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"Known by God"
"Known by God"
Sermon Details
"Known by God"
| Scripture Reference | Notes |
|---|---|
| Ps 139 | "Known by God"
A sermon preached at the Mint Methodist Church
by the Minister, Rev Andrew Sails
on Sunday 15th January at 10.30 a.m.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me (Ps 139:1)
If you have every felt alone, deserted, beyond hope, beyond love,
beyond meaning, beyond God - then hear the word of the Psalmist - “O God you have known me” - from cradle to grave you have always been, and always will be, there for me whether I know it or not.
This is the God who
· sees every sparrow fall,
· counts every hair on our head,
· marked out Jeremiah as a prophet when he was still in the womb,
· marked out Nathaniel as a disciple under the fig tree before Nathaniel even knew anything of it
· never abandons or writes off a single soul,
but searches after every last lost sheep on the lonely moor.
How wonderful to be known, fully known, by God.
2012 marks the 30th Anniversary of the Falklands war.
In the settlement of Darwin in the Falklands, there is
an Argentinian Cemetery for troops who died there in 1982.
123 of the graves are of unknown and unidentified soldiers.
The Argentine Veterans Association has this week asked permission for DNA tests to establish the identity of those laid to rest there.
Meanwhile on 123 tombs, the inscription still reads simply:
“Soldado Argentino - Solo Conocido por Dios” -
Argentinian Soldier - only known to God”
O Lord you have known me - and will always know me -
though I be in the heights or the depths, though I be dead and buried far far from home and lost and unknown to all I hold dear - still our heavenly Father knows all about us, he knows our very DNA, and cares for his every child wherever they may be.
How wonderful that God is with me even in my darkest hour.
But did you notice, as we read that psalm together,
that there creeps into the Psalm a rather more ambivalent tone -
You encompass me, behind and before…
That’s the version we read - we might be tempted to read the phrase as referring to a warm encompassing hug.
Actually the Hebrew is heavier than that -
it has the force of “Lord, you hem me in” - even “Lord you besiege me”
We begin to see that this God who searches and knows me in my entirety
may be both reassuring and threatening
So the Psalmist goes on -
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me….
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?”
How wonderful to be searched and known by God.
But also how fearful!
Here is Jeremy Troxler of Duke Dicinity School
describing his experience of airport security:
“I go to board a plane. A big, frowning man in a uniform barks at me, “Drop your bag, sir.” He unzips my suitcase, rummaging/ransacking through my most personal things. I’m not hiding anything, but still I’m almost afraid he’ll find something. He grunts at me to “take your shoes off.” I hop up and down in my socks, trying to remove my shoes while still standing and retaining some sense of dignity. I walk cautiously through a narrow gate and a beep goes off. The uniformed man slowly shakes his head. My belt is stripped off, shirttail pulled up out of my pants. I turn my pockets inside out. The beep goes off again. A woman with a badge pulls me aside, tells me, “Lean over and stretch out your arms, sir.” She frisks me to the point where I think she gets to second base. She finds nothing and seems a little disappointed -- then grunts at me to move on.
I am dishevelled, I am rattled, I feel a little violated -- I have been searched.
How fearful a thing to be searched and known by God.”
A God who is there when we want him - that is one thing -
but a God who is always there, always rummaging in the most private bits of my life - that is quite another. God - couldn’t you restrict your activities to Sunday morning when I am ready for him in my Sunday clothes, and for the rest just let me be - just leave me your mobile number in case I need to contact you during the week?
We all know how teenagers can resent their parents -
they are growing up to be individual people and they don’t want a mum or dad prying into all their inner secrets - cramping their style, discovering their insecurities -
And maybe we act the adolescent with our Heavenly Father.
God with us all the time - like the Psalmist
we may sometimes wonder if that is a promise or a threat.
For God is there watching our every move, our every thought.
And that means that those sad and sordid things
we do or fail to do in the so called secrecy of our own inner life might as well be carried out here in the midst of Church before the Cross - for that is how clear and public our life is to the God who searches and knows us.
And insomuch as you do it to one of these my brothers, you do it to me -
God in every victim staring back at us with hurt and loving eyes - Lord your presence is too painful - where can I flee from your presence?
More distressing video footage from Afghanistan this week -
showing American servicemen urinating on dead Afghan bodies.
What makes someone do such a awful thing?
Well I don’t know - though some would want to say that even worse than the urinating was the killing that went before it -
I have never been ordered to kill someone -
But maybe those soldiers just couldn’t face up to the reality of what they were being asked to do - and maybe they urinated on the body in order to turn it into an object, not a person to be grieved for, not someone silently accusing -
Insomuch as you did it to one of these -
Lord, if you are there at every turn and every breath of my life,
you are going to force me to look into the eyes of everyone I have wronged, and force me to see myself for what I really am.
Where can I fly from your presence?
Nowhere, says the Psalmist - for God is there, searching, knowing me
- though I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, - Though I say , “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day…
We can run but we can’t hide, we can’t outrun God.
So are we lost - condemned to run from Christ
only to have our darkness revealed by his ever hounding presence?
· Well, our darkness is revealed by the
God who searches and knows us through and through
· But we are not lost - we are found -
When finally we stop running, however painful it may be, we are found and loved and accepted
In Francis Thompson’s great poem
he sees God as the hound of heaven who will not let him go.
He flees like the Psalmist to ends of the earth -
& begins to discover, so it seems, the real darkness God’s absence as he flees from the light of his glory of God into the valley of the shadow, the darkness of sin and death.
But then, finally, inevitably, in the gloom, he hears the footfall still,
he knows that God has not, and never will, give up on him -
Then he knows that God is there even the darkness -
and suddenly he understands the darkness in a new way - the darkness - which seemed like the absence of God - is actually nothing but
“the shadow of his hand, outstretched caressingly”
O Lord, you have searched me and known me
What a fearsome thought - what a wonderful promise -
that my God can see me for what I am - yet never give up on me -
Until finally he has me safe in his outstretched & ever loving hand.
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