(Psalm 51:1-12)
Of all the features of the human face, the humble nose is a frequent butt of jokes. You’ve heard them before:
- My nose is so big, when I’m lying down, it works as a sundial.
- My nose is so big I was doing the backstroke, and the lifeguard had the beach evacuated thinking it was a shark.
- My nose is so big that when I sneeze, everyone runs for cover.
- My nose arrives at my destination 10 minutes before I do.
But the nose is critical for smelling. The nose knows.
This knowledge is called the science of olfaction — the detection and identification of airborne chemicals and scents. Olfaction research is a rapidly growing discipline that not only studies how we recognize the whiff of a dead skunk lying on the side of the road, but also studies the ever-creative ways humans have of making themselves or their surroundings smell good.
The science of smell is more than a reference to the emollients, ointments, creams, lotions, sprays, and gels that ensure our armpits are not offensive, or that your eau de parfum is not overpowering, or that your “Outlaw” cowboy cologne doesn’t smell like musk oil. It is also about how we can live in an environment that is fragrant, healthy, and olfactory-positive for those delightful nasal receptors that tell us when chocolate chip cookies are baking in the oven.
One’s sense of smell is so powerful that it can evoke long-held memories and be an aid to learning and memory retention, especially for those who are aging. In a recent study, participants were given a machine that released a brief spray of rose, orange, eucalyptus, lemon, peppermint, rosemary, and lavender scents during sleep. The researchers then discovered that there was a 226% improvement on a learning and memory test among those “who slept with a strong nightly scent compared with those that diffused distilled water every night.”
I have been doing a sermon series through Lent entitled, “What God Can’t Do” and, while I had not planned this one as part of that series, I guess the subtitle could be God Can’t Be Mocked” or “God Can Smell a Rat.”
In the psalm before us, King David has a smelling problem. But the problem has nothing to do with memory retention or the last time he took a bath.
The sovereign king of Israel stinks. The monarch reeks to high heaven. It’s been a long time since he has smelled like a rose. He’s a walking landfill, a leaching toxic waste site.
It’s an apt metaphor. The United States has 3,091 active landfills and more than 10,000 old municipal landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and most of them leak. This is David’s problem here in Psalm 51: he knows he has a sin problem, and the problem of sin is that it leaks out and pollutes others.
Landfills are basically bathtubs in the ground with liners and double-liners and so on. They can leak out the bottom or over the top, and towns like to locate their landfills far away. Which is precisely what David tried to do – what we all do: keep dirty little secrets hidden and out of sight where we think no one will notice.
David’s behavior is stinking up the place, and he knows it. He wants his life to smell like a rose. He wants fragrance. He desires l’eau de paix — the still waters of peace and green pastures of posterity.
This is the key to the psalm: David’s search for peace. And the key elements of this quest are confession, repentance, and restoration.
Verses 1-5 constitute David’s confession. It is the first step he takes to aerate the foul odor of sin that permeates his life. “I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me,” he cries. He has sinned against God, and what he has done is “evil in your sight.” He says that God has every right to “pass judgment” and sentence him to a punishment that is severe and just.
One aspect of a healthy confession is honesty. David was right. His crimes were evil. He had raped his beautiful neighbor, and in effect murdered the woman’s husband by sending him to the front lines where death was inevitable. David’s conduct was evil and diabolical and if he were alive today in the United States, he’d be given several life sentences without parole, or worse, depending on what state he lived in.
He was honest. That’s a good thing.
But let’s be frank. The likelihood that any of you sitting here is a rapist or killer is extremely low.
Could it be that — honestly now — most of us would have a hard time enumerating a sin that we had committed within the past 24 hours? Try it, right now. Not easy.
Yet, the Bible urges us to confess our sins. For us, as it was for David, it can be a starting point for refreshing and deodorizing our lives. Consider Proverbs 28:13: “No one who conceals transgressions will prosper, but one who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”
There is no doubt that David, considering his body of work in the psalms and his close relationship with Samuel, the last ruling judge of Israel, knew the Scriptures. He knew he had to own up to his misdeeds. He knew the law: “When any of you sin … you shall confess the sin that you’ve committed” (Leviticus 5:1, 5).
Perhaps because we’ve lost our sense of smell, we don’t know that our lives are anything but a “sweet-smelling fragrance” unto the Lord. If we practiced confession in our prayers consistently, we’d be more aware of how we have been disobedient and the forms in which our disobedience have been on display in our public and private lives.
