Worship - Sermons - 4/2/06

What is Fixed by Being Broken?

Psalm 51:1-17

William F. Schnell

April 2, 2006

Let us begin with the title of our message for this morning: “What is Fixed by Being Broken?”  It is a riddle.  Do you like riddles?  Not everyone does.  Rev. Horak says that they drive him nuts.  I am not particularly fond of them myself because I cannot get them out of my head until I solve them, and so long as I do not solve them they remain nagging reminders of my limited measure of cleverness.  Perhaps that explains why very few, if any, of my previous sermon titles are riddles.

But if I can solve a riddle in short order, I like it very much.  I solved the riddle that is printed at the top of our bulletin right away.  It is a nifty riddle Demus McVay shared with me not so long ago.  What doth man love more than life, Hate more than death or mortal strife?  ‘Tis that which contented men desire, The poor possess and the rich require, The miser spends, the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves.  It was that last line that tipped me off to the answer.  We brought nothing into this world and we take nothing out, according to St. Paul (I Timothy 6:7).  The answer is “nothing.”  Read the riddle again with “nothing” in mind and it will make a whole lot of sense.

We find a few riddles in the Bible.  Samson gave the Philistines a riddle to solve.  It was a tough riddle, but his bride, who was a Philistine, nagged him until he gave the answer to her in confidence.  Then she spilled the beans to the Philistines and they solved the riddle, much to Samson’s chagrin.  Ezekiel tells the Israelites a riddle.  Joseph explains the riddle of people’s dreams.  Jesus’ parables were often tough riddles for even his disciples to solve, as the one about the farmer sowing seeds illustrates.

So what is the solution to the riddle in the title of our message?  The last verse in our text gives us a clue.  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Verse17).  God will not despise a heart that is broken or a spirit that is broken.  Translation: God desires for human hearts and spirits to be broken because that is the only way God can fix hard hearts and evil spirits.  “What is Fixed by Being Broken?”  The human heart or, as our text also puts it, the human spirit is fixed by being broken. 

Does this make God a cosmic heartbreaker?  Not as we understand the term: “heartbreaker.”  Notice that our text refers to …a broken and contrite heart….  The dictionary defines contrite as “Feeling regret and sorrow for one's sins or offenses (by the way, you can properly pronounce the word with the emphasis upon either the first or last syllable).”  In the Bible a broken heart is the opposite of a puffed up and prideful heart.  A broken heart is a contrite heart.

Likewise, a broken spirit is an obedient spirit, as opposed to a defiant spirit.  A horse that is broken is no longer a wild horse but a tamed horse that is useful to its master.  God wants us to be useful to him.  We cannot be useful if we are wildly defiant and willfully disobedient.  That is not the kind of spirit that God can use, and it is not the kind of spirit that Jesus demonstrate when he prayed to God, …not my will, but yours be done (Luke 22:42). 

“What is Fixed by Being Broken?”  To put it one way: the human heart.  To put it another: the human spirit.  There you have it, the answer to our riddle.  I wanted to get to the point of this message early because I came down with a cold on Friday, and I figured that we might stop here if my voice did not hold out.  But since it seems to be doing fine right now, let us see how the point of this message was demonstrated in the life of King David.

You remember King David?  He was the greatest of Israel’s kings--the gold standard by which all other kings of Israel and Judah were measured.  As a young boy he defeated the giant Goliath and went on to victory after victory as Israel’s foremost general before being anointed king.  The fellow who anointed David declared the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart (I Samuel 13:14).  Further, we are told of his anointing, from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power (I Samuel 16:13). 

But David was not perfect.  He was not always a man after God’s own heart, nor was he always a man upon whom the Spirit of the Lord came in power.  There were times when David needed serious fixing in both heart and spirit.  Sometimes those who are revered as the biggest of saints had to struggle with being the biggest of sinners.  Why?  So the rest of us would not lose hope that we were beyond God’s mercy because of our sins.

When Nancy wanted to put my academic degrees on the wall in my office, I told her to include in that display my seventh grade report card.  Sometimes I will have distraught parents come to me about their child’s terrible performance in school.  “How badly are they doing?”, I will ask.  “Pretty bad,” they will say with a sigh.  I will then point to my report card on the wall and ask, “Are they doing that badly?”  Usually they will jump back in horror and say, “My heavens, no!”  If there was hope for me, the worst of students, then there can hope for their child as well.

In the New Testament St. Paul wrote: Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst.  But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life (I Timothy 1:15-16).  Paul had been pretty bad in his younger days, dragging off the early Christians to jail and consenting to the execution of the first Christian martyr after Jesus (a fellow named Stephen).  But at least it was a misguided zeal for God that led him to do it.

