Genesis 9:8-17 | Psalm 25:3-9 | 1 Peter 3:18-22 | Mark 1:9-13

You may have noticed something different when you arrived at church this morning. The color of the linens has changed from green to purple. The service began this morning with the call to a Holy Lent, in which we were invited to enter a season of self-examination and repentance; “by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” We’ve also confessed our sins and received absolution. But that’s not all – the psalm that we read (together) this morning is also a psalm of penitence, pleading for God’s forgiveness and proclaiming God’s great mercy. Taken together, these elements of the liturgy signal to us that we have moved from Epiphany, a season of revelation and God’s manifestation, to Lent, a season of self-examination, penitence, and preparation for the trials of Christ. Here in sunny California, the weather does not mirror this change in Church season, but the nature of our worship together gives us a sense of movement like a musical transition from major to minor key.

We hear the echo of those minor chords from the psalm of an ancient Israelite this morning, Psalm 25, and we can imagine a lonely penitent, burdened by the weight of sin, coming to the temple to relieve his burden. Before a priest and a gathered congregation, he pleads for God’s mercy and guidance in the face of his transgression, the priest responds with an assurance of God’s grace, and the congregation is taught by the priest and the penitent about the dangers of sin, God’s steadfast love, and the expectations of a faithful follower. The psalm is a plea for forgiveness and also a teaching tool: “The Lord is a friend to those who fear him, and will show them his covenant.”

When I imagine this ancient penitent, I admit a particular face comes to my mind. A lonely man, burdened by the sins of his lifetime, but unable to repent, and unable to restore his family. This was a man I knew last summer – he was dying of cancer, and I was his Hospice Chaplain. I can tell his impact upon me was profound – this is the second time this year he’s made an appearance in one of my sermons. He was just such an enigma to me… he chose to live alone and resisted any kind of move that would provide him with greater care, and yet he craved company. He was the loneliest man I’ve ever known, but he didn’t need to be. He sat there dying in his apartment alone because over his lifetime he had isolated himself, sinning against his wives, his children, until they eventually gave up on him. He talked to me a little about this, and yet he was never, in my presence, able to fully acknowledge his sin, or to ask forgiveness. At the end of the summer he died, and I’m left wondering if he had, like the psalmist, offered himself among the community of God and given up his sins, would he have been so isolated?

Sin isolates us. We are, after all, a covenant people. We live under the promise that God is faithful to us as we strive to be faithful to God. The covenant is all about living in community, in relationship with God and with all of God’s creation. When we break the covenant, when we fail to love God and to love others completely, we break down our relationships. Whether intentionally or unintentionally we put up road blocks, clogging the connections between ourselves and the world, until we find ourselves alone on a highway that no one wants to travel. If I could write in the margins of Paul’s letter to the Romans, which we read today, I would write in an exception. No… “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation…” EXCEPT maybe ourselves, the burden of our own sin, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God’s love is always offered to us, but if we are weighed down by sin, separated from our brothers and sisters, we may also be isolated from God. The ancient psalmist felt this isolation as he cried out, “Turn to me and have pity on me, for I am left alone and in misery!”

But the promise of Psalm 25 is that in the end the penitent is not left alone and in misery. Through the process of repentance, he finds a place back in the community, and offers himself as a student to the ways of the Lord. The predominant image of the community of God in this psalm is, in fact, a classroom. God is the teacher, and we are the students in a school of faith. “Gracious and upright is the Lord, therefore he teaches sinners in his way. He guides the humble in doing right, and teaches his way to the lowly.” In the school of faith, we are asked to submit ourselves with humility and a willingness to learn, with the promise that God will offer guidance, and an assurance that “All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”

Of course, there would be no point to this psalm if God’s love and faithfulness were only offered to those who perfectly keep the covenant. The sinner pleads because he knows that God is merciful. A God who is compassionate and loving can do no other than to offer mercy to the penitent soul. In the school of faith, we are continually offered new chances to repent of our sins, to come out of our self-imposed isolation, and to learn the ways of God. God teaches us to be faithful by demonstrating the never-ending faithfulness and steadfast love of a merciful God. God is the kindest teacher we’ll ever have.

So, we begin this Lenten season with a call to repentance, an invitation to examine our lives looking for those things which isolate us, removing us from the community of God’s creation and blocking our relationship with God. Those things can be difficult to see, particularly when we don’t want to see them. We humans have a tendency to hide from our own sin, and to resist restoring relationships that we know we have damaged. Sometimes being alone looks so much more appealing; it is certainly much less risky.

But God, the compassionate and loving God, the faithful and merciful God, is calling us into relationship through the covenant to which we all belong. The season of Lent, then is a reminder to us that our relationships require some maintenance. For we all sin, and it is only through repentance that we can be brought back into the community – the community that both submits itself as students in God’s school of faith, and also shares the teaching by proclaiming the way of the Lord.

I want to end this sermon by pointing out the way in which our psalm ends. If you notice verse 21, you’ll see that the plea for forgiveness is no longer an individual plea, it is a plea on behalf of the entire community. As if it wasn’t hard enough already, repenting of our own sins is not enough. Christians, we are members of a community – a small community gathered here this morning, but also a national community, and a global community. By virtue of being members of this community, we participate in the sin and resulting isolation of groups and institutions and governments. Our task is not only to examine our own lives and repent of our personal sins, but also to recognize the sins of our community that separate us from one another and from God, and to find ways to bring these communities back into relationship with God, with the hope and assurance that God will teach and guide us along the way.

A season of repentance is a difficult season, but it is one grounded in hope, and in the assurance that God is indeed merciful. If we will repent, turn away from our sins, and submit ourselves to the God of love and mercy, then we can trust that God will indeed guide us. Let us pray during this Lenten season that we will as individuals and as a community find true repentance, so that we may no longer be isolated by our fear and guilt, but brought, once again, into faithful relationships with God and one another. Amen.

Mrs. Mary Vano