Ash Wednesday - Create in Me a Clean Heart

The New Revised Standard Version Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon

Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon

To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

1 Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

4 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.

5 Indeed, I was born guilty,

a sinner when my mother conceived me.

6 You desire truth in the inward being;

therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

9 Hide your face from my sins,

and blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

11 Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your holy spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and sustain in me a willing spirit.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,

and sinners will return to you.

14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,

O God of my salvation,

and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

15 O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

16 For you have no delight in sacrifice;

if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

We come once again to the season of Lent. This is a season to reflect upon the journey of Christ to the cross, his suffering unto death, for the broken world. It is a time of repentance, a time to shake off what hinders us, a time to seek purification and renewal.

And so we gather again, we receive ashes again, we seek to rend our hearts and not our clothes once again.

Can you believe it’s only been a year since we all gathered together at St. James for Ash Wednesday, 2020? I know it is common to remark on “where we were last year” but especially as we’ve entered into this global pandemic, I know I feel a bit shocked and gut punched to think it’s been just a year.

Just a year? Maybe not just a year? Maybe more like it’s been a year of years. An extraordinary time.

I wonder how I would have practiced Lent from the outset last year if I’d known what we were stepping into. Days after we gathered together, we started to make plans to shift our churches online, to cease gathering together. The pandemic spread. And we grew strong together and we grew weary together.

Now, as a church that typically follows the cycle of lectionary readings for our worship gatherings, it can be easy to get into a sort of route movement through the year. This is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. We’re going to hear Psalm 51 or Joel 2 or Isaiah 58. “Blow the trumpet in Zion....rend your hearts and not your clothing.” “Is not this the fast that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”

Or Jesus’ words: “But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret…Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

We hear these words and perhaps they just roll past us.

I invite you to a different Lent this year. To a different practice. A new, purified, transformed heart season.

Psalm 51 famously states: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”

I pulled apart the Hebrew of those opening words for a bit of study. “Create in me a clean heart.”

The phrase is 4 words in Hebrew: leb tahor brilani, elohim.

leb — heart or inner self

tahor — pure or clean

br - l - niy — create for me

elohim — God

Hebrew scholar Robert Alter translates this phrase as “a pure heart create for me, God.”

There is a sense that the inner self, the core of who we are, is broken, sick, corrupted, hurting, longing. Have you felt that? Do you feel that? Right now, many of us might describe that brokenness as the feelings of weariness and depression. Let’s acknowledge that, with sadness and crying out for mercy. Not because we’re horrible people because we’re depressed, but because we recognize we’re sick, we’re hurting, we need help.

This is the leb, the inner self, that is crying out to God.

Then there’s tahor. When we feel the weight of our world, the sadness, the brokenness, we long for it to be made right. To be purified. To be rid of the sickness. We’ve used words like eradicate and immunize a lot this year. The Psalmist prays here: Lord, purify me. Eradicate the sickness. Cure the disease. Help. A purified inner self, both physically and spiritually, is what we want.

The third word of the phrase: br-l-ny (brilani) — create. And not just create…create for me. Here we must remember that we are not the ones who make the healing happen. We can’t just wave our hands and the disease is gone. We can’t just rest up and heal from the weariness. We can’t just eradicate the virus by our own will and home remedies (as much as some of us want to wish we could). No, we need outside help, an outside expert.

The word is “create for me” — God, please, in your mercy, do the work in me, restoring my inner self, restoring my spirit.

To elohim, the Lord, the Great Physician, we cry out.

Tonight, I want to invite us into a different kind of Lent. Throughout the season, our congregation is going to spend each Wednesday evening practicing the ancient Prayer of the Examen. This prayer practice invites us to reflect on our days, weeks, years, and begin to form a more clear picture of how God is faithfully with us.

The different kind of Lent this offers us is that we practice not in order give something up or add something new, but rather, to listen and seek after healing. When we listen for the voice of God, when we bring our prayers and suffering to God, we are seeking healing.

What might it be like to seek healing this season? There is much that needs it in our lives, am I right?

What if our words of “create for me” a pure heart are a cry for healing, for purification, for restoration? Could you say these words, “create for me a pure heart”? Could your prayer for healing be lifted up today and in this season?

What might it be like to seek healing this season? And not to expect it from yourself, but to journey into the heart of God, God who desires to make pure your heart, to rebuild our lives, to restore God’s people through Christ our Lord. This is the Lenten invitation.

Create for me a pure inner self, O God.

Amen.