Mind the Gap

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Psalm 32:1-5; Matthew 26:20-30

April 7, 2013 • Portage First UMC

In the church year, at least unofficially, this morning is called “Low Sunday.” After the celebration and the pageantry and the excitement of Easter, the Sunday after seems a bit low, a bit of a letdown. Clergy sometimes take this Sunday off because after all the energy expended during Lent, it’s natural to be tired, to feel a bit low on energy and power. It’s also come to be known as “Low Sunday” because, after the boost that you get at Easter, attendance numbers usually much lower today than the week before. “Low Sunday” can feel powerless and disappointing. But we all go through times like that in our lives. There are moments, maybe even long periods in our lives where we feel a bit “low” or powerless, as if there’s something missing, something unplugged. You know what I’m talking about: the things we once did to find satisfaction, the things we once did to gain approval, the things we once did to feel good about ourselves stop working, and life seems to be a bit out of kilter. So we try harder. We search the internet to find other things to try. We look at our life and say, “Why isn’t this thing working?” And sometimes there are physiological reasons for the lowness, or even psychological. Sometimes there are circumstances that we may or may not have control over. But sometimes the problem is deeper than what we do or even what we say. Sometimes the problem is a disconnect from the one who gives us the power we need for living. Sometimes we’ve allowed a gap to open between us and the one who strengthens our lives.

In transportation parlance, the phrase “mind the gap” showed up in the late 1960’s in England to warn train riders of the physical space that exists between the train platform and the opening door. “Mind the Gap” was a way of warning riders that they could get their foot caught in this gap and twist their ankle or even break it. “Mind the Gap” meant, “Watch out, there’s danger here if you’re not paying attention,” and it’s a phrase that has spread to many parts of the world. It’s also come to be used on busses in some parts of the world. The “gap” can be dangerous, just as much on trains as it can be in our lives. So what is this “gap” that sometimes shows up and saps us of our power for living? Well, if our power comes from the one who made us, from God, then the thing that causes a “gap” or breaks the relationship is sin. And the way we “mind the gap” is through seeking forgiveness.

This morning, we’re beginning a series for the month of April focusing on forgiveness, and the many ways we need and want to experience that. Last Sunday’s Gospel reading included a verse that we didn’t really deal with. Perhaps it caught your attention. There, in John 20, after he is raised from the dead, Jesus says to the disciples: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven” (20:23). What a strange thing to say, especially at that moment, in the midst of the disciples’ realization that he really is risen. But I think one of the reasons he said that is because forgiveness is at the heart of what it means to live out the Christian faith. Jesus is risen—now, go and forgive, for it’s in forgiving that the world will see something is different about you and me. And that’s not the first time Jesus said something like that to his disciples. In the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15). Similar sayings, but different. Two sides of the same coin, perhaps, but both emphasizing that if we’re going to live out the resurrection of Jesus, if we’re going to be able to walk The Way Jesus showed us, forgiveness is going to be at the heart of that life. The gap has to be minded, and more than that, for the “abundant life” Jesus promised, it has to be closed. So next Sunday, Pastor Deb will be sharing about finding forgiveness within marriages, and then we’ll look at forgiveness between family and friends, and finally we’ll talk about what it means to offer forgiveness, but this morning, we’re going to start in a very basic place. What does it mean to seek and find forgiveness from God? How do we close the gap that sin has created?

There are, of course, innumerable texts in the Scriptures we could turn to in order to begin to tackle that question; some of them you’ll read if you keep up with the daily readings this week in the bulletin or on the YouVersion app. But this morning, I want to take a look at one of the seven penitential psalms in the Old Testament (cf. VanGemeren, “Psalms,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, pg. 270). The psalms, you might remember, are the worship book of the Old Testament. These were songs written by a variety of people or in honor of a variety of people, and then preserved through the centuries to be used in public worship at various times of the year. The psalms are the songs they sang, and seven of them are songs that focus specifically on repentance. Psalm 32 is one of those, written by or for King David. David’s most famous penitential psalm is Psalm 51: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (51:10). That was written when his sin of adultery and murder was discovered. But Psalm 32 is a mystery of sorts. We don’t really know when it was written, or in what sort of situation, except that the author is realizing the effects sin has, the consequences of the gap. Out of his experience, he seeks to teach the people and help them avoid what he has been through (cf. Wilson, NIV Application Commentary: Psalms Volume 1, pg. 545).

