Psalm
139
July
18, 2020
O Lord, you have
searched me and known me.
You
know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search
out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even
before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me
in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Such
knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Where can I
go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend
to heaven, you are there;
if I
make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take
the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me, and
your right hand shall hold me fast.
If 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,
for darkness is
as light to you.
For it was
you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I
praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are
your works; that I know very well.
My frame
was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret,
intricately
woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your
book were written all the days that were formed for me,
when none of
them as yet existed.
How weighty
to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
I
try to count them, they are more than sand; I come to the end, I am still with
you.
O that you
would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those
who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Do I not hate
those who hate you, O Lord?
Do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I
hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.
Search me,
O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me, and
lead me in the way everlasting.
Here
is one of the awkward truths of life these days: there is nowhere to hide.
Everywhere we go, somebody is watching.
Back
when security cameras were rare, we knew we were being tracked inside the local
bank. Now the unseen eyes are everywhere. Silent cameras track us on the
highway, in stores, stadiums, and elevators. Above our heads, there are
satellite cameras with the ability to zoom in and see the pigment of a fruit fly’s
eyes.
More
and more of the planet is being mapped, so it is increasingly difficult to get
lost. When my friend Louie moved to South Carolina some years ago, I was
curious about the kind of house he bought. So I looked up his address on Google
Maps – ever do this? There was the town, the street, and a picture of the front
of his home, a nice ranch home. And on the day that camera car from Google
drove by, there was Louie, waving from the garage.
I
was intrigued to hear accounts of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British heiress. She
has been accused of some terrible crimes. The FBI found her in the woods of New
Hampshire after a year of hiding. Actually, they have known for a while where
she was hiding. Nobody noticed when she bought a log frame mansion for a million
dollars cash, but the authorities were watching.
There
is not a lot of privacy anymore. Not a lot of anonymity.
When
we record these worship services, if the organist plays a piece that somebody
else has ever recorded, our software program dings, and we are evaluated for a
copyright violation. Somebody just knows.
Do
you order any books on Amazon? Amazon tracks every order and suggests similar
books. They are watching, in order to make another sale.
Maybe
you remember the Jason Bourne spy movies. The spies chase after Jason Bourne,
the brainwashed assassin. Lot of action in those movies, but the primary theme
is surveillance. There are cameras in London train stations, a bank in Zurich, a
street corner in Manhattan. And these are old movies. Just think how many unnoticed
eyes caught us on the last trip into town.
Our
neighbors installed a security camera and pointed it at our house. I thought
they knew our kids have grown and moved out, but maybe they aren’t watching our
kids. Every Thursday night, when I take the garbage cans to the curb, the
floodlight comes on, the red light on the camera flares up. So I turn to the
camera and wave, sometimes creatively. I might as well give them a good show –
they are watching.
All
this can sound intimidating. Somebody watches us. They track how we spend our
money. They watch where we go. They anticipate what we are likely to do.
So
it may be no great comfort to hear the Psalmist declare that God is watching,
too. In fact, God is the Original Surveillance Officer. Adam and Eve were
hiding in the Garden. God said, “Where are you? Where did you go?” Pretty
soon, you realize that is a set up question. God knows. God already knows.
Abram
and Sarai are told they will become parents for the first time. They are sufficiently
ancient that Medicare is picking up the tab. A baby? Sounds like a ridiculous
promise, so Sarai bursts out laughing. God’s angels say, “Why are you laughing?”
She says, “I wasn’t laughing.” God says, “Oh yes, you were. I saw you. I heard
you.” (Gen. 18:15)
Sometimes
God’s observation is a good thing. God speaks up from a burning bush and says, “Moses,
I have watched the misery of my enslaved people in Egypt. I have heard their
cry. I have seen their suffering.” Moses is relieved to hear it, I think; God
has taken notice. Moses is curious; God has noticed, so what will God do? And
God says, “Here’s what I will do about the suffering I have heard and seen: Moses,
I am sending you to contend with Pharoah.” Freedom happened because God knows.
God sees. God hears everything.
Sometimes
that is a spooky thing. Like all those resurrection stories in the New
Testament. A stranger catches up with a couple of sad friends who grieve the
death of Jesus and the loss of all their hopes. The stranger says, “What are
you talking about?” He already knows. Yes, he knows. (Luke 24:18-27)
Or
Doubting Thomas, that dim bulb among the disciples. He exclaims, “I’m not going
to believe until I can stick my pinky in the nail holes.” So what does Jesus
do? A week later he appears inside a locked room while they are hiding, and says,
“Hey Thomas, here are the nail prints on my hands. Put your little finger here.”
The Lord has been listening the whole time. He heard it all. He has seen it
all. (John 20:24-27)
This
can be intimidating. To realize God sees what we do, that God sees the dark
thought, the foul deed, the shady deal. Nothing lies beyond the observation of
our Lord.
Like
King David, taking advantage of his royal privilege, to add another beautiful woman
to his bedroom and kill off her husband in a useless act of war. The king
thought he got away with the scheme. She was pregnant. He was the king. He plotted
a cover up, probably paid some hush money. And the whole time, God was
watching. So God sent the prophet Samuel to tell David what David had done –
because God knew. God always knows. (2 Samuel 11:27)
There
are no secrets if there is a God who sees us. No shadows in the presence of the
light of the world.
