Confession Is Good for the Soul

Psalm 51:1-17

When I was just a little girl, probably around age two, my mom was trying to potty-train me.  Apparently I didn’t take to it very well.  I guess I just didn’t like the potty chair.  Maybe I was afraid of it.  I don’t really remember.  But instead of telling my mom when I needed to go potty, I would just go behind the couch and wet my pants, and then come out, thinking that no one would notice.  Somehow, if I could just hide it, it wouldn’t be a problem.  But, of course, it was.  Both for me and for my mom.  Wet pants don’t feel too good after a while.

But isn’t that the way it is?  When we do something we shouldn’t do, our first impulse is to hide it, to cover it up, to sweep it under the rug and hope that nobody notices, especially not God.  That was the way Adam and Eve tried to deal with the very first sin.  When they ate the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, the only tree that God told them to leave alone, they realized what they had done, and they tried to hide from God.  Not only that, they hid from each other by creating clothes for themselves (you know, those leafy garments we see in the Sunday School pictures).

The great hero of the Old Testament, David the king, also tried to hide when he sinned against God.  You surely remember the story of David and Bathsheba.  David had stayed behind in Jerusalem that spring while his armies were off fighting the enemy.  He was bored, and probably feeling guilty for not joining the troops, and was maybe how things were going at the front, and he couldn’t sleep.  So he was pacing on the palace roof.  And he glanced over and saw Bathsheba taking a bath.  He began to lust after her, and decided he had to have her for himself.  So he sent for her, and slept with her, and sent her home.

As if that weren’t bad enough, when Bathsheba later told David that she was pregnant, David schemed to cover up his sin by bringing Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, home on leave.  Knowing that Uriah would surely spend lots of time with his wife, he figured that when the baby was born, Uriah would assume the child was his.  But things didn’t quite go as David had planned.  Uriah was only concerned about how the armies were doing, and he wasn’t going to enjoy time with his wife when the other men were still on duty. 

So David came up with still another plan.  He sent Uriah back to the front lines, and had his generals set up a situation that was bound to get Uriah killed.  And it worked.  Uriah died in battle.  And after the period of mourning was over, David brought Bathsheba into the palace and married her.  David not only committed adultery, he committed murder.  He was guilty of grave sin.  But still he hoped to keep it hidden.

God saw all of this and was concerned for David’s soul.  So he sent Nathan the prophet to confront David.  God knows that sin left buried will fester in our hearts and minds and souls, and continue to separate us from him.  And God was not willing to let David end up like that.  God needed David as his faithful servant.  And so God made a way for David to make things right.  Once Nathan confronted David, and David admitted that he had sinned, he wrote Psalm 51 as a psalm of confession.

Probably none of us has gone to the extremes that David went to in order to hide our mistakes or cover our sins.  I don’t know, maybe you have.  But we all are guilty of some kind of sin or wrongdoing, missing the mark, falling short of God’s expectations for us.  We are only human, after all.  And most of us have probably tried to hide that sin from God and from others, maybe even from ourselves.  It is hard to face up to what we have done, to admit how wrong we have been.  It is hard to let anyone, even God, see the dark sides of our natures.

But it is necessary to deal with our sins openly and honestly, as quickly as possible.  Otherwise, we feel distance between ourselves and God, a distance that is caused by our guilt.  And there is no reason to hang on to that guilt, because we have been promised forgiveness if we just confess our sin and promise to do better.  God loves us and does not want there to be a separation between us.  God understands that sin is a reality and that everyone will sin at some point.  That is why God provided a way out for us, a way that was paid for with the blood of his own Son.  God paid the penalty for all the sins of the world, so that all who ask will be forgiven.

We come to this season of Lent, this time of penitence and reflection, with some degree of discomfort and maybe even fear.  We would rather not think about what we have done wrong, or what we have failed to do that was right.  We would rather not admit that we are guilty of anything.  But we also know that we don’t want to live with our guilt forever, we don’t want to hide behind couches and wear wet pants just because we have tried to hide from God.  Wouldn’t it be better to just admit what we have done and be forgiven?

I remember reading a story in Robert Fulghum’s book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  He was in his office at home one afternoon, listening to the neighborhood kids playing hide and seek.  He noticed that one of the kids hid under a pile of leaves in his yard.  All the other kids got found, and they were all looking for this one little boy.  Finally, they yelled, “Olley, olley, oxen-free!” signaling that anyone still in hiding should come out.  But this little boy still stayed hidden.  The other kids got tired of looking for him and headed for home.  Fulghum said he just wanted to shout out the window, “Get yourself found!”

I guess that’s a good way to end tonight.  Get yourself found!  Come out of hiding and deal with your sin!  Confession is good for the soul.  God will forgive you; that is his promise.  All you have to do is say, “I did it; I’m sorry.  I will do better next time.”

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