In these five verses that we read, the psalmist sets up a stark contrast between the one who is forgiven and the one who is refusing to “mind the gap.” In verses 1-2, he says the one who is forgiven is “blessed.” They have a sense of contentment that comes from a right life. It’s more than “happy.” It’s a sense of life being rightly ordered (Wilson 94). It’s probably the same sort of thing Jesus meant in the Beatitudes when he pronounces various sorts of people “blessed.” But here, in the psalms, the blessed person has “transgressions forgiven, sins covered and sins not counted against them.” Now, you don’t see it in the English, but the author uses three different and distinct words here to describe that thing that breaks the relationship with God, the “gap.” “Transgressions” is a word that refers to outright rebellion against God. It’s disloyalty. It’s choosing to do what you know God doesn’t approve of. It’s the child who is told clearly, “You’re not to have friends over when we’re gone,” and they choose to do so anyway—only it’s much more serious than that. God says, “Do not murder, do not commit adultery,” and yet David takes Bathsheba, sleeps with her, and kills her husband (2 Samuel 11). God says, “You shall have no other gods beside me,” and yet the kings repeatedly worshipped idols, even sometimes putting them inside the Temple of God itself. Transgression is an act of rebellion. The next word, translated “sin,” is what we normally think of. In fact, it’s the way I defined it for you last Sunday: missing the mark, straying off the path. This is the most common image in the New Testament for sin. Last week, I compared it to failing to follow the GPS instructions, but you can also think of it in terms of shooting an arrow at a target and missing. It’s a sense that you’re headed one way, get just slightly off, and before you know it, you’re somewhere you don’t want to be. Then, the third word in verse 2 is also translated “sins” in the NIV, but in some of your Bibles it might read “iniquity.” This word means “evil, a crooked or wrong act.” This is more than rebellion against God; this is acting as if God doesn’t even exist. Some folks today don’t like to use the word “evil,” but there are some actions in our world that defy any other description. These are the incidents of child abuse or neglect, of rape, or genocide and violence against innocents. Read the headlines each day and then try to deny that evil exists. Sometimes, it even seems to win the day (VanGemeren 271; Wilson 545).

But the good news of Psalm 32 is that even that can be forgiven. We shouldn’t spend a lot of energy trying to divide “sin” into these categories; obviously, there are overlapping areas here. But the psalmist’s point is this: there is no “gap,” no sin that can’t be forgiven. God’s ability to forgive is just that large. I want to come back to that thought in a moment, but let’s continue to follow the psalmist, because the in the next two verses, he describes what it’s like to not be forgiven. “My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer” (32:3-4). That sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it? I don’t know that the psalmist is describing an actual physical condition, though he may be. More likely, he’s using metaphor and imagery to describe what was happening to him mentally, emotionally and spiritually. The image in verse 3 is of an inward pain that causes groaning, like someone for whom the pain never goes away. You can hear extreme depression in these verses, an interior darkness that threatens to consume the psalmist. It’s as if he has no strength to do anything, no power; every waking moment, every action is colored and pushed down by the thought of his sin, of the ways he has broken his relationship with God. He’s the person with a foot caught in the gap, twisted and turning. It’s painful. It’s broken. It’s continuous. And it feels broken beyond repair (VanGemeren 272; Wilson 546).

In a small way, it reminds me of getting lost in Germany three years ago. We were visiting a monastery, and we had gone into the chapel, but nosey me found an open door that I wandered through. It took me to the chancel, and I got some really good pictures of the altar and such, but when I went to go back through the door I had come through, it was now locked. In fact, it seemed like every door was locked in that hallway. I kept going around until I finally found one open and I went through it. It took me outside, but I was now on the opposite side of the monastery and in the middle of what appeared to be a garden party. Now, I know very few German words, so I just kept my head down and walked the way I thought our group would be. And the longer I walked, the more uneasy and upset I became. I was going to be left at a foreign monastery, knowing no one and not speaking the language. I was lost. And why did I get so lost? Well, because I wandered off the path. I left the place we were supposed to be, but more than that, like a true man, I didn’t ask for directions. Even though we were in Germany, undoubtedly one or more of the monks spoke English. But I kept quiet, and just tried to do it myself, getting more upset by the moment. The same thing is what has happened to the psalmist. Why is he feeling this way? He tells us in verse 3: “I kept silent” (32:3). I hid my sin. I didn’t let anyone, least of all God, know what I had done. And so he’s lost. He’s upset. He’s off the path, and he knows it. And he refused to confess it.

