Category: Sin

Covenant, Jeremiah 31, Joy, Lent, Lenten reflection, Psalm 51, Psalms, Repentance, Restoration, Sin

The Days Are Coming

kathymfindley

THE LECTIONARY TEXTS FOR
THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT

A Reflection on Scripture

The Word of God for the People of God

JEREMIAH 31:31-34 (NIV)
31 â€œThe days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
    and with the people of Judah.

32 It will not be like the covenant
    I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
    to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
    though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.

33 â€œThis is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
    after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.

34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more.”

PSALM 51:1-12 (NIV)
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
    and justified when you judge.

5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
    sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
    you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
    wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins
    and blot out all my iniquity.

10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
    or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
    and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

We are the faithful daughters and sons of God who wait. We are God’s people who wait for the promised days that are coming. For in those days the Prophet Jeremiah tells us that God will invite us into a covenant relationship. Like the people of Israel, we believe we are in covenant with God already. But this Lenten scripture speaks of a new covenant, a deeper covenant, a covenant not like the previous one. This covenant will be different, a new covenant.

As for me, well I desperately need a new covenant, because for this covenant, God will write God’s law upon my heart, where I need it most, when I need it most. For me, the season of need is right now — in the middle of a pandemic of isolation, in the midst of isolation due to acute kidney rejection, in the isolation caused by immunosuppressant medications, in the throes of worry and confusion. For me, these days promised need to come now — these days that affirm that we are God’s people and that, indeed, God is our God. God will remember our sin no more.

But we remember do our sin. Indeed, our sin is ever before us. As our teachers and preachers and parents used to say, we sin by both commission and omission. I know immediately, in my soul, when I have willfully committed a sin. That kind of sin is clear to me, and I quickly cry out to God, “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.” But sins of omission get me every time. What have I left undone that endangers my spirit? What have I left undone that harms another person? What have I done to sin against God?

These twelve verses of Psalm 51 are arguably the most heartfelt and poignant words of prayer and confession in the whole of scripture. The Psalmist’s words fully reveal his heart, open his spirit to God and speak fully and clearly of sin and of his deep longing to put his sin away. The Psalmist does not want his sin to be ever before him. Instead, he beseeches God . . . 

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

I have no words to illuminate today’s scripture, no words of reflection that would enhance the message of this beautiful Psalm. I have no thoughts to add to its essence. But from the depths of my disconsolate soul, I pray, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  Amen.

Create in Me a Clean Heart, O God, arr. Victor Johnson
Sanctuary Choir, First United Methodist, Downtown, Houston Texas
Dr. Terry Morris, Director of Traditional Music
John Gearhart, Organist
Jonathon Saint-Thomas, Pianist

Advent, Calling, Challenge, Compassion, Confusion, coronavirus, Covenant, Dreamers, Dreams, Isaiah, Justice, Mission, Pandemic of 2020, peace, Repentance, Righteousness, Sin, Sorrow, Spirit

THOSE WHO DREAM

kathymfindley

Copyright A Sanctified Art — sanctifiedart.org

A passage of Scripture that encourages me every time I read it came up this week in my Advent devotional booklet entitled, “Those Who Dream.” The beauty of reflection I have found in this booklet has definitely awakened dreams in me. As I reflected on Advent Scripture each morning, God never failed to remind me that the world is in chaos in so many ways. In the year we will remember as 2020, people languished and lamented through a seemingly uncontrollable pandemic. Many people prayed, many died, many wept, and some were even able to dream.

The sacred text for this past Thursday was from the eloquent Prophet Isaiah. I have always thought of this Prophet as a realistic dreamer who never failed to paint a true picture of a world both evil and good. Isaiah had a way of proclaiming the deep need for repentance while also calling the people to dream of all that could be better and brighter. The bottom line for this Prophet was sin followed by repentance, what that would look like and what a world of righteousness would look like. Thursday’s prophetic and inspiring word was from Isaiah 61.

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion — to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

Isaiah 61:1-4 NRSV



For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God, ffor he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

Isaiah 61:8-11 NRSV


Standing in the midst of a pandemic world with all the grave challenges before us, Advent sends us a message. The last good word in these proclamations from Isaiah tell us that our Lord will cause righteousness to spring up before us, before all nations. When righteousness has her way in us, then — and only then — will we dream again. Our dreams empowered with God’s anointing will bring the advent of righteousness.

After repentance! Only after repentance!

Look closely at Isaiah’s words and you will see anew that God has anointed us to bring good news to oppressed people, to hold in our arms those who are brokenhearted, to comfort the mourning people, to set free people who are bound with chains of their own making and finally, as the Prophet said, “to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.”

What Isaiah tells us after that is my dream for this Advent 2020: “They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.”

All around us are the ruins we have left behind from all that we have done to our world, collectively and individually. The politicians make war among themselves, increasing the chasm that divides them. The people put politics before unity and spew hate at one another. The white supremacists barrage our cities with evil. Some of our people protest the racial injustice they have long endured. Hungry people still wait in the cold for a morsel of sustenance. People who have no home shiver in cold porticos, in parks, under bridges. Violence with its many faces is ever with us. The Coronavirus ravages on. The teachers and parents languish in confusion and disappointment. The frontline health professionals fall in literal exhaustion. Our children ask us when life will be normal again.

Every year, I recall the text of one of my favorite Christmas carols, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” The carol’s text, written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day of 1863, is a poem in which he expresses the terror of peace evolving into a world of darkness, hate and war. Two years before writing this poem, Longfellow‘s personal peace was shaken when his wife of 18 years was fatally burned in an accidental fire. Then in 1862, during the American Civil War, Longfellow’s oldest son joined the Union Army and was severely wounded in November of 1863 in the Battle of Mine Run. Longfellow’s words reach deeply into my soul and plant sadness there. Yet, the words are real and true about his world and perhaps, in some ways, his words are real in the world in which we live.

Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day
    A voice, a chime,
    A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth,
The cannon thundered in the South,
    And with the sound
    The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
    And made forlorn
    The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head ; 
“There is no peace on earth,” I said; 
    “For hate is strong
    And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: 
“God is not dead ; nor doth he sleep!
    The Wrong shall fail,
    The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

We do not fully understand the ways that Longfellow suffered when he wrote this poem. Yet, we might have an inkling that some of the words describe us, describe our world. In the end, when all is said and done, the carol proclaims that the bells are still ringing loudly and deeply, that God is not dead, nor is God sleeping. Instead God is speaking to us so that we will know, beyond any doubt, that “the Spirit of the Lord is upon us.” And with that anointing, we will fulfill a covenant with God — the mission God has given us to pray and labor and dream God’s dream of repairing the ruined cities, the devastations of past generations, as well as the devastations we are seeing before us in this moment in time.

May God make it so. Amen.

An version of Longfellow’s carol was sung by The Carpenters many years ago. Here is the video: