Sermon: Summer Psalms - Dealing With Guilt And Shame -Psalm 38, August 16, 2026
Scripture: Psalm 38
Preacher: Ryan Slifka
Sermon: Dealing With Guilt And Shame
For the month of August our sermons series is “Psummer Psalms.” The Psalms being the prayer book of the Bible. The prayer book of Jesus. Each week we’re posing a question about our lives, and listening to a Psalm for wisdom.
Last week, the question we posed was “how do we deal with injustice?” listening to the 10th Psalm. This week, our question is a bit more personal. How do we deal with guilt and shame? How do we deal with the–sometimes intense–feelings that can come with doing wrong?
The scripture we’re looking to this week is the 38th Psalm. One of the many Psalms attributed to King David. And one of seven of what are called the “penitential Psalms.” Psalms where the author is making penitence for the wrong they’ve done.
“O Lord,” begins the Psalm. “Do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath/for your arrows have sunk into me, your hand has come down on me.” The Psalmist has done wrong. Is guilty, and has been punished, and can’t handle any more.
The punishment?
Drastic weight loss, withering bones. There are festering wounds, wandering mourning, heart palpitations, loss of strength, depression, and worse. One commentator says that “the Psalmist has almost every disease in the book.”[i] And it’s made everyone important and meaningful in his life stay away. “There is no health in my bones,” the Psalmist says. “Because of my sin.”
The Psalmist is sick as sick can be. And sees it all as a just punishment from the Lord. Her physical illness is the result of spiritual guilt. God has struck her ill for the ills she’s committed. And she can’t take it anymore.
Part of this is how the ancients often viewed physical sickness–as divine punishment for wrongdoing.[ii] So if you were sick, then you must have done something wrong. Sure, sometimes there’s a direct line from the things we do and illness–from smoking to cancer, or certain indiscretions and venereal disease. But human experience, and scientific discovery tell us otherwise. Our saintliest friends and family members seem to be the ones receiving the worst diagnoses. Even in the Bible, the book of Job, where Job–the most righteous man there is—loses everything he and ends up scraping sores with shards of pottery. We know when it comes to guilt and cause and effect, it’s not so clear cut.
We do know, however, what guilt itself can do to us.
Some call it the “mind/body” connection. That our psychological, emotional, spiritual states and our physical bodies are not only connected. They’re intertwined. A lack of vitamin D can make us feel down, but it also works in the other direction.
So often when we’ve done something wrong, we not only think it–like an idea, but we often feel it, too. We lose sleep, rolling it around in our heads, going over it over and over in our minds. Irritable bowel syndrome. Tight chest, anxiety. Full on depression, suicidal ideation. All stuff that, like the Psalmist, can push others away whether it’s the thing we did, or how we act after the fact.
This Psalm is maybe the most extreme example, but it does speak wisely as to the havoc that guilt can wreak on our entire nervous system. Some of us, some of you here, know exactly what I mean. Insert your sin here. Guilt can make us sick. Not only spiritually. But physically, too.
So how do we deal with it?
One way we have tried to deal with it as modern people is to try to pretend that sin and guilt–these just aren’t real things. That feelings of guilt we have are the product not of the human conscience, but baggage from less enlightened times, more ignorant ways of seeing the world. If we feel guilty it’s the product–not of some kind of higher moral reality–but of cultural brainwashing.
Which, don’t get me wrong: feelings of guilt have been used to manipulate since the dawn of time–especially by religion. Anybody who’s ever had that close loved one turn the emotional screws to get what they want, knows how easily it can be abused. But what about those times where we have genuinely done something wrong? If our guilt is always simply an illusion, what we feel is an illusion, we might as well admit that the very idea of right and wrong itself might also be an illusion. If you’ve ever had a wretched fever and tried to be your same old productive self, then you know just how well this sort of denial works. It doesn’t.
Another way we deal with our feelings of guilt is by dulling them. That puff on the vape first thing when we roll out of bed in the morning, the few cocktails before bed. Or even stronger stuff. But we know how painkillers work–at some point they always wear off. It’s only a temporary fix. Eventually you need a bigger and bigger dose.
And the other way–perhaps the main way–we try to deal with guilt is not by denying our wrongdoing, but by finding the right justifications for it. We search for why somebody or something else was at fault, in order to establish our true innocence. Somewhere in our childhood, or trauma. Our parents, or “the system.” Or even our biology. Which, don’t get me wrong—these wrongs are wrong, and all this stuff makes it harder to be good. Sure, we’re off the hook in our own eyes. At best, though, it just transfers our guilt to somebody, or something else, and it changes nothing of what we’ve done. Then we’re not just angry at ourselves for our guilt, we’re angry at that other person. We still end up sick. Just in a different way.
We can pretend we aren’t actually guilty as much as we want, we can dull the pain, and we can try to transfer the blame. But at the end of the day it does nothing to deal with the core, the root problem of our guilt.
