Selah; 3.1.20; ICCM; Psalm 32; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
Noel Coward, the famous playwright, once pulled an interesting prank. He sent an identical note to twenty of the most famous men in London. The anonymous note read: “Everybody has found out what you are doing. If I were you I would get out of town.” Supposedly, all twenty men actually left town.
What if you opened your mail one day and found such a note? What would race through your mind? The income you failed to report on your tax return? The time you spent on the internet watching questionable sites? The lies you told about an honest, hardworking individual?
Guilt is the dread of the past; a pain that wells up within our heart because we committed an offense or failed to do something right. It is a phantom pain. You know, like amputees experience after a limb has been removed. A part of the body that does not exist screams for attention. The memory of some sin committed years ago can cripple the enjoyment of life, any devotional life, and relationships with others. People live in fear that someone will discover their past. They work overtime trying to prove to God they’re truly repentant. They erect barriers against the enveloping, loving grace of God.
Guilt performs an important function. It is like an electric fence that gives us a jolt when we begin to stray beyond our boundaries. It sends an alarm to wake us up that something needs our attention. Like pain, guilt tells us when something is wrong. When you feel it, you don’t just sit there, you do something about it.
The problem comes when we keep our failings secret, holding them inside. 12 Step program participants know the value of confession. They have a saying—We’re only as sick as our secrets. The steps include making a searching and fearless moral inventory and admitting those things to the self, to another and to God.
Lent is a time for confessing our shortcomings. It’s a time to pause, to rest, to reflect. Today we read about the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden and Jesus’ testing in the wilderness. Those seem to fit the theme of Lent—but our Psalm for today is full of happy words. Psalm 32 begins with happiness and ends with being glad, rejoicing, and shouting for Joy. According to the psalm, it isn’t revelry and parties that brings happiness, but forgiveness.
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. While I kept silence by body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength dried up as by the heat of summer. We all know the truth of that. Consider an argument with a loved one, a really sticky one, the kind that has you pursing your lips and crossing your arms in defiant self-righteousness and silence. When we hold on to the anger, rehearse our woundedness, and savor the injustice we do waste away. The groaning drowns out all joy. Harboring anger, hurt and sadness can take up all the space there is, drying up our strength and leaving us feeling the weight of it all like a heavy hand pressing us down.
In our psalm there’s a mysterious little word, Selah, whose meaning has been debated for centuries. Most scholars think that it means stop, dwell, think, or consider. This Hebrew word occurs 71 times in 39 of the Psalms and three times in Habakkuk. Most of the psalms that include the word selah are titled, “to the choirmaster.” The prophetic book of Habakkuk, like the Psalms, is a book of poetry. In the third chapter is a prayer in the form of a song where we find the word selah. It is probably something like a stage direction in a play that was known and understood by musicians and even those who were just singing along.
We have Bibles written in English because the overwhelming majority of the original Hebrew and Greek words can be translated into English. However, there are a handful of words in the Bible that are not, or cannot, be translated. When this happens, what we read is not a translation, but a transliteration.
A translation is when a Hebrew word is translated into an English word that means the same thing. For example, the Hebrew word erets is translated to earth, because they have the same meaning, so we English speakers just read ‘earth’.
A transliteration is when a Hebrew word is simply sounded out to English so we can read and pronounce it. An example is Hallelujah. Hallelujah is a transliteration of a Hebrew word that literally means, Praise God (Hallel=praise, Jah =God). Instead of being translated as “Praise God,” this word has been left for us to sound out as it would be in the original Hebrew and continues to be a powerful expression of praise.
Like hallelujah, the fact that selah is transliterated and not translated signifies that when we read selah, we are pronouncing the word generally the same way it would have been pronounced thousands of years ago by those who originally wrote and read it. This little word invites us to pause and consider what God may be saying even when we don’t fully understand. It gives us an opportunity to take a moment away from this crazy, busy, life we all tend to live and consider the immense mysteries and wonders of God. It’s a good reminder of what Lent is supposed to be all about.
It’s after a pause, a reflection on our sin, that we can move to the next stage—Then I acknowledge my sin and did not hide my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah. And the pause is offered again, moving the psalmist and the reader to reflect on how all can pray to God in distress. In that turning to God the floods will not overwhelm. God will be a hiding place, preserving us and surrounding us with glad shouts of deliverance. Selah. Then the psalm continues by telling us not to be like a mule in need of bridling. Be open to instruction and counsel. Be glad in God and rejoice, shout for joy.
What is it that makes us Happy? How can Lent be a time for rejoicing? Well, this Psalm about confession and the little word Selah give us a clue. We acknowledge our sin, confess, and we are forgiven. We pause, we rest, we trust in God. We take time to breathe into the grace of God that surrounds, preserves and hides us.
The late Dr. F.E. Marsh was preaching about the importance of confession of sin and, wherever possible, restitution for wrong done to others. After the service a young man, came up to him with a troubled look on his face. “Pastor,” he explained, “you have put me in a sad fix. I have wronged another and I am ashamed to confess it or to try to put it right. You see, I am a boat builder and the man I work for is an unbeliever. I have talked to him often about Christ and urged him to come and hear you preach, but he scoffs and ridicules it all. Now, I have been guilty of something that, if I should acknowledge it to him, will ruin my testimony forever.”
He explained that he was building a boat for himself in his own yard. In this work expensive copper nails are used because they do not rust. The young man had been pocketing the nails to use on his own boat. He knew it was stealing, but he tried to ease his conscience be telling himself that the master had so many he would never miss them and besides he was not being paid all that he thought he deserved. But this sermon had brought him to face the fact that he was just a common thief, for whose dishonest actions there was no excuse.
“But,” said he, “I cannot go to my boss and tell him what I have done or offer to pay for those I have used and return the rest. If I do, he will think I am just a hypocrite. And yet those copper mails are digging into my conscience and I know I shall never have peace until I put this matter right.”
For weeks the struggle went on. Then one night he came to Dr. Marsh and said, “I’ve settled for the copper nails and my conscience is clear at last.”
“What happened?” asked the pastor.
“Oh,” he answered, “My boss looked at me a bit odd, then said, ‘George, I always did think you were just a hypocrite, but now I begin to feel there’s something in this Christianity after all. Any religion that would make a dishonest workman come back and confess that he had been stealing copper nails and offer to settle for them, must be worth having.’”
Dr. Marsh asked if he might use the story and was granted permission. Sometime afterwards, he told it in another city. The next day a lady came up and said, “Doctor, I have had ‘copper nails’ on my conscience too.” “Surely, you are not a boat builder!” “No, but I am a book-lover and I have stolen a number of books from a friend of mine who gets far more that I could ever afford. I decided last night I must get rid of the ‘copper nails,’ so I took them all back to her today and confessed my sin. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. She forgave me, and God has forgiven me. I am so thankful the ‘copper mails’ are not digging into my conscience anymore.”
Happy are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered. Amen.