For Such A Time As This

The Real Meaning of Lent

Ash Wednesday

Psalm 6

I was explaining at the prayer breakfast this morning my reasons for using the penitential Psalms for our midweek meditations during Lent. As stated at the beginning of our worship, Lent is a season of contemplative reflection on our greatest need as human beings. That need is to be free from the guilt and anguish of sin. It is a time to remember who and what we are apart from our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The Psalmists give us a wonderful resource for this contemplation. One thing I have always loved in the Psalms is that wherever I am emotionally or spiritually, there the Psalmist has been. It is comforting, assuring, and uplifting to know we are not alone in our struggles against sin. Better yet, it is such a relief to know where to find help For Such A Time As This. Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 & 143 help us to understand the real meaning of Lent. Tonight we begin with Psalm 6.

Ps 6:1 A psalm of David. O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. 2 Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint; O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony. 3 My soul is in anguish. How long, O LORD, how long? 4 Turn, O LORD, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. 5 No-one remembers you when he is dead. Who praises you from his grave? 6 I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. 7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes. 8 Away from me, all you who do evil, for the LORD has heard my weeping. 9 The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; the LORD accepts my prayer. 10 All my enemies will be ashamed and dismayed; they will turn back in sudden disgrace. (NIV)

Have you ever had those times when your mind just seems to be about a mile behind your body? Have you ever experienced a situation when you were deep in thought and someone tried to get your attention, but couldn’t? There are those times when I literally feel like my brain is tuned out and turned off? That’s the way it has been for me all day today. And I just couldn’t seem to get it together. Until, that is, I began thinking about the real meaning for Lent, and then it hit me, Lent is for such a time as this. The key thought here is distress; its cause, and remedy.

The Psalmist David is in great distress as he pens his thoughts and innermost feelings in Psalm 6. His health and strength have left him. His power over against his enemies has piddled into puniness, and prayer is dreadfully difficult.

The king, however, is learning a very important lesson from God. He is learning that repentance is For Such A Time As This. It is a particularly scary time for David. He is fearful of the Lord’s anger and wrath. He knows that his own sinful weaknesses brings him the agony of rejection and political turmoil, and sends his soul sliding into the depths of anguish. Unable to escape, he cries out, “O Lord, how long?”

Perhaps each of us has had a time when, like David, we felt worn out, comfortless, and full of sorrow. Perhaps each of us has had a time when our strength failed and we reeled helplessly from the attacks of evil. But, my dear friends, it is For Such A Time As This that the real meaning of LENT stirs our hearts like it did David’s, and we cry out, “Turn, O Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love.” God’s unfailing love, that’s the key. His love for us is the key that allows us to have a desire to “go and sin no more.” In another Psalm David writes, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped … Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”—and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

Unfortunately, our sinfulness is such that there is no escape from it. The moment we think we have our lives under total control, is the moment we need to remember that we are from birth to death a sinner. There is no respite in between. No rending of garments can change the heart. There is not even a moment in which sin is not with us. Our deeds, our faith, our piety is all tainted by sin, and, the wages of sin is death. So then, where is there any help? Or hope? Certainly it is not in us.

David in repentant faith looks up, not in, to find the cure. He knows the only source of removing evil, all evil, is God himself. “Away from me, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping. The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer.” How did David know that? How did he know the Lord heard him and could and would absolve him from his sin? It is really quite simple.

Out of His unfailing love God does turn to those who cry out to him. Remember what happened to Peter when he removed his eyes from the Lord? Remember how he cried out “Lord save me!” Immediately the Lord reaches out his hand to take hold of the drowning disciple. This is what repentance is like. It is not a work that we do. No, rather, it is a work done in us; a work done by the Spirit of God active through the Word. Can that Word and Spirit be resisted? It sure can! It can be resisted all the way to depths of hell. From that death no one can remember the Lord and his unfailing love so as to praise him.

My dear fellow redeemed, we are not like those who go down to the pit, so to speak. We also, like David, know the unfailing love of God. We know He has touched us in the water and word of Holy Baptism. We know that He touches us again with His own body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. We know that He is touching even now with love and grace and mercy. May our hearts always be turned then in repentant faith toward Him. Amen.