Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that You have broken rejoice.
Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me.
Cast me not away from Your presence, and take not the Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of my salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. (vs. 7-12)
Hyssop. In Leviticus 14 and Numbers 19, the cleansing ceremonies are described for the Israelites. Leviticus defines cleansing for lepers, which I find interesting in relation to this song of David. Hyssop is a plant with hairy leaves and branches which apparently made it perfect for dipping into blood and using for sprinkling as the sacrificial blood clung to it. The priest would dip the hyssop into the offering and sprinkle it seven times upon the leper.
A leprous heart. Numbed to feeling pain. So much so that it could lose part of itself and not even know. Lepers lose fingers and toes because they have lost feeling in the nerve endings and damage their digits in accidents. Blindness also occurs. So, David was leprous. How else could he have gone on with life as usual as a man of God and a murderer. Justification entered his bloodstream. The disease spread to become full blown iniquity. And he finally understood that.
How was it that David so easily saw the sin of the rich man in Nathan's story and missed his own? Our sin becomes comfortable to us because....well...it is ours. My father was molested when he was twelve years old. After this horrifying encounter, my father eventually became a molester himself. We did not discover this until I was thirty-seven. He was arrested for the molestation of a young man in his church. Many years passed. Many struggles with my father. In the end, at age eighty-four, he received court-ordered help. Left a journal when he died in 2007. One of the most striking things about the therapy-driven diaries was his inability to see his sin against children as wrong. There were many pages devoted to trying to empathize with victims. My father's pedophilia had been a part of him for so long that it was, by that time, intrinsic. In his bones. Justifiable on some level. He thought it love.
I have lived with sins I needed to excise from my heart. I understand the longer we allow the disease to overtake us, the harder it is to purge. There is not enough blood and hyssop in the world to cleanse a heart that is hardened, numbed and blinded. Leprous to the core. A leper who loves his disease will stay a leper.
Remember when Jesus met the man at the pool of Bethesda - the Mercy Pool? The man had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Around him lay all kinds of invalids - the blind, lame and paralyzed. Because the water in the pool was supposed to bring healing, these needy souls gathered there awaiting an angel to stir it up. Think Lourdes.
Jesus approached this man, knowing he had been lying there for a long time. "Do you want to be healed?" Christ asked. A crazy question. Right?
"Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up," he whined. "And while I am going, another steps down before me." Not the answer to the question, is it? Justification for staying by the pool. For not changing his life.
"Get up. Take your bed with you. And walk!" Jesus giving him the opportunity to change his life. To recognize not only his pitiful need but the powerful answer to it. A merciful response to a failed answer.
Ah, the leprous soul cries out, "Create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me!"
Her God replies: "Do you want to be clean? Really? With all your heart?"
On her knees now, for she has seen the numbness, the brokenness, and can finally call it what it is...disease...sin. "Please don't leave me! Don't hide Your face from me because You are my only hope of ever being cleansed. Wash me now!"
The hyssop branch in the hand of God is dipped into the blood and pure water of the sacrifice and sprinkled generously seven times upon the leper's filth. This time not from the veins of tiny birds or stomping heifers. This blood comes from a fountain gushing ever clean from the side of a wounded Lamb. Scarlet, it flows freely as our God trades His sacrifice for our iniquity.
"You are clean!" our Great High Priest declares. "Though your sins were scarlet, you are now white as snow!"
His grace is not fair, but it is free. To us. At great cost to Him. So that even our bones rejoice, freed from the aching malady which coursed through our marrow.
Do we want to be healed? We can. If we come to the fountain.
Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me.
Cast me not away from Your presence, and take not the Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of my salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. (vs. 7-12)
Hyssop. In Leviticus 14 and Numbers 19, the cleansing ceremonies are described for the Israelites. Leviticus defines cleansing for lepers, which I find interesting in relation to this song of David. Hyssop is a plant with hairy leaves and branches which apparently made it perfect for dipping into blood and using for sprinkling as the sacrificial blood clung to it. The priest would dip the hyssop into the offering and sprinkle it seven times upon the leper.
A leprous heart. Numbed to feeling pain. So much so that it could lose part of itself and not even know. Lepers lose fingers and toes because they have lost feeling in the nerve endings and damage their digits in accidents. Blindness also occurs. So, David was leprous. How else could he have gone on with life as usual as a man of God and a murderer. Justification entered his bloodstream. The disease spread to become full blown iniquity. And he finally understood that.
How was it that David so easily saw the sin of the rich man in Nathan's story and missed his own? Our sin becomes comfortable to us because....well...it is ours. My father was molested when he was twelve years old. After this horrifying encounter, my father eventually became a molester himself. We did not discover this until I was thirty-seven. He was arrested for the molestation of a young man in his church. Many years passed. Many struggles with my father. In the end, at age eighty-four, he received court-ordered help. Left a journal when he died in 2007. One of the most striking things about the therapy-driven diaries was his inability to see his sin against children as wrong. There were many pages devoted to trying to empathize with victims. My father's pedophilia had been a part of him for so long that it was, by that time, intrinsic. In his bones. Justifiable on some level. He thought it love.
I have lived with sins I needed to excise from my heart. I understand the longer we allow the disease to overtake us, the harder it is to purge. There is not enough blood and hyssop in the world to cleanse a heart that is hardened, numbed and blinded. Leprous to the core. A leper who loves his disease will stay a leper.
Remember when Jesus met the man at the pool of Bethesda - the Mercy Pool? The man had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Around him lay all kinds of invalids - the blind, lame and paralyzed. Because the water in the pool was supposed to bring healing, these needy souls gathered there awaiting an angel to stir it up. Think Lourdes.
Jesus approached this man, knowing he had been lying there for a long time. "Do you want to be healed?" Christ asked. A crazy question. Right?
"Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up," he whined. "And while I am going, another steps down before me." Not the answer to the question, is it? Justification for staying by the pool. For not changing his life.
"Get up. Take your bed with you. And walk!" Jesus giving him the opportunity to change his life. To recognize not only his pitiful need but the powerful answer to it. A merciful response to a failed answer.
Ah, the leprous soul cries out, "Create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me!"
Her God replies: "Do you want to be clean? Really? With all your heart?"
On her knees now, for she has seen the numbness, the brokenness, and can finally call it what it is...disease...sin. "Please don't leave me! Don't hide Your face from me because You are my only hope of ever being cleansed. Wash me now!"
The hyssop branch in the hand of God is dipped into the blood and pure water of the sacrifice and sprinkled generously seven times upon the leper's filth. This time not from the veins of tiny birds or stomping heifers. This blood comes from a fountain gushing ever clean from the side of a wounded Lamb. Scarlet, it flows freely as our God trades His sacrifice for our iniquity.
"You are clean!" our Great High Priest declares. "Though your sins were scarlet, you are now white as snow!"
His grace is not fair, but it is free. To us. At great cost to Him. So that even our bones rejoice, freed from the aching malady which coursed through our marrow.
Do we want to be healed? We can. If we come to the fountain.
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