A New Heart
Psalm 51: 11-18
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy Spirit from me.
Give me the joy of your saving help again and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.
I shall teach your ways to the wicked, and sinners shall return to you.
Deliver me from death, O God, and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness, O God of my salvation.
Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice; but you take no delight in burnt-offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
The verses in today’s psalm are bookended with heart imagery. Offering God a broken heart and God refashioning it anew suggest a heart made of clay. As the prophet Isaiah tells us, God is the potter and we are the clay.
Clay starts as a wet lump, easily molded and shaped by the potter. Then it is dried and fired harden its shape.
Unlike clay pieces for food and decoration, we want clay hearts that aren’t dried—fixed in their shape and permanently set. In fact, God tells the prophet Ezekiel that his heart of stone—or should we say fired clay—will be removed, and a new heart of flesh—or soft clay—will be given in its place.
Until the clay is fired, there is always another chance for it. No matter how dry, cracked or broken it is, it can be repurposed. Small pieces of broken pottery can be crumbled into dust and added to water. This makes a crucial ingredient for clay working called slip or slurry. Slip is used when two pieces of clay are joined together, literally forming the glue that holds it together.
For larger pieces, they can be fully submerged in water to reabsorb what was lost, and it can be refashioned.
If, as the psalmist suggests, we offer our broken and contrite hearts to God, they can be remade. But only if they have reabsorbed what was lost. That means spending time reabsorbing God’s love, mercy, and grace being immersed in scripture, prayer, and practice. Only then can God create our hearts anew.
Lent is traditionally a time when we look at the state of our spiritual lives, and today’s passage begs the question—how is your heart? Is it broken and contrite, ready to offer to God in order to be remade?
Lent is also a time to ask, how is your practice? What do you need to steep yourself in so that your heart can be saturated with God’s love, mercy and grace and then remade by God?
Create in me a clean heart, O God. A renew a right spirit within me. Amen.
prayer
Great and good God,
Give us pure hearts that we may see you,
Humble hearts that we may hear you,
Hearts of love that we may serve you,
Hearts of faith that we may live in you,
Reverent hearts that we may worship you,
Here and in the world out there,
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
—Dag Hammarskjöld from the Book of Common Worship ©️ 1993, p. 22