THE PRAYER OF MANASSEH

A Sermon

Preached in the Dulto Utiversi ty Chapel

by The Reverend Professor James T. Cleland

Dean of the Chapel

14 March 1965

We are worshipping during Lent. Therefore it is but right to pay some attention to sin: sin recognized, sin confessed, sin forgiven. Has C~d anything to say to us about this matter?

Let us approach the subject by looking at a Jewish book found in THE . TIIE APOCRYPHA has been denied:.a place in the Canon of the Scriptures, primarily because the fourteen books which comprise it were written in Greek rather than in Hebrew, the holy language of the Jews. One of them is "The Prayer of Manasseh," which was our morning Lesson. I am heretical enough to believe that a word from God is found in that prayer. Let us look at it togetbe~

Manasseh was a king who reigned in Judah, 696-641 B, c. Of all the kings of Judah, he had the longest reign, maintainine his throne in Jerusalem for fifty­ five years. According to Jewish tradition (2 Kings 21: 1-lB; 2 a tronicles 33:1-13) he was one of the three naughtiest kings who rulled in Palestine, taking his place at the bottom of the class with Jeroboam and Ahab. You know the usage of designating a king by a single adject! ve: Alfred the Great;' William the Conqueror; Ethelrod the tnready; Edward the Cnnfessor. Manasseh might well be called: ~~nasseh the Wicked, He majored in iniquity; he also minored in it. He was a specialist, with a one track mind f or the bad, accordin ~ to the Biblical record. The reason for this appraisal was that his religion was a tangled eclecti­ cism which, in quite undiscriminating fashion, worshipped Yahweh, Baal and Astarte as if they were co-equals. In addition, he practiced augury and sorcery; he consulted mediums and wizards; he did homa: e to the star•; he turned the Temple into a pantheon; he burned his son alive. Dr. Moffatt's translation of 2 Kings 21: 6 (c.f.: 6) sums up Manasseh tG a few well chosen words: "He did ample evil in the sight of the Eternal to vex him." That is the emphasis of underemphasis.

Manasseh was a problem to the religious historians who soueht to account for him. According to the Deuteronomic theory of history, a kine who was so inherently wicked ought to have died young or, at least, to have lost his throne. For the theory is that if one is good, he is successful; if he 18 bad, he is unsuccessful. And longevity was the mark of success and, therefore, of upti~htness. Fbr example, 2 poor wee Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reian. He lasted three months and ten days in Jerusalem. What does say about him? "He did that which was evil in the sight of the lord" (2 Chronicles 36:9). Now what could this laddie of eight have done to upset the lord God of Eosts? A p(')etic critic in Scotland suggests that he cut compulsory chapel and went fishing.* (''Tabernackle" with "fisbin '-tackle" is an ingenious rhyme!) Three months and out. Obviously, he must have done evil. Well, what can be said when there are juxvaposed Manasseh's "ample evil" and a fifty-five years reien? The Chronicler decided that at some point Manasseh must have seen the light and repented. So, aceordin ~ to the priestly editors, Yahweh had him captured by the Assyrians and imprisoned in Babylon. Listen to them:

And when he was in affliction, he besou ~ ht the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the Sod of his fathers, and prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kin ~ dom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God (12-13),

Repentance accounted for his lastin ·~ - fifty-five years on the throne.

There is a Jewish midrash, that is, a scribal comment on this verse in Chronicles, which tells that when Vanasseh began to pray he, quite understand­ ably, directed his confession to all the ~ ods whnm he had worshipped. The angels in heaven were afraid that:-despite his enormous wickedness, Yahweh would be tempted to forgive him. So they ran, or flew, round heaven shutting up all the windows and doors so as to block out Manasseh's entreaty. But Yahweh bored a hole under the Throne of Glory, and the prayer came throur; h. Manasseh was forgiven, because Yahweh was both smarter and more compassionate than His angels.

Centuries later--maybe between 150 and 50 B.C.--a Pharisaic scribe decided to compose the kind of prayer which Manasseh might have prayed in his Babylonian cell. It was our Scripture for the morning.

