•     PENITENTIAL PRAYER – Psalm 32 is one of the few laments that make the liturgical scene; in the course of Christian history, most laments in the psalms have long vanished from communal, public prayer.  This psalm is significant because of what it holds in common with the other Pentitential Psalms (6, 51, 38, 102, 130, and 143): a type of lament that explicitly stresses sin and its forgiveness.[1] 

•     CIRCLE OF FORGIVENESS – This psalm creates a circle of logic that begins with a simple discovery: happy are those . . .  The truth about forgiveness recalls a moment in which the pray-er came to such a discovery: a time of unhappiness due to un-confession of sin.  The final forgiveness section closes with a full acknowledgement of personal guilt and sin which then leads the reader back to the learning moment: and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Now we’re back to the happiness that results when sin/transgresssion is forgiven.

•     WHY WE NEED SIN – Dr. Karl Menninger penned his famous book, Whatever Became of Sin decades ago.  He sought to recover the concept of sin, i.e. the responsibility of personal wrong-doing.  He realized what Psalm 32 also recognized: the devastating physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of failing to acknowledge our sinfulness.  Like the psalmist, he calls on us to break our silence, “to identify it, to define it, to warn us about it, and to spur measures for combating and rectifying it.”[2]
 

•     What keeps people from confession of wrong doing?  Unconfessed sin sapped this pray-er’s strength like the summer humidity. How would you describe the cover up of sin—what images come to mind?

•     God freely forgives.  How has that message been driven home to you recently?

•     I think a very useful homily on this psalm might be entitled, Why we need sin.  In one sense that is not true.  But from the perspective of Karl Menninger the absence of sin-awareness begins to skew personal responsibility in our actions. Create an imaginary world in which no one takes responsibility and then hold that over against the three movements of Psalm 32—the devastation of unconfessed sin, confessing our sins and forgiveness, and the discovery in v. 1: Blessed is the one whose transgressions is forgiven.