Come out, come out, wherever you are (sermon from Sept 2, 2018)

Reading:  Psalm 139

Of the various psalms I’ve preached from this summer, I think I’ve left my favourite – or at least the one that touches me most deeply, for the last.

How wonderful – and fearful, it is to be known by God.  That first line – “O Lord, you have searched me and known me,” especially when I read it out loud, never fails to capture my heart, and make me catch my breath before moving on to the rest.

“You have searched me.”  The word apparently has the sense of digging into, of drilling down and unearthing, seeing what’s buried no matter how deep down.  And who doesn’t long to be known and understood in this way – so deeply, thoroughly and intimately?

And be loved in this way, too? 

Because it’s God we’re talking about here.  The God who hears the cries of the forgotten, and whose heart breaks open and whose arms reach out in saving them.  The God whose eye is on the sparrow, who counts each hair on our head, who calls each creature and each of us by name.  The God to whom one is the most important number – one lost coin to be found, one lost sheep to be recovered, one lost child to be welcomed home.

For some years now, I have read this psalm at almost every funeral I have led.  Because isn’t that why we gather when someone we love has died?  To remember and to make sure that the one we loved is remembered, not forgotten, not lost and tossed out like yesterday’s news, but held close in some eternal present – some eternal grace of meaning and purpose?

This week I read about a cemetery in the Channel Islands to the south of England near the coast of France, that is dedicated to the unknown dead of World War II.  The remains of soldiers are buried there, but no one knows exactly who is buried where.  Except One: the One who holds in loving care all that ever has been, is, and will be.  And on each gravestone in that cemetery, the only words inscribed are the most important of all:  “Known by God.” 

Known by God.  Isn’t this what we all long for?  And what we find our deepest comfort and reassurance in – at the end of life, and also all the way through?

I like the way another preacher* once paraphrased part of this psalm:

          Lord, you know when I pull up a chair

                    and when I stretch my legs.

          You know what’s on my mind

before my train of thought has even left the station.

          You search out my path

like a hound dog sniffing out the trail ahead,

and have fluffed my pillow

before I’ve even laid down.

          You know all my maddening and endearing

eccentricities and idiosyncracies and disorders.

          I am an open book to you.

          You complete my sentences.

          You know me better than I know myself.

And, we might add, love me better than I know how to love myself, too.

When we don’t even always know ourselves, how wonderful it is to be searched and known by God.

And how fearful it is as well – to be searched and known by God.

A few years ago I was crossing the border, going to the Buffalo Airport to pick up Japhia’s brother and drive him back to Hamilton.  Easy-peasy.  No shopping, no sidetrips, just over and back.  Except this time on my way into the States I was caught by some computerized program that randomly identified me and my car as the one to search at that particular time.  So instead of just showing my passport, answering a few questions and being sent on my way, I was ordered to drive over to a side-garage and wait there for someone to check my car.  And even though on every rational level of my brain I knew this would be nothing more than an inconvenience of maybe 10 minutes along the way, another part of my brain spent the whole time worrying about what was in my car – in the trunk or glovebox or under the seat, that I had forgotten about or someone had put there and I didn’t even know about, that they would see as suspicious or maybe even proof of guilt of something.

Irrational, I know.  Makes you think, “Gee, he must have something to hide.”

But I remember, too, a Sunday school chorus I learned as a child:

          Be careful, little hands, what you do

          Be careful, little hands, what you do

          For the Father up above is looking down in love.

          So be careful, little hands, what you do.

Then also with little eyes what you see, and little feet where you go.  And as a kid, it scared the heck out of me.  Because how could God – even a loving God, not find something wrong if God only looked hard enough, as God would?  Something offensive.  Something weak and wrong and unbecoming that would disqualify me maybe forever from heaven and God’s loving embrace?

So I learned – I think we all learn, to hide.  To put on a mask.  To play a role.  To put only our best foot and our made-up public face forward.

Which helps explain, too, why we kill God when we have a chance.  At least, try to put limits on God’s presence in our lives.  Limit the openness and availability of our lives to God.  Put God in a box – whether by turning God into a doctrine to believe in, or treating God as a distant being we come to visit on Sundays, or the way, too, we literally put Jesus to death, bury him and put a big stone across the mouth of the tomb when he starts getting too close.  Gets too personal and challenging.  Starts getting under our skin, and bit by deeper bit into our heart.

Except God doesn’t stay in boxes, does God?  And Jesus was raised from the dead.  Appeared again and again to those who most knew him, and whom he most wanted to be known by – to those whom he was calling out of their boxes and closed tombs, into something bigger than what they had thought they were about, into a life of simply but truly loving God with all their life and their neighbor as themselves, into being servants of the living God and of the living God’s kingdom for all in the world.

Somewhere along the way in this history of God and in our own life story – if we are lucky, maybe, or opened to it, we come to know and actually trust that this God and this God’s knowledge of us is not something we need to be afraid of, but is something for us to welcome, to give thanks for, and to give ourselves to.

Because as challenging as God is – in what God knows of us, and knows of what we can be and are created to be, it is unmistakably good news.  News of our lives having deep meaning and high purpose.  News of our lives being bigger and being part of something bigger and more important than we usually imagine.  News of everything about us being some unique reflection and revelation of God’s love and good will at work in the world.  News of each one of us and each one of our lives being of eternal divine significance.

And there is no escape from this God.  No matter what direction we go in.  What distraction we try to lose ourselves in.  What darkness within us we think makes us ineligible for the life of divine love and divine loving God sees us as capable of – and will die to help us find our way into.

For “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”  Even the darknesses of doubt, of guilt, of sin, of insecurity, self-judgement and fear.

So how fearfully wonderful and wonderfully fearful it is to be searched and known by God.  Because it really is, that as we let God save us – especially from ourselves, that we come to know ourselves, our personal worth and our eternal importance as never before. 

The psalmist says:

          Where can we go from your spirit?

          Where can we flee from your presence?

          Nowhere.  Thank you, God.

          Search us, then, and know our hearts.

          Test us and know our thoughts.

          See if there is any wicked way in us,

          and lead us in the way everlasting.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.


* The paraphrase above is by Rev. Jeremy Troxler, pastor of Spruce Pines United Methodist Church, Spruce Pines, North Carolina.