There is not time to re-read the prayer. Let me summarize it for you. It begins with a recognition of the greatness of God. He is the creator; the "ma.jesty of his glory is unbearable" (v,5). He is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent One. He is eternal, while man is the creature of time and of a day. It is a normal place for religion to begin. Yet it is not the heart ~f high religion. Even the devils tremble before the majesty nf God. But they do not worship. There is something else in God which stageers and shatters man into worship. What is it? The mercy of Sod:

For Thou art the l.nrd Most High, Tender-hearted, long suffering, and most merciful, And regretful of the wickedness of man. Thou, therefore, Lord God of the upright, Hast nnt ordained repentance for the uprir, ht, For Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who did not sin against Thee; Thou hast ordained repentance for a sinner like me (vv. 7-8),

*W. D. C~cker: THE BUBBLY-JOCK AND OTEER POEMS, p. 17. 3

That is the real theme of the prayer: the mercy of God, the everlasting mercy, the undeserved mercy, the mercy which is tbe day-in, day-out revelation of the grace of ~d. For if God could forgive b'l.anasseh, then He is the kind ()f God who can for: ive anyone--if only there is a repentant and a contrite heart to receive the outgoing mercy of God for all poor sinners.

I once read "The Prayer of Manas set" in the York Chapel of tl1e Divinity School. At the close('){ the service one of my colleav,ues said to me: "Where did you find that?" I told him--in the J:pocrypha. He commented: "That is the outside the ." It is. It is the teaching of Jesus, long before the days oZ his flesh. Why not? God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Thanks be to ':'.od!

***~'* *

Yes, this is the gospel nutside the ::;ospels. &.It it is Ue ~ ospel inside the Gospels, too. I don't have to quote to you the passages whiclo center around the affinnation that Jesus Christ's purpose in coming into the world was to save sinners, no::.· to damn them. This was Jesus' intention for one simple reason: 1 t had always oeen God's intention. This GOspel was picked up by Peter and Paul and John, by Ue early church and the medieval church, by t t e Re:lor·mation and the ecumenical movement. This is the good news: God forgives sinners who repent.

Now 1 I can hear the muttered reaction of some of you to this: "It may well be true. It is true. &.It, Cleland, your Lomi letical technique is deplorable, if not wrong. fccentuate the negative. let sinners know what will j appen if they do not repe:.-..t. Give them a glimpse of l:eJ.J.. Fill their nostrils with the smoke

of fire Bild brimstone. Cleland 1 you need something of the backbone and vocabulary of Jonathan Edwards."

Do you lmow Jonathan Edwards, eighteenth century preacLer i n Northampton, Massachusetts, who has been described as "ti1e outstanding intellectual figure of colonial America"?* lie once preached a sermon on "Sinners in tl.e Eands of an Angry God, It wl ..ich someone has labelled "·t t. e most terrifying sermon ever preached" . Let me share the flavor of it with you, by quoting from it:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell mu:::h as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, ... He wi 11 in.::lict wrath without any pity; .•. It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity; the1·e will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery; ...

And here are the last words of his conclusion:

And it would be a wonder, if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, be.Lore this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some

*W. W. Sweet: TI·: E STORY OF RELIGIONS Hi J'.MERICA, p. 165. 4

persons, that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before tomorrow morning!

How vmuld you react to preaching like that from this pulpit? Now there may well be truth here. 1 would amend Jonathan Edwards' emphasis somewhat. I don't thinl:: tl~ at God sends any f'f us to Hell. But, He lets us <:' O u ,ere, if we want to ~o. :. e has to; because P~ gave us f reedom, the f reedom to make fools, silly fools, and sinners, damned sinners, o f ourselves . Othe rw ise , we would be marionettes in tte hands of a clestial puppeteer. Yet, I a ~_re e with the specific intent of 3dwards' sermon: it was ~ to b l ast sinners to perdition with a perverted !._ lee. It was to stimulate them to repentance. J::e was seeking converts, not for his own self-satisfaction but to ~~d's glory and man's salvation. It is his homiletical technique which ! deplore.

The BibJ ical message, in the Old Testament, as in t he Uew Te s tament and in "The Praye1· o ? Manasseh," is good news: a:ifirmed, elaborated , i J.lustrated. That has always been, and still is,the messar e o1 the Church. let me e xemplify that by lookin: at the scriptural texts which we re at the heart of t l: e lives and actions o f five men. , the :,~ ather of the German ref ormation, focussed on six words: "The just shall live by faith" (Rom. l:l'i), Hugh Latimer, "the hones test man in England" who was bur ne d at the stake in Ox::o r d in front of Baliol Col)_ e~e, for his Anglican heresy, - ~ oilcentrated on: "Tl.i s i s a fai tl-ful saying, ant1 worthy of all acceptation, t l. at Christ Jesus came i n to the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief" (1 Tim. 1:15). John Bunyan , t L -L I{cr, criminal, author, whose PIL':.:-RIM' S PROGRESS is still sold and read, tool{ a s i is own: "Him that comet!-, to me, I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:3'1), William Wilberforce, the hunch-back, wto per~uaded Parliament to free all slaves in tl~ e Eri tish empire, prayed almoLt daily: "C..od be merciful to me a sinner" (luke 1 ~ :1 ~ ). Thomas Chalmers, ·the Gcottish preacher, teacher , administrator, e conomis t, :f astened on: "Believe o,-. Ue lord Jesus Christ, and t · ou shalt be saved" (Acts 16:31).