David moves from confession to repentance in verse 6, and his pleas continue through verse 11. But the word “repent” doesn’t appear even once. In fact, the English word “repent” appears infrequently in the Old Testament, less than a dozen times and that’s if you’re reading the King James Version. But the Hebrew word for “repent” or “repentance” is a form of shuv meaning “turn,” and it occurs more than 1,000 times in the Hebrew Bible. In the New Testament, the Greek word for repentance is metanoia, which essentially means to change one’s mind.
Psalm 51 is very much like a courtroom scene in which the trial is over, and the judge asks the convicted felon if there is anything he wants to say before a sentence is imposed. Psalm 51 is that statement. It begins with confession, as noted above, and now, David starts to change his mind, starts to turn in verse 6, expressing remorse and contrition. It’s an about-face for the proud and arrogant man who had formerly strutted and preened before a sunbathing married woman and who had later conspired to bring about the death of his rival. That person is gone. Now he wants a total makeover of his spiritual house. He wants the foul smell removed, the stench to be overcome by God’s lovingkindness. He uses words like “purge” and “clean” and “wash.” He wants to be “whiter than snow.”
David is turning. He is changing his mind. It’s something people do when they repent. It happens to alcoholics who stay sober; at some point they turn. It happens to smokers. At some point, they quit and turn their lives to face a new, healthy direction. It happens to addicts. And this turning and changing can happen to all of us, as well.
When we turn, we can ask God as David does to “hide your face from my sins.” David praises God in Psalm 103 saying, “As far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us” (v. 12).
In our text, he comes right to the point: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me” (v. 10). Clearly, David is doing something more than simply saying he’s sorry. He wants a do-over or a make-over. He wants to be a new person, a new creation. He wants a fresh start, a new beginning. He is at a turning point we call repentance.
It’s characterized by total disgust with one’s behavior. The penitent is completely repulsed by the stench, and now abhors the lack of discipline in their life. The confessor is ready to turn, leave behind the detritus of their former life and set off on the road not taken.
It’s not an easy road. Both interpersonal and human-divine relationships are fragile and complex, often prone to misunderstandings, conflicts and ultimately, dissolution. Whether it’s a friendship, a romantic partnership, a family tie or even a professional relationship, no connection is immune to strain.
However, just as relationships can be damaged, they can also be repaired and revitalized, especially after taking the first steps of confession and repentance.
David seeks a reconciliation with God. He knows it is possible because God is a forgiving God. He knew that:
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice,
which is more than liberty.
For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
David’s knowledge of the wideness in God’s mercy, the kindness in God’s justice and his understanding that the love of God is deep and broad, and the heart of God is “most wonderfully kind” empowers him to pray for restoration: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit” (vv. 10-12).
David is doing everything right as he seeks restoration. He has engaged in self-reflection and acknowledged his role, his complicity, in the problem. He understands his need for spiritual and personal growth and that confession and genuine sorrow for his behavior are intertwined as prerequisites of restoration. He probably knows that restoring a broken relationship with God is — as it is with humans — a complex and challenging journey, but not impossible.
Kurt Vonnegut once said, “I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.” No, Kurt, you’re not a fool. You’re close to the kingdom of God. David also believed peace, plenty and happiness could, against all odds, be worked out some way.
There’s no better feeling than the peace that comes after the storm. The silence after the thunder. The rainbow after the rain. Clean air that smells like it has been washed in lilac. Ominous clouds that have vanished. The loving embrace. The wide smiles of relief and joy. It’s a super feeling and David remembers the feeling from experience. He wants to feel it again.
He wants to inhale fresh air. He wants to catch the aroma of peace once again wafting through his life. What David wants is what we all want. Who doesn’t want to live in harmony with God and with others?
Fortunately, David discovered the secret to finding peace and removing the stench of sin in his life. He learned how he could come out of this dark and smelly period smelling like a rose. The keys are confession, repentance, and restoration. Working with these three components of contrition, he could experience the joy of peace once again.
So, how are we smelling these days? If we are presently odiferously challenged, we might take a page out of David’s experience to learn how to come out of adversity and despair smelling like a rose. Often, when we use this expression, we are referring to someone who gets away with some sort of skullduggery yet manages to get away with it scot-free.
But this is not the situation in Psalm 51. Here, we discover how people like us can experience personal failure and loss, and yet through confession and repentance, emerge flawless, untarnished, and restored despite potential difficulties or challenges.
“Smelling like a rose” describes a sweet-smelling state of divine grace and goodness. The expression reminds us that it is possible to sink to an unbelievably low point in life, to stink to high heaven, only to have high heaven come down and refresh us with restoration and peace. “Heaven came down,” wrote John W. Peterson in his well-known hymn, “and glory filled my soul.”
And when the glory of heaven fills our soul, nothing else matters.
Amen.
