Daily Lesson for February 20, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 64 verses 6 through 9:

6 We have all become like one who is unclean,

   and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.

We all fade like a leaf,

   and our iniquities, like the wind, sweep us away. 

7 There is no one who calls on your name,

   or attempts to take hold of you;

for you have hidden your face from us,

   and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 

8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;

   we are the clay, and you are our potter;

   we are all the work of your hand. 

9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord,

   and do not remember iniquity for ever.

   Now consider, we are all your people.

We are living now in a time of great institutional church indictment. 

As we see story after story of survivors of abuse coming forward, the church can no longer turn a blind eye to its own coverups and its profound failure to protect the young and vulnerable.

For this I believe we live in a time of severe and necessary judgment by God.

As the Prophet Isaiah says from exile in today’s Lesson:

 “We have all become like one who is unclean,

   and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.

We all fade like a leaf,

   and our iniquities, like the wind, sweep us away.”

We have all become like one who is unclean —whether or not we ourselves were directly involved. We as a church have become unclean.  We have become unclean by our commission and omission, complicity and silence, by failing to be our brother’s keeper and our sister’s protector. And regardless of how fair or unfair it might seem to us, we have all become unclean.

The Prophet speaks for his people. He does not make excuses. He does not pass off responsibility. He does not refuse accountability. 

No. He laments. He confesses.  He shows contrition and repentance and the active plea for mercy and commitment to profound change.

He laments.

And perhaps that is what we most need now in the church — people who dare to lament, to wail, and grieve, and sorrow, and dare to look down deep into the darkness that change might truly come to pass and our iniquity not imprison us forever. 

God is the potter and we are the clay. And should the potter decide we need to be broken first before we can be remade then so let it be. For brokenness is path to wholeness and exile the only way home.