Psalm 51
The psalm assigned by the lectionary for the Fifth Sunday of Lent is Psalm 51.
Homileticians teach that the “form” of a scripture text should influence the “form” of a sermon. Years ago, I heeded this advice and decided to write a sermon on Psalm 51 that was itself in meter and, because I love the film So I Married an Axe Murderer, I had a jazz band accompany me on the preaching of it.
I wrapped the psalm around a story I read of the man who received the first heart transplant.
‘It works.’ / It works /
Indeed, It’s more buttoned-down
Than ‘Christos Anesti!’
But such were the first
Easter words pronounced
Over the new heart
Of-
Louis Washkansky.
Louis-
A Lithuanian Jew
Was born in 1922.
Louis fought Mussolini.
Having seen El Duce
Strung up by his heels,
(like a fascist pig at the butcher)
Louis Washkansky
Settled down in Cape Town
And opened a grocery.
Until-
54 years
Pricks to the finger,
And shots to the guts,
Up and down sugar.
Then-
Pain down arms, elephant on chest,
1
2
3
cardiac arrests
Rendered him habeus corpus
For an experimental test.
Louis Washkansky
The first person after 50
Dogs before him to
Another’s heart receive
(Man’s best friend, indeed).
After 9 hours under,
60 attending,
Louis Washkansky
Of the green grocery
Opened his numb eyes
-delivered-
With the heart of a
Girl, 20-something girl
Beating inside his
Bruised and cracked chest.
———————————
His heart’s former owner-
She had been struck by a driver
Who’d had one too many.
It’s always 5...somewhere.
The girl with the heart
Was on her way
To buy tea.
And cake.
Yeah.
From her local grocery.
By fate or by lots,
Her heart became another’s to bear:
Louis Washkansky’s.
When-
Louis Washkansky
First fluttered his eyes,
His chest beating fresh
And faithfully as
The checkout on aisle
Number 5,
“It works”
Said-
The doctor, a preacher’s kid
From Cape Town,
Like God b’fore the new hewn
Grave: ‘It works.’
In Afrikaans,
Said: ‘It works.’
The girl’s grief-blind Father,
The doctor’s trial and error,
Had given the the grocer
Exactly what each of us
Would gladly broker:
A new- a different heart.
———————————
If we had the hearts
Sufficient to tell the truth to each other:
My need is as great as that grocer’s.
My desire to back trace my steps
Just as desperate
As his donor.
What the doctor concluded
of Louis Washkansky.
What You first declared
About Adam and Eve
Is what my heart longs to hear you pronounce over me:
‘It works.’
My heart, it works.
But for that to happen
I too first require
Some kind of surgery.
A new, a different, a clean
Heart-
———————————
What harm could it be?
I’ll just repeat:
mercy.
A new, a different, a clean
Heart-
That’s what I most need.
Without one, the best I
Can do is plead for
Your, on your mercy.
Which is, perhaps, the
Ultimate, stinging
Irony
In a life that hides
Behind them
Trades in the
Thrives on them.
What I’m so stingy to bequeath
Is the one thing I’m starving to receive.
Mercy.
I’m not talking about the one an’ done
Caught red-handed, get out of jail free-dom
Sort of mercy.
Not the snake-oily, Holy Ghost, Fatherweejus mercy.
Not the hair-sprayed preacher’s mercy.
Not the jury of your peers’ mercy.
I’m talking about the mercy that’s weighted down
By hard and heavy consonants that break bonds
Cut oceans in two. Crack water from rock.
Hesed the Hebrews call it.
Steadfast.
The
No matter what.
You do despite what I do
Mercy.
Have that kinda on me.
But even this plea of mine
Points out my problematic plot line
It’s alway all about
Me.
Me.
Me.
You upstairs
The man down the street
She across the bed
I’m like a dyslexic St Paul:
The one thing I ask of you
The one thing I want?
I do not do.
The one thing I ask of you
Is the last I’ll offer you.
When it comes to mercy,
It’s better to receive
Than it is to believe you must give it.
When it comes to mercy?
I am reticent.
I am hesitant.
I am no better than Maleficent.
Grace is less amazing
When it’s another’s song.
Trust me-
‘Tis better to be found
Than to get up and to find.
(Build)
But You already see my blindness
Know my mind, know
That what I solicit
I so seldom show.
I need a Billy Mays magic miracle.
Shazamm!
Over my sin-stained self.
Not 3 Hail Marys, nor alms for the poor
Costlier even than easy installments of $19.94.