These men, and thousands of other folk, are the witnesses for my stylistic objection to this single sermon of Jonathan Edwards . Yes, he, too, desired repentance f or the sake of eternal life. But I believe that it is better to woo the sinner b;;r the mercy of God than to ter rify him by the wrath o f tjod. Don't talk to me about this being IIcheap grace. It It is worse, or better, than "hc eap grace;" it is "free" grace--as the author o f "The Prayer of Manasseh knew, and Jesus knew, end Paul and Luther and Latimer and Bunyan and Wilber !.orce and Chalmers, and some of us here this mornin:?;.

What does tt.is say to us worshippin · 1-. ere right now? Believe it. Accept it. Close wi ti; it. Believe the good news that we may be right with God if we desire it, because it is what God desires. I:t :.e forgave David and Manasseh and Peter and the dyLt:::; tLief and Paul, I-~ is probably able and willing to ::: ort ive us, if we want it. But l~t me add one caveat, one warning .

The caveat is this. For a sensitive person, a perceptive per son, a reverent person, a ~ entle person, it is a more devas tating experience to ~ all into the hands of a merciful God than of an an~ry God. It oblite rates one's self-esteem, 5 nne's conceit of himself, one's pride. There is nothing one can do with grace, with free crace, except to refuse it with scorn, or to accept it with embarrass­ ment, with shame, with gratitude. Here is a homey, human analo ~ y. You know that I smolte a pipe. You may not know that I scatter ashes like an active volcano. So my jackets smoulder and burn. W.y wife bas no objections to my smoking; but she does frown on my incendiary carelessness. One day I burned a hola in a new sports jacket. I tried to sneak it out of the bouse and down to Van Straaten's where it would be invisibly mended. But ~~s. Cleland caught me tip-toeinc out of the door, and asked me what I was doing. I confessed. She smiled: II I know you b urned the jacket. I mended it two weeks a ~ o, and hung it back in your closet." That is grace, in the act of mendin : and especially in keepin~ quiet about it. And I felt as if I could crawl under a worm. I stood knee-hi~h to a frasshopper. I shrank to the size of a peanut. If she had been angry, even justly angry, I was ready with my defence: "who earns the money in this house? Who bought the jacket? Who will pay to repair it? 'fuo will weer it, invisible darnine and all?" But erace rendered me speechless, though talking is my job, All I could say was "Thank you. Thank you. I am beholden to you," as I turned around, went silently upstairs and placed the mended jacket back on its hanser.

No, _race is not cheaply given, nor cheaply accepted. It is freely given, and given "for free." And one spends the rest of his life tryin ~· to express his eratitude. Paul, that proud man, is probably the author of the verse "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief" (1 Tim. 1:15). Of whom I am chief, foremost, first. It is an awesome, humbling, crestfallen, blessed fact to fall into the hands of a merciful God. That is the caveat regarding Erace. So watch it. • * * * * • "Sinners in the hands of an ancry r od" may be the cause of conversion, through fear. But "sinners in the hands of a merciful God" is the cause of embarrassment, shame, repentance, joy in forr. iveness, ~ ratitude, dedication, service. \Then we realize the mercy of God--mercy upon mercy--then, like Manasseh, we pray, over and over again: "To Thee I bend the knee of my heart." And God's answer is always the same: "My son," or "My daughter."

PRAYER AFTER THE aBRMON

Almighty Lord, ~d of our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, And of their descendants, ••• (1) Tender-hearted, lon ~ -suffering, and most merciful, And regretful of the wickedness of ~n ••.• (7) To Thee we b~w the knee of our hearts. (11) Thou Lord art the God of those who repent, (13) And Thou wilt manifest Thy ~ oodness toward us. (14) Therefore, we shall praise Thee continually as long as we live. (15 Amen.

The Prayer of Manasseh (Adapted).