Trinity Lutheran Church

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable unto O Lord, Our Rock and Our Redeemer. Amen.

 Every Sunday afternoon without missing a Sunday, I come home to check one of my favorite websites- post secret. The premise is simple, people from all over the world send in their own personal secrets to a man named Frank. He then in turn posts some of the postcards on his blog and also adds others into one of the four books he has published. Frank started this project because he felt as though if people knew that everyone had a secret there would be more compassion in the world. Some of the secrets are funny, like “When my dog winks at me, I wink back, just in case.” Other times they are serious such as, “My relapse will not determine my future.” The postcards range from handmade to store bought. Sometimes people respond to the secrets left and other times the secrets are so painful it seems like no one knows what to say. People now leave copies of their own secrets in the Post Secret books at their local bookstore. At the bottom of the page is a thank you note from one young woman who was considering committing suicide until she read the postsecret blog. The blog helped her realize that she was not alone in this world.
 I sometimes wonder what David would write in to Frank. Would he write in about how he had “relations” with Bathsheba? Would he talk about his sons? Would he talk about how he tried to convince Bathsheba’s husband to quickly return home to his wife so that no one would know that the child she is pregnant with is actually David’s, not Uriah. Would David write in about how he had Bathsheba’s husband killed then took her as his own wife to some how make the wrong he did right? David’s story is a soap opera. David, the one who we heard of beating Goliath last weekend, the one who put his trust in Lord, now was a man most people would be ashamed of. All of the trust David had in God, seemed to have gotten away from him when he saw Bathsheba. David who as a young man seemed to be so faithful to God, to the living God who had saved the Israelites from the hands of the Philistines, now all of a sudden seems Oh so…human.
 David’s story is a story of being a human. Here is a man so willing to profess his faith in the Lord. Someone who is willing to put them in harms way to save a little sheep from the mouth of a lion or the paw of a bear, because of his trust in God. David is like us. Yes, we are not royalty and maybe we don’t have servants, but we do make mistakes. We say one thing, but mean another. We confess that yes we are Christians and they will know us by our love, and sometimes that love is that does not really translate as we hope it would. We forget our brothers and sisters who are in need. We turn our head away from the injustices in our world. We come into this space as a way of fulfilling we see as our duty, yet we spend more time thinking about our to do list or what someone else is wearing. We talk badly about those around us. We lie, cheat, steal, and everything else the Ten Commandments tell us not to do. We make idols out of material possessions, hoping to find fulfillment in them. We strive to make more money, become more popular, and we sometimes give up parts of ourselves all so we can do what we think society wants from us. We sometimes leave our faith at the door, living as if it doesn’t matter to us.
 David couldn’t escape from his sin. He could not leave his mistakes in the past. God knew what would become of David before David even threw the first stone at Goliath. God knew David would spend his life paying for his mistakes. David and Bathsheba would lose the child they created in adultery. David would lose two of his sons, one to murder and the other to his own destruction. David at times would be filled with both praise for God and also turmoil in his life and for his people. David would spend his life trying to be faithful to God, to the one who saved him and the one who did not hold his indiscretions against him. David in one of the most recited Psalms, Psalm 51, pleas for God to restore him, to make him clean again. David wrote this particular Psalm after the prophet Nathan came to him. David feeling truly horrible for what had happened pleaded to God, “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;1 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 right1 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 willing1 spirit. (Psalm 51:1-13).
 David goes to God, confessing all that he has done and all that he is. David knows it is only against God whom he has sinned and that David has always been a sinner. David like us, is a sinner, and a saint. David is faithful to the living God and also a human with faults. We too are faithful Christians and at times we mess up, and we mess up big time. We know there is only one person who has been free from sin, Jesus Christ, and we know that no matter how hard we try and how much we desire to be totally blameless we will never truly be. We will always have sin in our lives. Yet, like David we come before God, humbled by our mistakes, begging God for forgiveness. We ask God to make us whole again, clean us from our sin, and to never leave us. We beg for God to help us become blameless, knowing that week after week, day after day we will have to ask for forgiveness once more. We will have to ask for God to clean us once again and to stay with us day after day, mistake after mistake.
 When we gather for worship we begin normally by confessing our sins to God. We confess that we are not good enough, that we are human, we make mistakes, and we desire for God to forgive us. We want to be made whole again. We confess that we know we cannot live this life alone, that we need God’s to be with us. We need to know that God will not leave us, no matter the mistakes we make in our lives.
And we so we confess, we confess as a community. We confess that not only are we the individual making mistakes, that we the community are also not living as God has called us to live. After we make our confession, we heard the words that David so longed to hear- “You are forgiven.” And we are forgiven over and over again. God forgives us for every mistake and God will continue to forgive us all the days of our lives. When we come up for communion we are reminded of that forgiveness once again. We are reminded that God gave his only Son, for all of us, for all of our sins. When we take the bread and the wine we are given tangible evidence of the forgiveness given to all of God’s creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We will never be good enough to receive God’s forgiveness, but thank goodness our God is a loving God full of grace, one who is willing to forgive our sins those known and those unknown. When we are making mistakes, when we are the ones who like David are crying out for God to forgive us, let us never forget that it is in this community we are reminded of the forgiveness which we have already received. Amen.