So what will, then? How can we deal with our guilt in a way that goes to the core issue?
Well, honesty, for starters. “For I am ready to fall and my pain is ever with me. I confess my iniquity,” he says. “I am sorry for my sin.”
I love how Eugene Peterson puts it in his Message translation: “I am ready to tell the story of my failure. I’m no longer smug in my sin.” The Psalmist here doesn’t avoid, he doesn’t obfuscate, but he brings it all to God in what the reformer John Calvin calls “humble prayer and unfeigned confession.”[iii] In the same way the first step towards sobriety is admitting that you have a drinking problem, and the first step towards healing is accepting the diagnosis, our first step is being “ready to tell the story of our failure.” Not to run from our guilt, but to take ownership of it.
Now, I know what some of you might be thinking–I knew it! I knew that all these Christians want to do is make me beat myself up, and feel guilty.
But that’s not it at all. We do so for the opposite reason. We do it because we trust in the One to whom we are accountable. We do it to find relief. And we trust the One who we turn to bring it.
“It is for you Lord, that I wait;” prays the Psalmist, “it is you, O Lord, who will answer.” “Make haste to help me, O LORD, my salvation.” The Psalmist doesn’t confess, doesn’t lay it all on the line in the hope that God will maybe help. But the Psalmist knows that he can be honest, he can come clean, he can repent. It may not all happen at once, he may have to wait, but the healing will come. The Psalmist can tell the truth, can face all guilt and shame because he trusts that God is the God of salvation–salvation which means healing at its core. The healing of creation, in body and in spirit. This God will answer not with our destruction. But with forgiveness.
This is why we say together a prayer of confession every Sunday. Because, like the Psalmist, we trust that our honesty about our sins, and our sincere repentance, is always met with God’s forgiveness.
In fact, we go one step even further, in that we not only trust God will answer. But that God has given the definitive answer to our guilt, yours and mine, once and for all. And that answer is in the cross of Jesus Christ.
On the cross God didn’t pretend our guilt wasn’t real, on the cross God didn’t avoid it, God didn’t shrug off the hurt and pain we’ve caused by saying “don’t worry about it.” But instead, on the cross, Jesus took all our guilt and all our shame into himself. “He forgave us all our trespasses,” says Paul in his letter to the Colossians. “He forgave our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.”[iv] Jesus took all the agonies that the Psalmist bears witness to, the hell of our suffering and sadness, our guilt. into his own body, and into the grave with him. Not to intensify our feelings of guilt. But to put them to death. And to set us free.
And you know how I know it’s true? Because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, and I’ve felt it. I’ve seen some of your faces after we’ve confessed in worship and had forgiveness proclaimed. And when I’ve received confessions privately, countless times, whether from this congregation or AA step 5’s, or even my own grandmother last year just before she died. I can tell you that, even though telling the truth is so often difficult and painful, you can just see the healing happen. Tears flow the moment hands are raised in blessing, and words of forgiveness pass from Christ’s lips through mine to the ears and into your heart. Stomachs unknot, fists unclench, and shoulders drop. Because the guilt that has grasped them for so long, it just washes away with the truth of the gospel. I know it’s real, because I’ve seen it.
And you know, it’s not that it automatically fixes it all for good. The truth is that you will forget it. Maybe by Friday of this week. And you’ll continue to fall short in this life again and again.
But it’s like how the great blues legend, Buddy Guy, said in one of his song “funny thing about the blues—you play 'em 'cause you got 'em, but when you play 'em, you lose 'em."[v] You play the blues because you’ve got em, and more you sing the blues, the more you seem to lose the blues.
That’s how it works with our guilt. The more we confess, the more we seem to experience that great relief. The more we confess our sins, the more we seem to lose ‘em. Not just by telling the truth about what we’ve done wrong. But in receiving that great good news of God’s reconciling grace, the wondrous healing words of our forgiveness. Over and over and over again. Until that day that glorious day of the Lord. When all creation is made new.
How do we deal with feelings of guilt and shame? Not by avoiding them, or hiding them, nor by dodging them or drinking or drugging them away. But by facing them head on, knowing that that we are forgiven.
May you be given the courage to tell your story of failure, knowing that the LORD has already answered you in the death and resurrection of his Son. It may not be the only way to deal with your guilt. But it is the best way. The truest and most effective in the end.
I offer this to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spiri
[i] Peter Craigie, quoted in J. Clinton McCann, Jr. “The Psalms,” New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, vol. IV (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 833.
[ii] Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 134.
[iii] John Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 38, https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom12/calcom12.xxxv.ii.iii.html
[iv] Col. 2:13-14.
[v] Buddy Guy, “Blues Chase the Blues Away,” Ain’t Done with the Blues (Silvertone Records, 2025).