David was also instrumental in the unjust death of a man, but a much baser motivation was at work in him.  The psalm from which our text comes is prefaced with these words: “For the director of music.  A psalm of David.  When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.”  Ah, beautiful Bathsheba!  What an appropriate name, for the story starts with Bathsheba taking a bath without pulling the blinds on her window.

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"  Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her (II Samuel 11:2-4).  Well he must have done more than take a nap with her because she soon sends news to him that she is pregnant.

What to do?  Bathsheba is married to a fellow named Uriah, who happens to be an honorable man on the front lines of David’s army (which is why he couldn’t possibly be the father).  When David calls for him to return from the battlefield, Uriah is so honorable he refuses to sleep in his own house and with his own wife while away from his troops saying: …my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife?  As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing! (II Samuel 11:11).  “How could I enjoy the comforts of home while my men are deprived of the same?”  What a consummate leader of men, what a great example and what a contrast to David, who had no compunction about lying with Uriah’s wife.

David arranges for Uriah to return to the front lines.  He arranges for him to go to the very front of the line where the fighting is fiercest.  Then he arranges for all the troops to pull back in the heat of battle leaving Uriah alone and surrounded by enemy troops who kill him.  That freed David to take Bathsheba as his wife—one of several wives by the way.  I just heard on the Colbert Report, of all places, that David had seven wives.  I did a little research and discovered that he may have had eight, plus an unspecified number of concubines (but no fewer than 10).

I told you David was a bad boy.  A prophet by the name of Nathan also tells him as much in a very interesting exchange that leaves David a broken man.  He does not try to deny what he has done or justify it.  He confesses that he has sinned against the Lord and he accepts the judgment he has coming from the Lord’s hand.  He also pours out his soul to God in a psalm, from which comes this portion of our text: Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.  Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me (Verses 4-5).  David acknowledges the truth about himself, which is that he is a hopeless sinner through and through and from start to finish. 

But this psalm offers more than the truth about David, it also offers the truth about God.  God can fix a broken man.  God can fix a sinful man who knows what he is.  God can take a heart and spirit broken by sin and fix them.  And so David casts himself upon God’s mercy and pleads, Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.  Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you (Verses 10-13). 

Just like St. Paul was able to reach and teach sinners because he himself had been the worst of sinners and yet was now redeemed by a Savior, so David could reach and teach sinners as an example of God’s redeeming mercy and forgiveness.  It kind of reminds me of a tee shirt I saw that has a nun sitting astride a motorcycle with cigarette in hand and a caption beneath that says:  “Wherever there is sin, there I must go.” 

Well I do not think we have to go out looking for sin, because sin finds us all by itself.  We are all of us, like David, sinful from birth.  As I like to remind parents who bring their children for baptism while they are sweet little cherubs.  I tell them, “You will have to teach your little one a lot of things, like math and how to ride a bike.  But one thing you will not have to teach them is how to misbehave, because they will learn how to that all by themselves.  All people come with sin as original equipment. 

We can go around like Alfred E. Newman saying, “Who, me?”  We can live in denial if we want.  We can act like everyone else has issues except us, but that attitude is just a recipe for disaster because acknowledging our sin is the first step in allowing God’s redeeming love to fix us.  That is why we have this table where we can come time and again to remember the truth about ourselves and the truth about God.  The truth about ourselves is why we always begin our communion with God with a prayer of confession like David’s psalm of confession.  The truth about God is why our prayer of confession is always followed by an assurance of pardon.

It doesn’t matter how big a mess we have made of things.  It doesn’t matter how long we have strayed from God’s path or how far.  If we think our sins are hopelessly unforgivable, we need go no further than our Bibles to read about the exemplars of our faith--David, Paul, Peter—and like those parents who look at Dr. Schnell’s 7^th grade report card, we will find hope.  If God could save the worst of sinners, if God could redeem a man sinful from the time his mother conceived him, then maybe this merciful, longsuffering Savior can save us from our messes and put us back on the path to the Promised Land.

The key is recognizing that we are broken and in need of divine fixing.  “What is Fixed by Being Broken?”  You are and I am.  Recognizing our brokenness is an attitude of Lent, and we all know where Lent leads us: to the resurrecting power of God revealed on Easter morning.  Recognizing our brokenness is the only proper way to come to this table.  Or, to draw upon another image David uses in our text, recognizing our need to have all our sins washed away.  Let us come to this table echoing the prayer of David in our text: Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin (Verse 2).  Let us rise and sing, “Cleanse Me.”