Lent V: Confessional Address (22-Mar-2015)

This confessional address was preached at St Mark's Lutheran Church, Mt Barker, 8.30am, 10.30am.

Today as we prepare for the confession of sins, I’d like to read to you a little verse from Psalm 51, which is a psalm that often is used at this time through Lent. It says: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

When we read our Gospel reading today: When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. Now so often we might say to Jesus, “I want you to draw me to yourself, Jesus, just like you say, but I often feel so broken.”

But when we feel like that, this is Jesus drawing you to himself. He is drawing you to himself, he is stretching out his arms to you and embracing you, but on the cross. The whole Christian faith is drawing people in their cross to their crucified Saviour. That’s where we meet Jesus.

And so the psalm says: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. The sacrifices of God are not a proud, arrogant, spirit—a spirit that feels pretty good and has life together. Sacrifices in the Old Testament were burnt, and when we our spirits are burned, it hurts, but God knows, and he hears, and he listens, and he cares.

It’s easy to imagine what it means to be broken. We can imagine what another psalm says: You have taken me up and thrown me down. That’s broken. But it says: A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. What’s contrite? Contrite is like an old lady I know who cracks walnuts in the palms of her hands. Our pride puffs itself up, we want to be like God. And then the Holy Spirit comes along, takes our pride and goes: crack, like a walnut. A broken heart is easy to picture, but a contrite heart is one that is stuck between a rock and hard place. The Holy Spirit has got us cornered, but not out of vengeance and hate, but out of love. The Holy Spirit corners us, and keeps us from wriggling away, just like a surgeon wants his patient to lay still so that the proper cut can be made. When our hearts and broken and contrite, then they are in that wonderful condition where Christ’s forgiveness can be applied to us, and in such a way that we hadn’t realised before, and we can sing to him a new song.

So let’s come and bring to God the sacrifice of our hearts, our broken and contrite spirits. He will not despise you, but he applies his forgiveness to you and through his cross and his blood, He draws you lovingly to himself. Let’s pray…