Sermon, Sunday 6 March: Lent 4 'All is discovered: flee!'

READINGS Psalm 32 and Luke 15:1-9

SERMON
Let’s pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer, Amen.

There’s an urban legend variously attributed to writers
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mark Twain...
One version of the story goes that, apparently, Doyle...
or Poe... or Twain – take your pick..
had been involved in a rather heated dinner conversation
in which the writer had categorically stated that:
‘there was no man, who, having reached 40, didn’t have a skeleton in the closet.’

Deciding to test out the theory in the cold light of day,
the writer concerned thought up a prank involving 5 friends –
all who had been at the dinner party,
and all who were due to dine together again the following week.

The prank involved sending each of the five a message which:
bore no signature,
contained no information.
and was comprised of just four words:
‘All is discovered. Flee!’ 

The following week, when the writer and his friends gathered for dinner,
the table conversation was abuzz with the news about one of their number who
had disappeared quite suddenly, and who hadn’t been heard from since...

Guilt.
It is a hard thing to carry the weight of things done
– or not done – that you later regret.
At some point or other, because we’re human and not yet perfect,
we      mess     up.
We say things,
we do things,
that, at the least, aren’t best helpful,
and, at the worst, are seriously hurtful and harmful to others.
And then, we have to live with ourselves,
and with the knowledge of what we’ve done.
Guilt coories in and makes a home in our heart,
gnaws away at our soul.
And guilt – the heaviness and the horror of it –
is what the Psalmist is writing about in Psalm 32,
and, especially, the importance of letting it go.

Now don’t get me wrong:
I’m not saying that our Psalmist is suggesting that,
when we mess up, we should sail blithely through the situation
and not acknowledge what we've done – far from it:
not recognising the fall-out of what we've said or done and ignoring it,
well, that’s verging on pathological behaviour.
Having that sense of knowing that we’ve done something wrong,
is about being a responsible human being...
and in that sense, guilt is a useful tool to make us re-examine
what we do and why we do it –
it provides us with the opportunity to reflect, to grow, and hopefully,
if what has been done has involved others –
it provides a spur to reconcile and build bridges...
But...holding onto guilt,
holding onto the situation that’s caused it,
and revisiting and revisiting it
is unhealthy and possibly verging on narcissism. ...

We’ve all heard the phrase:
‘I can never forgive myself.’
Some of us here today may even have said it on occasion.
For those of you who have,
and even for those of you who haven’t:
read this psalm –
take it to heart –
follow the example of the person who has written it.
Here’s why:
For the Psalmist, living with guilt –
living in guilty silence –
has had a profound effect on his or her well-being:
the Psalmist claims that guilt was the cause of physical illness –
in verse 3, there’s a description of bones being ‘wasted away’,
this, caused by ‘groaning all day long’ –
the inner conversation and turmoil produced by living with guilt.
In verse 4, there’s a sense of heaviness,
of strength being sapped –
guilt using up and wearing out the Psalmist’s energy:
guilt sucking the very life out of the Psalmist.

If our gospel reading concerns lost things –
a lost sheep,
a lost coin –
our psalm concerns a different kind of loss:
loss of peace,
loss of quality of life,
loss of joy.
But it doesn’t stop with that -
the Psalmist doesn’t just go
‘well, guilt pretty much stinks and that’s all there is to it.’
It’s not all there is -
and so, another kind of loss is offered up for our consideration:
the loss of guilt – a way of letting it go and getting our life back on track.
What’s suggested is turning from our introspection
and from picking away at the scab of guilt –
to changing the focus and looking out and up -
handing this thing that is a blight on our life over to God.
Instead of hiding away in a closet and hanging out with the resident skeleton,
the Psalmist urges us to open the door of our heart,
to acknowledge the skeleton,
and let God be our protection and hiding place.
If we do that, suggests the Psalmist,
we’ll regain our peace,
find our joy,
find life in all its fullness.

Forgiveness,
and freedom from the soul-destroying,
life-sapping weight of guilt,
is central to what the Christian faith is about.
Each time we have our quarterly formal service of communion,
as God’s people, we make an affirmation of faith
that has been handed down through the centuries: the Apostles’ Creed.
The Creed is a shorthand way of gathering together
the most important aspects of the faith – of what we believe.
In amongst the various doctrinal statements
that make up our faith-in-a-nutshell, is:
‘we believe in the forgiveness of sins’...
We affirm that we believe in a God who forgives –
who doesn’t hold a grudge,
who doesn’t keep a tally...
All we have to do is turn to God and say
‘I messed up. I’m sorry. Help me.’
And because forgiveness is at the heart of our faith,
and is what is in the heart of the God who we worship -
because we believe in the forgiveness of sins,
we let the burden, the weight of the guilt go
as we turn to God and no longer remain silent
about what it is that we’ve done.  ...

While the psalm talks about guilt, and the effects of living with guilt,
essentially, Psalm 32 is a psalm about joy –
the joy of forgiveness
the joy of living free from guilt
and the joy of being able to
share the joy – the good news:
that our God is not about constant recriminations,
but that our God loves us
loves us so much that he’ll go looking for us
like that lost sheep or the coin in our parables...
that our God loves us with an everlasting love
and wants us to live in the freedom of that love...
this day and always.

In a wee while, we’ll be sharing in bread and wine –
it is the meal of forgiveness,
the meal symbolising the great and merciful and loving heart of God,
who takes away our guilt if only we turn to him.
The God who already knows our heart –
a heart where all is discovered,
but where, unlike the chap in our Conan Doyle story,
the only place we need flee when all is discovered,
is straight into our Father’s arms. Amen.