Confession is, though, what he says finally solved his quandary: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord” (32:5). Do you hear those three words again? He’s confessing everything. In fact, he uses three words to describe what he does here, one for every sort of sin that he’s telling God about. “Acknowledge” means “to make known,” and it probably refers to more than just letting God know what he’s done. In some sense, it’s a matter of admitting it to himself as well, and perhaps to a trusted friend. He’s admitting he’s done something wrong, that he is the one who caused a gap. That’s a critical thing for us to be able to do, because we’re masters of self-deception, of convincing ourselves that, even if we think something is a sin for someone else, it’s not for us. It’s okay for us. Those who find themselves trapped in various addictions know about this. Early on, they have to admit their own self-deception. In fact, the fifth step of the Twelve Step program is this: “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs” (Wilson 552). “I acknowledged my sin to you,” the psalmist says, “and [more than that, I] did not cover up my iniquity” (32:5). This means to take the lid off, to expose whatever it is to the light. Darkness, which is the way sin is often described in the Bible, cannot stand in the presence of light. Light always wins. Even if it’s just a little bit of light, it will break through the darkness. John, in the prologue to his Gospel, in words we read every Christmas, promises that: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). I uncovered my sin; I stopped hiding it, the psalmist says.

And then, he confessed his transgression to God (32:5). He gave voice to it, and I find it very interesting that, in the Hebrew language, this word is used not only for “confess” but also for “praise.” Confession is a form of praise, of worship, because when we confess what is wrong, what is broken, the gap, we are then freed to give praise to God (cf. VanGemeren 273). At the end of the psalm, then, the writer is singing: “Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart” (32:11). Praise results from confession. And so does freedom. The feelings the psalmist was having are replaced by a sense of being blessed, of being filled with joy, of being loved by an “unfailing love” (32:10). Hope overcomes despair when confession enters the picture, because the promise is simply this: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Confession bridges the gap between ourselves and our creator.

So, the question becomes, why don’t we? Why do we, like the psalmist, most often hold back and hide our failings, our sins, our brokenness? Two reasons, I think, in our modern world, and the first is our deep concern for privacy. We’ve even passed laws that help us protect our privacy, and laws that protect our privacy even sometimes when we don’t want to protect it. We have the mindset that what I do is no one else’s business but my own. You mind your gaps, I’ll mind mine. And then we wonder why we end up with such superficial relationships. It’s because we never take the risk to break the privacy wall and share on too deep a level with anyone, sometimes even with our spouse, which is something Pastor Deb will look at next week. What’s fascinating to me is the double-mindedness we have about privacy. We want it protected, and we want people to stay out of our business, but then we’ll get online and many will say things there that they wouldn’t say elsewhere. And it all combines to keep us from being whole persons.

Couple that concern for privacy with the deep-rooted American and Protestant passion for perfectionism. We must do everything right, and if we don’t, we must at least appear to do everything right. We’ve grown up being told more often what we do wrong that what we do right. I mean, think about the way we’re educated. Ten questions on a quiz, and you miss one. What does it say at the top when you get it back, usually? Minus one. Not plus nine. Minus one. We focus on being perfect, and we allow each other little room for mistakes, so something inside of us has determined that we’ll make sure we’re seen as right more often than not. When it comes to church, when it comes to eternal things, we convince ourselves that everyone else has it all together, and we hide behind a facade of apparent success, happiness and control. The problem is—everyone else is hiding behind their own version of that facade. None of us is perfect, but we struggle in the church maybe more than anywhere else with perfectionism. It limits our ability to honestly and truly confess our failings, our sins, and our brokenness, even to God (cf. Wilson 551-552).

And being honest about it is important. The psalmist says the one who finds forgiveness is the one “in whose spirit is no deceit” (32:2). In other words, you can’t trick God. “Don’t pretend you’re seeking forgiveness if you’re really not” (Hamilton, Forgiveness, pg. 27). We’ve probably all known people for whom repentance is an act, a show. We’ve had our share of politicians and preachers, entertainers and leaders who publicly repent for some act, but then continue to live the same way. Repentance means to turn around, to go the opposite direction. It’s getting back on the path, on God’s path. And if we go to God and repent just to get out of a jam—you know, make a deal with God, like, “If you get me out of this, I’ll go to church for three weeks in a row,” or something like that—then we’re not seeking true repentance. Forgiveness sometimes becomes one more way we seek to manipulate God. The psalmist likely knew people like that, too, which is why he says we can only find forgiveness if we have “no deceit” in our spirit. Or, as Eugene Peterson translated it in The Message, if we’re holding nothing back from God, that’s when God will hold nothing back from us (The Message: Psalms, pg. 45).

