Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy,
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
Psalm 51:1-2
Some stains are stubborn and take more effort to wash out than others. Some stains go deeper than the skin. God is a healer, a stain-remover, a mender of brokenness, no matter how deep the stain may be. The psalmist is confident that God can be counted on for mercy. “According to” refers to the known qualities and character of God: “Your steadfast love.” “Your abundant mercy”. This is who God is. It is important that we understand sin and iniquity as things that God desires to save us from. They are the stains, the wounds, the things that misshape and corrupt us. Even though sin is our enemy and God’s enemy, we adopt it as our own. Sin becomes personal. “My iniquity…My sin”. Sin becomes a stubborn stain that is difficult to remove. Lent is a season when we avail ourselves to the stain-removing work of God. We muster the courage to confront the reality that the stains are there and that the stains are ours. We trust in God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy.
The stain-removing process is not automatic. I am learning that stain-removing often requires the friction between my habits, assumptions, and emotional ruts and God’s grace. This is why my discipleship has sought to be more embodied and relational and less private and spiritualized. My life must be “scrubbed” in real time with a combination of pressure and repetition. I’ve found that the relational challenge of loving my literal neighbor has provided this cleansing action. God’s grace works powerfully to wash me thoroughly. The Spirit invites me to do things I wouldn’t do without God’s invitation like knock on a door, introduce myself to someone new, apologize for something I said, invite someone to dinner, ask a personal question, or answer one asked of me honestly. These and countless other tiny risks of faith are the repetitive motion – each of them moves my heart, mind, body, and soul and starts to loosen those particles of fear, pride, judgment, and doubt within me. The response of my neighbors is another grace – whether positive or negative. It reaches depths I couldn’t reach myself, often surprising me with joy or a hidden shame. And then there is the grace of the prayer and reflection that accompanies this relational activity. It is like the soap and water that gently lifts those particles out and dissolves them, creating in me a clean heart. Processing this activity with faithful friends increases the depth and power that I experience cleansing and renewal.
I encourage you to enter this Lent thinking about how God is inviting you into the process of stain-removal, reconciliation, and healing from sin. Where is the invitation to embodied and relational friction and pressure? Where is the space for prayer and reflection to help ease that friction and dissolve those particles? Who are the faithful friends you can process this cleansing process with? God is abundant in mercy and steadfast in Love. God is ready to cleanse us.