Sustain in Me

When you try your best, but you don't succeed / When you get what you want, but not what you need / When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep / Stuck in reverse

Songwriters: Christopher Anthony John Martin, Guy Rupert Berryman, William Champion, Jonathan Mark Buckland
“Fix You” lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Mgb. Ltd.

It would be difficult to believe that Coldplay set out to write an Ash Wednesday song. But it sure seems like they did. “When you try your best, but you don’t succeed.” Is there a better opening line to capture something of the struggle we face as those who seek to follow Christ and yet fail more often than not? Is there a better way to express the despair we feel as we stumble over our own limitations, our own mortality?

Well, there is Psalm 51. Year after year, we return to this psalm because it speaks to the depths of our human predicament, but also the hope inherent in our faith. “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit” (Ps 51:12 NRSV). That is a powerful and hope-filled plea, but it is surrounded by an expression of brokenness and guilt and confession so strong that it threatens to overwhelm the possibility of redemption.

“When you lose something that you can’t replace.”

Tradition suggests that this psalm was the one David wrote after his confrontation with the prophet Nathan over the Bathsheba affair. Or, some argue, it was written after the child from that ill-fated liaison died, and the despair and guilt that wracked David afterward brought forth this heartfelt prayer. There is certainly human anguish captured in Psalm 51, and an overwhelming sense of guilt.

We want there to be levels of sinfulness. Surely what King David did was much worse than anything we might have done. Surely. And yet the experience written about in Psalm 51 seems to resonate with our own experience and desire for redemption. The plea in the midst of this psalm sounds as if it could have come from us. We want restoration. We want a clean heart and a new and right spirit within us. That’s why we’re here on Ash Wednesday—for a new start and a new hope.

But that one line, verse 4, doesn’t seem to capture the deeper reality. “Against you, you alone, have I sinned,” wrote David. I wonder if Bathsheba would have a different opinion about that. I wonder if Uriah from the flag-draped coffin or the baby bundled into blankets might feel differently. That’s the problem with sin; it leaks. It spills out and affects folks around us. “As long as no one gets hurt” is a naïve cliché that doesn’t give us a sense of the true impact of our actions or decisions or priorities. We think we can get away with something because it is just between us and God. It’s my soul I’m putting at risk, no one else. Or so we think.

So, what did the writer, David or whoever, mean when writing “against you, you alone, have I sinned”? Our highest allegiance is to God, and therefore that’s what matters most? Well, maybe, but that doesn’t feel satisfactory to a faith that demands that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So, why then? Why start with God to begin to fix what is broken within us? Maybe for the strength to heal the relationships. Maybe we start with God so that we can then go further.

That’s why we’re here. At worship this night. Where else could we go for restoration to joy? Where else could we go to be purged and made clean? Where else could we go for a new heart? Worship, of course. The purpose of worship is to glorify God. And the result of worship that glorifies God is to reconcile the worshiper with the Presence. For reconciliation to take place, cleansing must occur. For cleansing to occur, an open heart must be offered. For an open heart to be offered, a hunger must be acknowledged؅—a hunger to be fixed, a hunger to be whole again.

When we come to worship hungry, then something happens. We are transformed; we are healed; we are made clean. We are made right with God. Then it becomes possible to be made right with one another. That is why we worship as a body, so that the effect of our worship can be felt among us as well as within us. Because we know that even though we start with God, it is not God alone who is sinned against. We need to begin that healing process too.

That is what is missing when we are missing from worship. That is the “not right” feeling that we get when we are away from the body. Many have spoken about that lack, that unsettled feeling that we get when we miss worship for whatever reason. It is hard to name sometimes, but it is real. The truth is, we can have that feeling even when we are present in worship because presence doesn’t always mean engagement. Presence doesn’t always mean coming hungry. We are so filled up by the busyness of this life that we forget how hungry we are. We forget to seek the face that defines us, that accepts us, that loves us with a love almost beyond description. We think we are self-sufficient, when, in fact, we are anything but. We are needy. We are often empty. We are hungry for that word of acceptance, of unconditional love. We are hungry for meaning and direction and hope.

Our unspoken fear is that the one we seek this from won’t offer it. We fear that we are somehow not worthy, that we are too dirty to be made clean, too broken to be made whole, too rotten to be made healthy. That feeling of disconnect is not just inside us; it is from that source, and we are cast away from all that will make us “right.”

The psalmist feels that too. Yet there is a plea; there is hope; there is a remembrance of wholeness and joy. So, the psalmist seeks it, even as we seek it. The psalmist worships, even as we worship, that we might be made right again. “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and put a new and right spirit within me.” That’s our prayer, our theme for worship. Then our lips will open, and our mouths will declare praise. Come and worship; come hungry and worship with joy. Then we can tell the story; then we can ask forgiveness from all those we have harmed. Then we can be reconciled, or at least begin the process of reconciliation. Then we can see the lights that will guide us home, and we can feel it in our bones, and we can be on our way to being fixed. That’s our prayer and our hope and our desire this Ash Wednesday