘True worship and new living
            require a yielding of self to begin again on God’s terms.’
 
And here we meet a profound challenge to our practices of worship.
 
If we have reduced confession and repentance to personal ethical or moral choices,
            we have missed the point that this Psalm has brought us to.
 
It’s all about the restoration of our fractured relationship with God,
            and the relocation of ourselves in right relation to God.
 
Sin is not what we do, it is who we are before God,
            and forgiveness is God’s response to our sinful nature.
 
When we realise that righteousness is not something we can achieve
            by modifying our behaviour or assiduously guarding our thoughts,
we come to understand that it is all, always and only, of God.
 
Only God can make us clean,
            and any consequent change in our actions
            arises from God’s prior action in us.
 
When our sins of pride, idolatry, and selfishness against God are confessed,
            then our lives are restored as God forgives us and grants us new life.
 
So when we confess our sins,
            we are confessing the brokenness of our relationship with God;
and the forgiveness God grants us,
            is the restoration of our souls to the one who breathed us into being.
 
This psalm takes us beyond any efforts of our own to become righteous,
            and instead invites us into God’s righteousness,
which is transformative not only of our own lives,
            but of all people, and all creation.