“If you keep track of sins, Lord—my Lord, who would stand a chance? But forgiveness is with you – that’s why you are honored.” Psalm 130:3,4 (Common English Bible)
Anne Lamott imagines a common caricature of God as an uptight, judgmental perfectionist who loves and guides you and then, if you are bad, roasts you: a God as a High School principal in a gray suit who never remembered your name but is always leafing unhappily through your files.[i] Fortunately, such a God is unknown in this Psalm. Composed as an individual prayer, Psalm 130 begins with a plea for help. This prayer is made from “the depths” (verse 1), a dark and bleak place and, apparently, there is nowhere else to turn. We are not told what the darkness is. It may be the loss of someone deeply loved. Perhaps the prayer comes from fear of those who threaten harm. Or, maybe, the prayer gushes forth from a keen sense of personal spiritual poverty. The reason for the prayer doesn’t matter. We all know darkness. Each one of us has made a cry from “the depths” at some point in our life. And, along with the person who makes this prayer, we ask for God’s mercy and care.
Suddenly, right in the midst of the prayer, confidence in God’s persistent mercy, is celebrated: “If you keep track of sins, Lord—my Lord, who would stand a chance? But forgiveness is with you—that’s why you are honored.” Memories of God’s mercy in the past strengthen the expectation that God will continue to demonstrate mercy. More, it is this character of God—one who assiduously grants mercy again and again—that God is honored among the people. Mercy is an eager expectation precisely because of God’s character! The one who prays now transitions from “the depths” to hope. This affirmation of faith moves from one generation to another because it is built upon the sturdy “honor” of God: “that’s why you are honored.” It is right there that we uncover the precious nugget, the valuable gem of this prayer—God’s honor. God is honored because God refuses to “keep track of sins.” God’s honor is in moving “honorably” toward us, entering the depths of our darkness and restoring light and life to our lives through forgiveness.
God has nothing but the best for us. In the weeds, and thorns, and brokenness of our lives, God sustains us and cares for us. Though we have hurt God, and others, God forgives us. God behaves honorably with us. There’s that word again—honorable. God is “honored” because God moves toward us with forgiveness which the Bible calls, “honorable.” Remember that when in those darkest of dark moments, we wrestle with forgiving ourselves. If God calls forgiveness honorable, do we dare now behave in a dishonorable manner by a failure to forgive ourselves? A man walked out of a church service just as the Lord’s Supper was about to be shared. One of the two pastors quickly grabbed a large piece of bread and a cup and followed the man to a nearby park. The pastor offered the man the bread and cup. The man said, “I don’t deserve that!” “Neither do I”, responded the pastor. “But strangely, God’s desire is to honor us with this bread and cup—to honor us with God’s forgiveness. Will either of us dishonor God with our refusal?”
Anne Lamott rejects the caricature of God she creates and so should we. God is not a High School principal in a gray suit who never remembers our name. Not a God that continually examines the file of our life, seeking to produce a record of wrongs. This Psalm shows us a God that refuses to keep a record of our wrongs and neither should we. Sin remembered creates a chasm—a chasm between us and another, a chasm between us and God. That is why the apostle Paul boldly asserts in his letter to the Church in Philippi that, “I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me.” (Philippians 3:13b). Should any of us chose to play the comparison game, the game that “my sin” is so much greater than Paul’s sin that he so easily dismisses, remember, Paul held the coats for men as he watched them cast stone after stone upon Stephen until Stephen was dead. That nightmare of a memory Paul forgets as he now accepts God’s forgiveness, forgives himself, and reaches forward for the goal of living fully in Jesus.
Joy,
[i] Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Anchor Books, 1994), 29.
Nurture Faith with Dr. Doug Hood 