My Bad
9th Sunday of Pentecost
Psalm 51:1-17
When we were kids and my sisters and I fought usually Missy was the instigator and eventually Mom would intervene and then tell Missy to apologize. Missy would refuse, and then Mom would say, "Apologize." Then she’d cross her arms and spit out,“Sorry.” Then Mom would say, “Say it like you mean it.”
I heard Paul Slansky on MPR a few weeks ago. He and Arleen Slorkin wrote a book called My Bad, a book about public apologies. They follow the trend in our culture of public apologies being less about saying, “Sorry” and more like, “If you were offended by what I did then I apologize.” It is a conditional apology meant to put the weight of the issue back on the person offended. "If you are wimpy and sensitive enough to be upset by what I did them I apologize." Takes the steam out of an apology, doesn't it? You can be offended twice, this way. He also has a blog listing recent apologies, most currently Mel Gibson’s after he was arrested for drunk driving.
The radio program also talked about the finer details of apologies. First, we want the person to feel bad. We want remorse, we want pain, we want guilt. Unfortunately, we can’t control how someone feels. We can go by what they do as we make judgments, or by how well they seem to have heard us, but we can’t make someone feel different.
Secondly, we want assurance that the person won’t do the offending thing again. An apology loses its value if, say, someone apologizes for stepping on your foot and then they turn around and stomp on it again. We want a change in behavior accompanying the apology.
When we are apologizing to God, however, it’s a little different. We see this in the Psalm today. This one is historically understood as the Psalm David wrote after being caught in his affair with Bathsheba and the killing of her husband Uriah. It's heading in the Bible reads, “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba."
When apologizing to God, asking forgiveness, confessing our sin, it sort of does matter how we feel, since unlike other people God can tell. The language of the Psalm shows us this -- "my sin is ever before you" and "you are justified in your sentence...indeed, I was born guilty." We might say this apology is overdone these days, but we get the full expression of David's guilt and the weight of his actions as he asks God for help and mercy in the midst of the trauma of it.
In the Christian tradition we apologize and ask for forgiveness as a matter of course, to make right anything we might have messed up. Traditionally worship has included a prayer of confession every Sunday, just to cover that part. I'm not the only clergy that doesn't include a specific prayer of confession every week, but I include it especially on Communion Sunday, to help prepare us for Communion, although you can come to the table and ask to be changed here. God can work on you in Communion too. But we do ask forgiveness every week anyway, everytime we pray the Lord’s Prayer: "forgive me my trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Forgiveness and mercy, every week, every day we pray Jesus' prayer.
But just like with apologies from the people in our lives, changing behavior is an important part of apologizing to God. We don't just say, "Give me a clean slate so I can mess up again." David asks God to “create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” He is taking his heart and offering it to God, saying, “Change it. Change me. Transform me. Make be better.”
The hardest part, really, is the asking to change. The newspaper (can't find it online yet) had an article this morning asking if, when people are drunk and do despicable things, is it really them or the alcohol speaking. Evidence says its them - their inhibitions were down but what they say was in them. What they said came out of their mouth -- like Jesus said, "It's not what you put in your mouth that defiles you but what comes out of it." So when we pray, "Create in me a clean heart" we are not asking for better control of what we say, better management of how we present ourselves to the world. We are asking for a change in what is on our minds and in our hearts. We are asking for the stuff inside us to be changed. We aren’t asking for a heart transplant, really, a different heart than the one we’ve always had but instead to be shaped so we have the heart God meant us to have, so we have the heart God dreamed us to have.
And finally David asks God to stay with him, not to abandon him, even as he faces the consequences of his behavior. "Take not your holy Spirit from me, and cast me not away from your presence." In the mess he has to face, even after his apology, David needs God with him. As he works to be changed, he needs God with him.
So we can say, “My bad,” or we can say “My heart, change it” but in the end we must say, “My God, stay with me through this.”