One of our struggles with receiving forgiveness from God has to do with guilt—in particular, the guilt we feel over whatever the sin has been. And, honestly, there are some preachers and teachers who haven’t helped with that. Some people today, particularly young folks, have given up on the Christian faith because, they say, it’s nothing but shame and guilt. Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps you’ve been able to see that over the last few weeks as we’ve explored Jesus’ ministry. The central focus of Jesus’ ministry was to help people be freed from their sin, to find grace, redemption, healing, forgiveness and mercy. “A Christianity obsessed with guilt is no Christianity” (Hamilton 17), at least not the kind Jesus taught. Or the psalmist, for that matter. At the end of the passage we read this morning, he promises not only that God will forgive our sin, but also the guilt of our sin (32:5). We do have to talk about sin and be honest about sin, not so we can feel guilty about it, but so that we can be freed from it. Doctors, for instance, study disease, not so that they can make you feel bad about getting sick, but so that they can help you find healing. When we talk about sin, it’s in the process of finding grace, healing and forgiveness. That’s what Jesus came to bring. In fact, that’s what was on his mind during his very last night here on earth.

That night, he gathered his disciples, those who were closest to him, for a final meal in a borrowed Upper Room. Even in the midst of talk of betrayal, in the knowledge that one of those who was closest to him would turn him in within a few hours, Jesus still spoke of forgiveness. That night, he gave them a meal to help them remember that what he was about to do, the horrible brutality of the cross, was for their forgiveness. In ways they couldn’t and we still don’t fully understand, Jesus gave his life to secure our forgiveness with God the Father. He who had never sinned took the punishment for all our sins so that we could find grace and forgiveness. Paul put it this way in his letter to the Romans, that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And so, that night, he took common elements, things they were very familiar with—bread and wine—and he poured new meaning into them so they would forever remind his followers of God’s great desire to forgive, to bridge the gap between himself and humanity. “This bread—my body. This wine—my blood, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin” (26:28). A reminder of what the psalmist had promised so long before: “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered” (32:1).

Do you want to be blessed today? The psalmist says the way to blessing is not found in keeping quiet, in refusing to confess the wrongs, the brokenness in your own life. The path to blessing is found by opening up to God, to acknowledge that our sin, whatever it is, is first and foremost, against him (cf. Psalm 51:4). We may find that confessing that sin to a trusted friend is helpful as well, but the path to blessing begins when we open our hearts fully to God and allow him to forgive both our sin and the guilt of our sin. He wants to. That’s why Jesus came. That’s why he went to the cross. That’s why he rose again.

What is the “gap” in your life? What is it you, maybe, have convinced yourself God couldn’t or wouldn’t forgive? We weren’t meant to carry the burden of that guilt around. The communion table reminds us of that. And yet, so many of us come to this table, and we carry with us the guilt or the sin or the whatever that keeps us at a distance from God, and we fail to mind the gap. We come here twisted and torn up and broken, and we leave the table the same way—but the good news of the Gospel, the good news we just celebrated in the Lenten season, is that you don’t have to live like that anymore. The burden that keeps you distant can be forgiven, laid down at this communion rail and left here. So this morning, as you come forward, I’m going to invite you to do something that may seem a bit strange. When you came in this morning, you were given a small stone. It represents the things in our lives we carry around that we weren’t meant to, the things God wants to forgive. So as you come forward for communion this morning, I want you to bring the stone with you. As you receive the bread and the cup, pray about the things that cause a gap between you and God, the things you’re carrying around. And then, and after you’ve received, I invite you to leave the stone on the communion railing as a symbol that you’re not going to live with that burden, those sins anymore. You may need some moments to pray at the communion rail, and that’s fine, but once you have, leave the stone as a sign that you’re ready to receive God’s free gift of forgiveness. Because the only gap that’s supposed to exist is not the one between you and God, but between you and your sin. Another psalm says this: “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:11-12). And that’s good news. With that in our hearts, let’s come to the table and receive all he has for us.