Psalm 32

“The one whose wrongdoing is forgiven, whose sin is covered over, is truly happy! The one the LORD doesn’t consider guilty—in whose spirit there is no dishonesty—that one is truly happy!”—Psalm 32:1–2, CEB

“Happy are those whose actions outside the law are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Happy are those whose sin isn’t counted against them by their Lord.”—Romans 4:6–8, CEB

Pauls’ reference to Psalm 32 in Romans 4:6–8 is omitted from the Revised Common Lectionary, but this psalm surfaces in year C, Proper 26, begging to be mined for an answer to the question: If we believe God forgives our sins, why does our individual and collective happiness feel so far out of reach?

Happiness eludes American billionaire Richard Sackler in Hulu’s 2021 TV Series, Dopesick. As the president of Purdue Pharma, Sackler is unhappy, despite the successful launch of his company’s new drug, Oxycontin. His wife is perplexed: “You did it all. You are President, the drug is a success, you’re gonna make the family richer than it’s ever been, why can’t you enjoy this?” “I don’t know,” he responds. “Maybe I’m not capable of joy.” ¹

The psalmist knows what Sackler feels—the psalmist knows what we feel—when unconfessed, unrepentant sin hovers over and within us. In the drama mini-series based on Beth Macy’s non-fiction book by the same name, Sackler willfully ignores the mounting evidence of Oxycontin’s highly addictive nature and its role in destroying individual lives and entire communities. In this scene the character reveals the toll his silence has taken on his body. Though it seems he can avoid the truth, his body will not play along.

Although Sackler’s example may seem extreme for our personal context, the psalmist expands our understanding of transgression/sin through the words peša‘ and ḥăṭā’â. The first connotes rebellion against God, the second connotes a mistake (it is often translated as “sin”). ² There is outright, I-know-this-is-not-how-God-calls-me-to-live sin, and there is the sin we stumble into because the better way has been hidden from us. In a time and a culture when committing an offense is synonymous with being a bad person—think how quickly we move to public shaming on social media—it helps to understand the different ways we fail to love God with our whole heart and our neighbor as ourselves—knowingly and unknowingly. The realization that sometimes we do not know we have sinned can elevate fear in our relationship with God unless we believe God desires our alignment with God’s purposes for our own good. The first step toward freedom is to acknowledge that we don’t know what we don’t know until the truth is revealed to us. The next is to trust that God will respond to our transgressions, as the psalmist notes, through nāśā’—lifting up our rebellion and carrying it away—and through kāsāh—covering our mistake so nothing remains.

This is good news! We cannot overemphasize the blessing of a God who carries away our rebellious actions and covers over our mistakes. It is a therapeutic corrective for anyone whose parent, teacher, or community has contributed to the shame and blame that disfigures our souls and distorts our relationships. God does not respond to our sin as the authority figures in our lives often do. Happy is the one who knows that our God throws the horse of our mistakes and the rider of our rebellion into the sea, so happy that songs of praise pour forth from that one’s lips.

With the practice of confession baked into the Christian tradition through corporate and individual prayer, why aren’t our churches and communities marked by people rejoicing in their deliverance from sin? The psalmist’s claim offers us the opportunity to consider what we are afraid to confess, and why. Our answers provide clues to who we think God is and what we believe possible within our relationship.

“The conversation is the relationship,” writes Susan Scott, quoting poet and author David Whyte. “If the conversation stops, all of the possibilities for the relationship become smaller and all of the possibilities for the individuals in the relationship become smaller, until one day we overhear ourselves in mid-sentence, making ourselves smaller in every encounter.” ³ Our fullest conversations are with those whom we trust to show us what psychologist Carl Rogers coined “unconditional positive regard.” ⁴ The transformational power in any relationship depends on how much of ourselves—the good, the bad, and the ugly—we are willing to disclose. To speak the truth before God and each other is counter-intuitive—we fear what we might lose in the exchange. But when we ignore the only one with the power and the will to carry away our transgression and cover over our mistakes, we sabotage our very own happiness.

Psalm 32 is a radical response to the voices priming us to prove our worth, to protect our need to be right, and to put our needs above the needs of others. It is imperative that the church search for and acknowledge how it colludes with the voices that Walter Brueggemann calls “the idol-making ideologies of our day, which reduce all of life to management and reduce the terror of God’s holiness to a set of religious niceties.” ⁵ He suggests this psalm “could lead us to think through the ways in which our culture denies and suppresses and covers up all in the name of competence, prosperity, and success.” ⁶ This psalm invites us to discern where and how we have failed to bear faithful witness to the resurrection of Christ with all of its power-disrupting implications.

At its heart, this psalm is a love song sung by one who knows they have been delivered into new life by a God who clings to us with ḥesed the steadfast, unconditional, I’m-committed-to-what-is-best-for-you love that compelled Ruth to cling to Naomi. The psalmist’s confession does not release the flood of God’s ḥesed. God’s ḥesed was there from the very beginning of the psalmist’s life. But until the psalmist acknowledges the gap between what God loves and what the psalmist loves, the psalmist cannot find refuge in their relationship.

So it is with us. When we are in conflict with God, one of us must let go of what we love and protect. As much as we resist surrender, finding refuge with a God whose ways are aligned with our ways would be horrifying—imagine living in relationship with a God who puts their own need above the needs of others. Conversely, it is impossible to feel safe within a God who loves justice, mercy, and humility when we do not. We are at an impasse until one of us will change—and that someone can never—must never—be God.

Psalm 32 makes no bones about the stakes: while the psalmist remained in rebellious, unrepentant silence, their ‘eṣem (translated in the NRSV as “body” but which can also mean bone) became brittle and dried out. Snaith links the psalmist’s wasting bones to the dry bones of Israel that filled the valley in Ezekiel 37. ⁷ Unconfessed sin leaches the life from our individual and corporate bodies. New life is always available to us, but we must pass through the threshold of confession so we can move into the rooms of forgiveness, reconciliation, and renewal. When our strength is dried up, dare we face what we have not learned to confess?

In White Too Long, Robert Jones builds a strong historical and contemporary case for White Christianity’s complicity and construction of White supremacy in the U.S. Through polling and data analysis, Jones surfaces the consequences of unrepentant, unconfessed sin. His findings are difficult to digest. Though most Christians deny racist tendencies “in the United States today, the more racist attitudes a person holds, the more likely he or she is to identify as a White Christian.” ⁸ Equally devastating is his revelation that “…white Christian churches, both Protestant and Catholic, have served as institutional spaces for the preservation and transmission of white supremacist attitudes.” ⁹ His conclusion that “White supremacy…has become deeply integrated into the DNA of white Christianity itself”, ¹⁰ begs the question: can the dry bones of White American Christianity live?

Though Jones’s diagnosis is grim, he sees evidence of renewal where White Christian churches break silence about their entanglement with white supremacy. Through repentance and reparations, they embody their confession. Painful as the process is, Jones believes what many of us have yet to learn—our silence will lead to our death. The psalmist’s claim is for a time such as this. Happy are those who confess their sins, for they are set free to join God’s Spirit in making all things new.