Psalm 51:1-17
When we were kids and my sisters and I fought usually Missy was the instigator and eventually Mom would intervene and then tell Missy to apologize. Missy would refuse, and then Mom would say, "Apologize." Then she’d cross her arms and spit out,“Sorry.” Then Mom would say, “Say it like you mean it.”
I heard Paul Slansky on MPR a few weeks ago. He and Arleen Slorkin wrote a book called My Bad, a book about public apologies. They follow the trend in our culture of public apologies being less about saying, “Sorry” and more like, “If you were offended by what I did then I apologize.” It is a conditional apology meant to put the weight of the issue back on the person offended. "If you are wimpy and sensitive enough to be upset by what I did them I apologize." Takes the steam out of an apology, doesn't it? You can be offended twice, this way. He also has a blog listing recent apologies, most currently Mel Gibson’s after he was arrested for drunk driving.
The radio program also talked about the finer details of apologies. First, we want the person to feel bad. We want remorse, we want pain, we want guilt. Unfortunately, we can’t control how someone feels. We can go by what they do as we make judgments, or by how well they seem to have heard us, but we can’t make someone feel different.
Secondly, we want assurance that the person won’t do the offending thing again. An apology loses its value if, say, someone apologizes for stepping on your foot and then they turn around and stomp on it again. We want a change in behavior accompanying the apology.
When we are apologizing to God, however, it’s a little different. We see this in the Psalm today. This one is historically understood as the Psalm David wrote after being caught in his affair with Bathsheba and the killing of her husband Uriah. It's heading in the Bible reads, “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba."
When apologizing to God, asking forgiveness, confessing our sin, it sort of does matter how we feel, since unlike other people God can tell. The language of the Psalm shows us this -- "my sin is ever before you" and "you are justified in your sentence...indeed, I was born guilty." We might say this apology is overdone these days, but we get the full expression of David's guilt and the weight of his actions as he asks God for help and mercy in the midst of the trauma of it.
In the Christian tradition we apologize and ask for forgiveness as a matter of course, to make right anything we might have messed up. Traditionally worship has included a prayer of confession every Sunday, just to cover that part. I'm not the only clergy that doesn't include a specific prayer of confession every week, but I include it especially on Communion Sunday, to help prepare us for Communion, although you can come to the table and ask to be changed here. God can work on you in Communion too. But we do ask forgiveness every week anyway, everytime we pray the Lord’s Prayer: "forgive me my trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Forgiveness and mercy, every week, every day we pray Jesus' prayer.
But just like with apologies from the people in our lives, changing behavior is an important part of apologizing to God. We don't just say, "Give me a clean slate so I can mess up again." David asks God to “create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” He is taking his heart and offering it to God, saying, “Change it. Change me. Transform me. Make be better.”
The hardest part, really, is the asking to change. The newspaper (can't find it online yet) had an article this morning asking if, when people are drunk and do despicable things, is it really them or the alcohol speaking. Evidence says its them - their inhibitions were down but what they say was in them. What they said came out of their mouth -- like Jesus said, "It's not what you put in your mouth that defiles you but what comes out of it." So when we pray, "Create in me a clean heart" we are not asking for better control of what we say, better management of how we present ourselves to the world. We are asking for a change in what is on our minds and in our hearts. We are asking for the stuff inside us to be changed. We aren’t asking for a heart transplant, really, a different heart than the one we’ve always had but instead to be shaped so we have the heart God meant us to have, so we have the heart God dreamed us to have.
And finally David asks God to stay with him, not to abandon him, even as he faces the consequences of his behavior. "Take not your holy Spirit from me, and cast me not away from your presence." In the mess he has to face, even after his apology, David needs God with him. As he works to be changed, he needs God with him.
So we can say, “My bad,” or we can say “My heart, change it” but in the end we must say, “My God, stay with me through this.”
posted by Michelle at 2:37 PM
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