Too Wonderful

This sermon was delivered on Sunday, January 15, 2012

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

O God, 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 God, 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.

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, before they 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 the sand;
I come to the end —
  I am still with you.

I have preached on this Psalm several times.  It is, in fact, my favorite Psalm, partly due to the allusion to knitting, but also because of the clear message that God is with us everywhere we go, no matter what.  Throughout my own spiritual meanderings as a child and as a teenager, one thing was always clear to me… God loved me, for exactly who I was, and no matter what.  This is what eventually brought me back to Christianity—the memory of that assurance of God’s love.

This Psalm tells us of the ever-present love of God, the amazing, unfathomable knowledge of God, and the assurance that God knows us better than we can ever imagine.  In this way, it reminds me of one of my favorite Rumi poems in which he writes, “When you look for God, God is in the looking of your eye…”  It’s a bit of theology that is central to my understanding of God, and that you might recognize from my prayers and blessings on Sunday mornings.  I think few things are as important as realizing how close God is to us, how much God loves us, and how intimately God understands us.

This is why Psalm 139 is my favorite… not just because of knitting, but because it rings so true to me.  Now, for some reason the psalm is chopped up in our lectionary, but I think it’s important to hear those lines in the middle. 

Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’,
¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you.

The psalmist says, in every way possible, that God is always there, always with us.  There is nowhere we can go where God is not.  In our times of greatest accomplishment, when we “ascend to heaven,” God is there, and in our worst, most shameful moments, when we “make our beds in sheol,” God is there too.  Even in the depths of depression, when we feel like the darkness is going to cover us for good, God is there.

Now, God is always with us, but God doesn’t necessarily intervene in the ways we would hope.  This is one of the frustrating mysteries about the Divine.  Today is the anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King—a man who was certainly aware of God’s presence and God’s love.  God was there when he was writing speeches and organizing marches.  God was there when he was in prison and when he was in church, and God was there when he was assassinated. 

As we mourn the death of such a great leader, we might wonder why, if God was there, why couldn’t God have stopped it?  Why couldn’t God have prevented his death?  Why is it, if God is always with us, and loves us, and knows us better than we know ourselves, that God doesn’t always protect us from harm, or prevent us from harming others?

These questions are painful to ask, and risky to try and answer.  Some people will say that it’s because whatever happens is God’s will, and we shouldn’t question it.  Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe God wills for children to be abused or people to be bigots or bombs to be dropped.  A loving God does not cause suffering and pain, but suffers with us. 

Humanity is broken in many ways.  We have an endless capacity for love and creativity, but we also have an amazing capacity to hurt and destroy.  I think this is part of what the psalmist means when he writes, “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Fearfully and wonderfully…somewhat contradictory, perhaps, but it certainly rings true. 

I think this is where faith comes in, where religion can be a force for good in our lives.  As a Christian community, we strive to learn from and follow the teachings of Jesus, who challenges us to transform ourselves and our lives, to make change where it is needed, and to treat even the lowliest people with care and respect.  We do not need to be famous to do these things.  We do not need to be ordained or have a PhD.  We just need to be willing and open and take risks in the name of love.

At Martin Luther King’s funeral, they played a recording of his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church.  In that sermon he made a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry," "clothe the naked," "be right on the [Vietnam] war question," and "love and serve humanity."  

He got it.  He understood that the important things in his life, the things he wanted to be remembered for, had nothing to do with the letters in front of his name, but with the ways in which he strived to follow Jesus’ example and help others to do the same.

God was there when Martin Luther King was assassinated, loving and caring and weeping along with his family and all those who loved him.  But God was also there with his killer, loving and caring and weeping for the choices he made.  God loves the civil rights organizers and God loves the Klansmen, and that is all part of the mystery.

 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.

 We are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God… God who is ever present.  God who knew us as we were being formed, who has knowledge of us that we don’t even have of ourselves… and that can be a bit overwhelming.  When we try to comprehend that vastness of God, the immense love and understanding that God has, it is too much for our human brains to fathom—it is “Too Wonderful.” 

It is also unnecessary.  We don’t need to understand everything about God to have faith in God’s love and presence.  We only need to feel it, to see it all around us in the beauty of God’s creation and the love we have for each other. 

  When we see suffering and hatred, we can work to make it better, knowing that God is there with us in the work… and when we fall into the darkness of depression, or feel hopeless in the face of seemingly insurmountable troubles, we can read a psalm like this and remember that we are each and every one of us, incredibly precious and deeply loved by a God that will never let go.  AMEN.