This
divine characteristic – omniscience, we call it – that God is all-knowing, has
often prompted a lot of moral policing and finger-wagging, especially in the
church. By the tenth century AD, the church had written a prayer that some of
you know. This prayer for purity begins, “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts
are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.” God searches
our hearts; the Psalmist knows this.
Yet
the Psalmist knows something more. The God who watches our deeds and knows our
thoughts is the God who knows “when I sit down and when I rise up.” That’s the
language of a Good Parent. Every good parent tucks in the children at night and
listens for when they wake. Every attentive Parent pulls back the curtain late
at night and watches for the teenager to get home. My sister and I joked that,
when we were out late at night, our mother slept with one eye open. She is a
good Mom.
Psalm
139 says there is nowhere we can wander that God does not watch, nowhere we can
go that God cannot get to us. “O Lord,” prays the Psalmist, “where could I ever
get away from you?”
If I ascend
to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take
the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even
there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
It
isn’t because God is nosey, it isn’t because God is controlling or
manipulative, it isn’t because God is poised to pounce if we have a wayward
word or deed, it isn’t because God is neglecting the asteroids. God watches
because God cares about us. Whether we know it or now, we are in a relationship.
God sees us because God has already claimed us. Life began with God, says the
Psalmist, and all the way through and to the end, God leads and holds… because
we are loved, because we are claimed.
The
invitation is to trust this until we know it.
Did
I ever tell you about my friend Carol? She is really something. We have been friends
since the eighth grade. These days she runs a coffee shop in my hometown, and I
like to visit when I can.
Some
years ago, she started making the headlines on the sports page. She played some
sports in high school, but that was high school. Some time in her late
twenties, she started to jog, then run. She ran 10-K fundraisers and 26-mile
marathons. I was curious about that, so she told me the story.
She was married and they had a
little boy. The marriage had its bumps, as many marriages do, but both of them loved
little Joey, provided for little Joey, until that one terrible night when
little Joey died. It was a horrible thing, about the worst thing that could ever
possibly happen to young parents. He wasn’t breathing. “From that point,” she
confessed, “my life fell to pieces.”
Depression hit hard. Her husband was
no help. The marriage came unraveled. Nobody could find a way to assist. To handle
her own stress, Carol started to jog. No reason, really. It seemed the thing to
do.
She said, "I'd get up in the
morning, and the first thing I'd do is put on my sweats and start running. Maybe
it was from shock more than anything else. I just needed to be moving. Months
went by and I kept running. I don't know why. Was I running away from something?
Running to find something? I don’t know.”
And then, one morning, she ran
around a bend on a country road and she saw a church. Suddenly, she said, “in a
flash I knew I was running away from God. I wanted nothing to do with God. God
gave me a little boy, and I lost my little boy. God gave me a marriage, and I
lost that, too. It was so unfair. What did this happen?”
Standing in the middle of the road,
she said, “I let God have it. I yelled. I screamed. I told God, I’m not going
to let you off the hook. The tears were in my eyes, as I started to jog, and
then run. And the whole time, I had the strangest sensation. It was as if
Somebody was listening. As if Somebody was running beside me. So I ran faster
to get away, and he kept up.”
“When I got home, that feeling was
still there. When I want for a run the next morning, I had the sense Somebody
was running by my side. And then the profound realization came: God had been
with me the whole time, with me for my whole life. His presence was inescapable
and now I know it. My son is with God, and so am I.”
I said, “Is that how you will all
those races?” She laughed and said, “Nah, it’s something to do on weekends.”
She paused to make her point. “What really matters is that once I ran to get
away from God; now I run to pray. Once I ran away from terrible pain; now I run
to see God in all things.”
As the Psalmist sings, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from
your presence?” Wherever I go, you are there.
This is the difference between a surveillant society that
merely wants to consume us and an ever-present God who invites us to belong as beloved
children. God was, God is, God ever shall be. God comes before, God follows
after us, and all the while, God is with us to guide, challenge, and comfort.
In
one of his essays, Thomas Lynch reflected on the challenges of his work as a
funeral director in Michigan. His work brings him into contact with people in
the worst of circumstances. Earlier in his life, he confesses, this did a
number on him. He would come home from a demanding day and worry about his own
family. But even if he peeked through the bedroom door at night, he had to ultimately
close the door and entrust his family to the providence of God. As he writes,
But faith is, so far as I know it, the
only known cure for fear – the sense that someone is in charge here, is
checking the ID’s and watching the borders. Faith is what my mother said:
letting go and letting God – a leap into the unknown where we are not in
control but always welcome.[1]
We
are not in control but always welcome. We are known and loved by a God who pays
attention to each one of us as a Parent loves the child. God’s providence
surrounds us, and we can never outrun it. And no matter where we go, wherever
we find ourselves, God is already there. So we pray for the eyes to see and
pray for the heart to know.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
Thanks to Thomas G. Long, whose article "Psalm 139 and the Eye of God" (Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2020) shaped the thinking of this sermon.
[1] Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking:
Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (New York Norton, 2009) 50-54.
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