More chi-chi than gold
Or frankincense and myrrh.
Like Nathan to David, like Nicholson to Cruise,
The truth about me
I can’t handle it.
Because I’ve exercised so much equity
With my iniquity
My sin is in me,
Ground down deep-like wine and dirt and blood-
To the fibers and sub-flooring
Of my soul and my Being.
If I were a suit you took the cleaners
You’d get charged extra
And told not to expect me
For at last 3 business
Days- you’d hear her disgust in Korean
As she wondered to the woman
With pins in her teeth
Exactly what you’d done in me.
Mercy is what I need.
My sin is ever before me .
Like grace’s doppleganger
In, with and under
Just say the words, no reply
I am not worthy
Of your mercy.
My sin is ever before me
Every pair of eyes
The most unflattering of mirrors
Revealing not the extra 2-inches
Or the male-pattern baldness
But the mystery
That we’re the only members of your handiwork
Who know not how
To be creatures.
Behind my every offense-
If I take measure,
That’s what I should confess:
Thinking the world here for my pleasure
Not me made for my Creator.
Failure to be human:
I’m guilty as charged.
And it’s crime that moves all the rest of you
To the back of the line.
Because against You
You Alone
Have I sinned.
To you I gave the finger.
And uttered ‘Sorry doesn’t cut it.’
To you I sent the all CAPS email with the
angry emojis
I unfriended You.
For your Tea Party bat crazy,
Your Moveon.org rant.
And hung up when You picked up.
To You I told the little white lie
and the outright one.
To You I raised my voice for no good reason.
And said ‘Yes Dear, I’m listening.’
To You, I said ‘Sorry, I don’t have any cash.’
up here
It was Your eyes- God- I forgot were
To You I was a noisy gong, a clanging symbol
Neither patient nor kind
Keeping track of Your trespass
Just as I expect You to forgive mine.
Every sin I’ve committed
Every person I’ve harmed
Count them together
It adds up to one:
You.
(Step)
Against You alone have I sinned.
Your ledger longer than any other’s.
You’ve seen my worst, every inward part
So You know better than me
How sorely I need
A new and clean heart.
——————————-
A clean heart!
I’m so far removed
From my mother’s womb
I cannot imagine
What possessing said heart would mean for my other organs
For my ears and my tongue and my mind.
Louis Washkansky knew.
For a time- well, if not clean-
At least more innocent than mine.
The grocer from Cape Town survived
With the unlucky girl’s inside
Him for 18 short days.
But 18 days!
For 400 hours
Louis Washkansky
The grocer who’d seen horrors
The battles and blood
Trenches and marches
Of war.
The camps, the mass graves, the ovens.
For 18 days-
Louis Washkansky
Found respite inside
an innocent’s heart.
Do the memories recede?
Does the mind forget?
What the heart never learned?
For 18 days
A war-jaded vet
Quickened with her pulse-
Her naiveté-
That still more days lay
Ahead of her.
Had she had her first kiss?
Been spurned by a friend?
Acquired the scars
Which always become
our kids’ first lessons?
With her’s beating inside him
I wonder-
Louis Washkansky-
Did he love his wife, finally
With a love she’d always fancied?
Did he hear what she left unsaid?
Did he show his children
Her love and attention?
Did he sashay around
And leave the toilet seat down?
Did he listen and feel
And, for once, find the right words
To: Honey?
What are you thinkin’?
With her inside him
Was it freeing?
To finally, truthfully, be singing:
‘I’m every woman.’
——————————-
Or was it just enough for the grocer to hear
What we’d mortgage heaven to broker
What we’d plead for You to impart:
‘It works’
A new, a clean, heart.
Louis Washkansky
His new heart, her old one
Beat for only 17 days longer
His/her doctor, the Cape Town preacher’s kid
Could not give
What only You can offer.
But still-
I’ve got to wonder
Can even You impart
Such an illogical grace
As a new, clean heart?
I mean-
How can what is Yours only be mine?
Without it being less than You?
How can the infinite lodge
In this small space I’ve carved for it?
Given what impossible surgery
A new, a clean heart would require
The metaphysical
To say nothing of the biological
Might it be sufficient to desire
Not what in me You must do
A new heart to own
But to desire just You.
You alone God.
If so, then the point
Is not a doctor
To bind us
To extend us 18 or 15 or a few more days
But to break our spirit
So that, broken, our lips may proclaim your praise.
Create in Me