The following sermon was preached on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2014 at Good Shepherd Community Church in Scarborough. The Scripture readings were Genesis 3:17-19; 1 John 1:5-10; Luke 18:9-14.
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On Saints and Sinners
The events of 2 Samuel 11-12 depicting the encounter between David and Bathsheba and its fallout mark “the great turning point of the whole David story.” 1 According to its traditional superscription, Psalm 51 was composed by David following his dramatic confrontation with the prophet Nathan. This great penitential psalm has rightly occupied a cherished place in the life of worship and prayer of the Christian church through the ages. In many traditions, it is corporately read or sung on Ash Wednesday. Reflecting upon the psalm leads Robert Barron to observe the somewhat counter-intuitive connection between saint and sinner in the Christian faith: Continue reading On Saints and Sinners
- Robert Alter, The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 249, quoted in Robert Baron, 2 Samuel (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015), 95. ↩