Repentant songs, sinful kings, and why good people aren't just rare but impossible

Psalm 51

David was in trouble. He’d done something terrible. It was bad enough having an affair with Bathsheba; worse still was sending Uriah off to die in the war. He’s broken no less than seven of the Ten Commandments in a single go, which is a pretty starling accomplishment if you stop and think about it. David, the king of Israel, is chief among sinners.

            If one of us did what David did we would find it difficult to ever be accepted in town again. We know how people would react; the kind of gossip spoken behind our backs. We wouldn’t feel welcome anywhere anymore—not in the church; let alone at the school or anywhere else in public.

            David is creepier, sleazier, and more of an abuser of power and people than we would tolerate in anybody in our neighborhood, let alone our public officials. And that could be the end of the story, except for this:

God chose David. This is critical. It means that David was more than an adulterer and murderer. We like to define people by their worst actions; they become: rapist, thief, adulterer, bad guy. God calls them something different; God calls them “sons” and “daughters.” We give scarlet letters; God gives names. God gives humanity. David is not excused; it’s not that there aren’t consequences; it’s just that there is nothing so terrible that it can separate us from the love of God. God uses us in our brokenness and what comes from this God-given humanity that we discover when we understand how broken we are is often something unexpectedly beautiful. Today it is this song: Psalm 51.

But now that I’ve gone out of my way to excuse David I have to turn around and say this: David was rotten; he abused his power, like so many of us do. The only saving grace he had was that God doesn’t play by our rules. If God did, we would be absolutely out of luck.

This Psalm shows us a way forward for those of us caught in sin. This is not a prayer for good people who’ve had bad things happen to them. So, if you’re a good person I have two words for you: 1. This is not the Psalm for you, and 2. You are not a good person. There is no such thing; not when the scale we are being held up to is the perfection of our God. “No one is good but God alone,” says Jesus.

Often when we read lamentation like this we assume that the words come from a good person with a good heart who, through no fault of their own, faced some immense difficulty, but we do that only because we imagine ourselves to be that person. That’s the kind of person’s shoes we like to wear. In our minds we construct realities where we are virtuous and upright, and when the world realizes just how great we are it will be all the better for it. The motto of rugged individualism may very well be, “The only good person is me.”

I have to imagine this is why this Psalm is ascribed to King David. These words are particularly powerful coming from this terribly powerful, and equally sinful, man. This Psalm comes from a place of repentance, because if we speak it from a place of moral uprightness all we are doing is puffing out of chests. “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” because it is all about me. Me. Me. Me.

When we talk about sin in the church we cannot stress enough that sin is universal before it is bad things that we do. The world is not full of King David’s and Uriah the Hittites, or rather it’s full of both of them but they are one in the same. The power of sin lies in our ability to always see in ourselves Uriah and never see David, to crave the power of David and the morality of Uriah, and to continue to give the Davids of the world the power to do what he did to Uriah without batting an eye. The world is not full of people who are evil and people who are good. It’s not full of bad guys and heroes. We are all created good but covered by this thing we call sin, and the terrible things we sometimes do—and the great things we sometimes do—do not change that. It’s just that those who have some power can abuse that sinfulness all the more, since their power speaks the words they want to hear: it calls them worthy, it says “You really are a good person.”

“Create in me a clean heart, O God,” because I am King David. Maybe the difference between him and me is a measure of power. Maybe I truly wouldn’t do what he did… but the truth is I would; or I would have had a different, equally awful, vice. I definitely wouldn’t have done what was required of me as a person in power, which is to give it up. Like the rich man in the Gospel of Luke who meets Jesus as one who has followed the scriptures diligently his whole life long, Jesus looks at all of us who think we are pretty good people and says, “You done good. Now, go, sell everything. Give everything.” And we go away disappointed. Because what is the point of power if we give it away?

And as long as we’re asking that question we are mired in the darkness.

David prays “Create in me a clean heart, O God” not because he is particularly righteous but because he is particularly broken; not because he knows it all but because he is unsure of anything. And the simple truth is that David is no better for it. He doesn’t become a righteous person because of his prayer, just as we do not become righteous people just because we say some words that we think God will find appealing. David becomes a righteous person only by virtue of a God who flips death on its head. We only see glimpses in those brief, fleeting moments of complete surrender, when we realize that power is not enough. In David’s case, this happens when the child born to Bathsheba dies.

The road to salvation leads through death.

            This 51^st Psalm isn’t a perfect prayer. It can’t be. David is still too absorbed in how he imagines the kingdom of God. “Do good to Zion in your good pleasure,” he says (verse 18), “Rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.” David, like all those who live in Israel prior to Jesus, are still too limited in their understanding of power. They still can only imagine an earthly kingdom.

            I want to say that today we’re wiser; that today we have a much better imagination for God’s kingdom; but I just don’t think so. We, too, pray to God for things that feel to us to be selfless but are veiled threats against the righteousness of God. We too often imagine that God is a fairy godmother granting our requests. We still too often speak the words of Psalm 51 imagining that the words alone will make us righteous. We are not righteous; not ‘til we cross that barrier into death. But we are forgiven; which sounds similar, but for that the crucial difference that forgiven people continue to go on sinning. We try not to; that is certainly the path toward a good life—not taking advantage of others; loving God; loving our neighbors. But we won’t get there. We won’t love perfectly, which is why “Create in me a clean heart, O God” is not a formula to be a better person, but a confession of our brokenness and words of longing for a better life.

            Through it all we have a God who sees through us and calls us “daughters” and “sons.” Human beings. And that’s a beautiful thing. Thank God for grace, the only hope of creating a new heart in me; a slow process, but a certain one. Something worth waiting on.