The Rocks We Carry

King David was touted as the man after God’s own heart. He was beloved by God, anointed and given the highest authority in God’s country. He remains a legend. The uniter of Israel and the King who no other king could even dream of eclipsing. King David was the moral standard — the one by whom good and evil were once measured.

So what could possibly have occured for him to write a song so desperately tragic as the 51st psalm? What could land a man on the winning streak of all winning streaks to pen these words

Psalm 51:1–5 NRSV

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

Well, what happened was that the humanity of David got the best of him. In a moment of infatuation and lust he reached out and took something that was pleasing to his eyes… something that was not his to take, something that was off the King’s table.

Much like his ancient ancestor, who in the garden of Eden saw a fruit that was pleasing to the eyes and desirable for making one wise — even though expressly forbidden by the only law God had handed down at the time — David saw, took, and fell mercilessly to his own peril.

He saw the young woman Bathsheba — the wife of a top commander in his army. And he took her. Then having taken her, he arranged for her husband to be killed in battle. He fathered a child with her — a child that died. He was confronted by the prophet Nathan, and in his agony penned this psalm. In his most desperate hour, at his lowest moment, the realization of what he had done and what he had become spilled out of him.

Was David perfect prior to his entanglement with an innocent married women? Certainly not. Along the journey of life he picked up sins, like little pebbles. Easy to carry, easy to let go of. But in the end those pebbles turned into stones, and then into rocks. His adultery, deceit, and murder weighed him down until finally he hit rock bottom. And at the end of himself, he looked to the only place he could: to the God who had once called him “a man after my own heart.”

And early 2010s Christian Band called Bellarive — which was born out of the Florida Annual Conference of the UMC take a playful riff off of Psalm 51 in their song titled “Tendons”

If the Titanic was made to sink

Then so was my heart

For I made sure it was impenetrable

Oh, what a wretched man I am Who will save me from this flesh

Paul whispers in my ear

Oh, don't worry my friend

You're in good company

Poets before me have tried

To measure this love

And if 40,000 brothers cannot With all of their quantity of love Make up this sum

Then how can my heart contain this mass

It would only burst at the seams into

A million tender pieces

So what then

What good is a broken heart to You

Could you even hear my heart from there

And like a father assuring his son To come home Oh my son, it's enough, it's enough

So who am I to accept this grace

That just falls like rain

Cause we all know I chose to lay

My head in this desert

But like a fish out of water

We only know then what it means

To be parched

So if Christ is alive, the love

And the groom

Then take heed my friends

For chivalry is not dead

For I know no other lover who would

Have met me here in this place

So I awake and I rise from my bed

Of complacency

Oh, my God I've been sleeping

With a corpse

Oh, and these bed sores they still

Rest in my bones

Oh, how I've made a beautiful dance

With this cadaver but my audience

Is appalled

Oh, how strong these tendons

How they desperately need to rip

From this ancient Adam

So light up the sky and

Set me a flame

Burn this bone and tissue

For I no longer want to be

Entangled in this sinew

That hinders my reach towards You

It’s powerful. The words of a man who is at rock bottom, dealing with the reality of the frail human condition. Reflecting on how low the rocks he has decided to carry have brought him.

This is the place that David found himself in, and this is the place that maybe you have once found yourself in. Maybe this is the place that you find yourself in now. Carrying around rocks that you have collected that are dragging you down to your rock bottom. Rocks of anger, grief, sin, addiction, and resentment.

The reality is, we have to come face to face with the place that our rock collection has brought us. It’s actually healthy. That’s why Psalm 51 is in scripture. God wants us to come to a place of discontentment with our place in the world. Because discontentment can lead to change.

JK Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, is attributed with the saying “Rock Bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” She penned the early pages of the story that changed her life on a bar stool. What has occured is nothing short of amazing.

So for us, the ash that we encounter on a day like today is a reminder that we are a people who are often ground down by the rocks that we carry. But the ash is also a reminder that this is not the end of our story. The ash is a reminder that God is not done writing our story. Today we celebrate the good news that we look onward towards the cross and empty tomb, and in doing so we embrace a journey from rock bottom to restoration.