March 13 sermon

Text: Psalm 32
Preached March 13 at Gol and Hegre and March 14 at the Minnesota chapter retreat of the Society of the Holy Trinity


Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

When I was a kid, we lived in an old house. My parents still live there. I think it was built in the 1880s. Fortunately, I didn’t have too much trouble with fears of monsters in the closet or other such things. But there was one thing that could throw me for a loop once in a while.

Our house had beautiful carved wood trim around all the doors and windows. From where I lay in bed, the angle was just right that, when I looked up at the trim around my door, it looked like a person. The points and curves of the molding looked like the profile of a very angry, very mean person scowling down at me.

Sometimes I would get up, turn on the light, and look at it straight on to assure myself that it really was just a block of wood. And my parents’ voices downstairs reminded me that I had protectors in the house who wouldn’t let the scary face get me. Other times I would hide under the covers and try to get the image out of my mind, but somehow this approach never seemed to work quite as well.

The psalmist knows all about scary images much worse than scowling men disguised as door trim and monsters lurking in closets. The psalmist knows that sin has a similar effect on us, and there are really only two ways to deal with our sin—we either confess it or we hide it. And, just like my ducking under the covers as a child, hiding from our sin doesn’t seem to work as well as turning on the light and exposing it.

“While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”

The psalmist knows what it’s like to try to conceal our sin. It takes a lot of energy, consuming all our attention, draining our strength, exhausting our bodies. God’s hand becomes a crushing burden, heavy upon us.

Adam and Eve discovered this too, didn’t they? After they ate the fruit that was forbidden to them, the first thing they did was to cover themselves with loincloths they sewed from fig leaves. And, though today’s reading stops there, the story goes on. The next thing Adam and Eve did was to hide from God.

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid…” (Genesis 3:8-10).

For the first time, Adam and Eve were afraid of God. Hiding their sin from God required hiding themselves from God. And thus the relationship was broken.

The apostle Paul understood that sin is not just something we do. Sin does something to us. It alienates us from God. It enslaves us to its tyranny. It subjects us to death.

Paul says in our second reading, “…sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, so death spread to all because all have sinned,” and “death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam….”

God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate the fruit of the tree which was forbidden to them, they would die. This is the reality of sin and there is no escaping it on our own. This is what it means for death to exercise dominion. When we are hiding from God, hiding in sin, it consumes us.

Every sound, even the sound of God, becomes something fearful and terrifying. Every sound becomes the sound of a monster under the bed, lurking in the shadows. Death gets the final word, because we become incapable of hearing any other word. We cannot hear God’s word of forgiveness and new life, God’s word that would teach us the way to go. So death wins.

And, of course, our attempts at deception never work anyway. As the psalmist tells us in Psalm 139, God knows each one of us intimately, and we cannot hide from God.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me….You discern my thoughts from far away….Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me….Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

The writer of 1 John tells us—and the order for confession reminds us—that “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” And there is no fooling the God “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.”

We don’t like feeling quite that exposed, do we? It’s very uncomfortable. We already said that, after their sin, Adam and Eve’s next moves were to cover themselves with loincloths and to hide from God. Their sin left them feeling exposed to the all-knowing gaze of God, and even itchy fig leaves and a hasty hiding spot are preferable to the kind of vulnerability!

But this God “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid” is also the God who is “faithful and just,” and who has promised to “forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This God’s all-knowing gaze contains not just accusation and judgment, but also mercy and love.

So we don’t have to cower in our sin and deceit. We don’t have to escape the monsters and shadow-figures by ducking under the covers. Instead, we can expose what we would rather conceal. We can confess the sin we would prefer to hide. And, in doing so, we can be released from the burden of guilt and deception.

“Blessed are those whose transgression is forgiven,” the psalmist says. “Blessed are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”

Confessing our sin strips it of its power, like the scowling face in the door that suddenly turned back into simple wood trim when I took a closer look. Like the monsters in the closet that can only lurk in shadows and solitude. They disappear under the revealing scrutiny of light and the protective presence of parents.

Confession of sin is confession of faith. We confess our sin because God has promised to forgive us for the sake of Christ, and we know that God keeps his promises. We confess our sins because we know that God has both the ability and the desire to forgive us.

The psalmist, who knows the truth of this promise, continues: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

Our own efforts to conceal our sin are doomed to fail. But when we confess our sin, God covers it effectively with Christ’s own righteousness. As Paul says in our second reading, "If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ."

Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God forgives our sin so that we can be restored to right relationship with God. We no longer have to hide from God; instead we can hide in God, so that the words of Psalm 139 no longer strike fear into our hearts, but instead become music to our ears:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me….You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me….If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

Suddenly, God is protector rather than accuser! When Adam and Eve’s sin was exposed, God relented from the punishment of death which he had originally decreed. God provided them with clothing and sent them on their way in safety. Adam and Eve found grace and new life rather than death.

Of course, they also faced serious consequences. They were evicted from the garden and their lives became much more difficult. The blessing of God’s forgiveness does not mean that we never have to face painful consequences for our sinful actions.

But when we know that a loving and forgiving God is on our side, we are free to face those consequences in peace, trusting that God will walk with us through whatever mess may arise from our failures.

As the psalmist says,

“Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance….steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.”

When we confess our sin and receive God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ, God’s hand is no longer a heavy burden day and night. Instead, that hand supports and upholds us in the face of life’s trials. Death no longer has dominion, but God’s grace triumphs. We are freed to live in the joy and peace of God’s steadfast love, which surrounds us always.

And joy is exactly where the psalmist leads us: “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.” Through Jesus Christ, God makes us the righteous. God makes us the upright in heart.

We are those who can be glad in the Lord and rejoice, for we know the gift of God’s forgiveness. We are those who can shout for joy. And so we do exactly that, saying, “Thanks be to God!” Amen.