Sermon 6th November 2016

Today,  one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, preaches. The reading is from Psalm 139

The Inescapable God

Psalm 139, verse 14: “I praise you because you are to be feared”, says The Good News Bible, “all you do is strange and wonderful”, or as the New International that we use at St Paul’s and many other versions of the Bible put it, “I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made”. I am fearfully and wonderfully made…. you created every part of me, you put me together  - or “you knit me together,” it says in some versions – “in my mother’s womb”…I like that idea of us being a complex piece of interwoven and deliberate stitching or knitting. Each of us is a beautiful, complex, unique and deliberate pattern.

I don’t know about you but these words, certainly as they appear in the New International Version, hit me every time I come across them.  I am fearfully made and I am wonderfully made. We know now better than at any time in history, just how complex and astonishing the human body is, how remarkable it is that from the most basic atoms of the elements of the universe has developed over billions of years  - and for our particular species over the last two hundred thousand years - the human body and the human brain, conscious of everything and everyone else around us and with the potential ourselves to appreciate, to do and to create so much that is good, remarkable and beautiful and the potential, in principle, to explore the universe we find ourselves in.

There is then a real sense of awe, wonder and amazement at what we are like.  We are wonderfully made. But also you get from this psalm a sense of strangeness, even a sense of fear, or shock.  How can it possibly be the case that all this has come about? How can we possibly be like this? What is this? We are fearfully made..

And as we know there are at least two main ideas about how we got here. There is the idea that says we came about over endless ages simply because of the interactions of physical and chemical and biological forces within the laws of this universe, but without the need for any conscious, let alone loving, Creator. The laws of the universe are enough. And then there is the idea that we were deliberately made, by a supremely powerful Creator.  I have never believed the two starting points, science and religion, to be fundamentally irreconcilable.  If God created us by allowing us to develop from the basic building blocks of the universe over billions of years that is fine, personally, for me. I can’t see that it undermines at all the fundamental  - and remarkable - idea that I, we, were created.

And obviously that is the view of the writer of this psalm. Just look at us, he says.

And that is the first reason why, when Cameron said to the preachers earlier this year that they could choose a psalm to preach on, that I asked if I could preach on this one.  Because, although I can sense the power of the scientific argument that says the laws of the universe are enough I find it, myself, deeply unsatisfying because it does not seem to me to be enough. God, it seems to me, gives the universe a warm heart rather than a cold heart, a purpose as well as an explanation, a plan more than randomness, ultimate value more than just relative value.

Because if we are created as wonderfully and as fearfully as we have heard, then every person is of enormous value in the eyes of God.  That must be the starting point. Every person. Not just the result of essentially cold scientific forces but a creation, wonderful in the eyes of God.

And yes I know that this view brings with it challenges. Why then does God allow deformity, suffering, pain, why does the beauty seem to be damaged or even broken? But, for myself, I would rather wrestle with and try to work through those difficulties than say oh this is not always straightforward, so if there is suffering and illness and deformity in the human body there cannot possibly be a Creator.  For myself, I would rather not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Because accepting every single person is created by God still allows me to start from the position that every single person is valuable and is precious in God’s sight and because my own, limited perhaps, experience for myself and among my family and friends, is that the creator God is actually with us in that physical suffering that I have just mentioned.

Even the writer of this psalm acknowledges that thinking about God as our creator in this way can get tricky:

“O God how difficult I find your thoughts,” he writes in verse 17. How can all this be and how does it all work out? And what is the creator God doing in his world? These are questions we have to ask.

However, this idea that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by our creator God does allow us to do, I think, at least two things:

-       It allows us, as our starting point, to accept and love ourselves as we are, not “Oh I’m too thin, I’m too heavy, too tall, too short, too big here, too small there, too hairy or too little hair.” Yes, I know we must look after and care for ourselves and our bodies, that should go without saying, but the starting point is that God has made us as we are and we can accept ourselves and love ourselves as he has made us;

-       But just as importantly – in fact probably more importantly - it requires us, I think, to see other people as God sees them, whatever value the world puts on them. It’s only one example but the person who has been in my mind this week is a woman who used to come to my Dad’s church in S Yorkshire, maybe 20 years ago. He told me once in all honesty she was probably the person with the lowest IQ he had ever met. She had a partner and had children but everyone knew that she really had little idea of when she was or was not pregnant. And when the church ran a trip to the seaside she bought a stick of pink rock and brought it up with her to the communion rail the next day. But beautiful in God’s eyes and of the same worth to Him as anyone else? Absolutely…. and that is how that congregation welcomed her.

Think of ourselves as fearfully and wonderfully made and maybe we will begin to see ourselves differently. Think of other people as fearfully and wonderfully made by God and maybe we will learn to see them differently too….

There is the first set of thoughts for this morning. Thoughts about God as our creator.

Then the second set of thoughts from this Psalm 139, for me, are those set out mainly in verses 7 to 12.  “Where could I go to escape from you? Where could I go to get away from your presence?” And the answer the writer gives, surprisingly or nor surprisingly - what do you think? - is: nowhere! God is in heaven, of course he is, but here is the reminder: you will also find Him in the world of the dead; you will find Him from one furthest end of the earth to the other; you will find Him in the light, yes of course you will! But you will also find Him in the darkest darkness, because even what we think of as the darkest night is as bright as the day to Him…

If you wanted to see God as some over-zealous parent-like figure wanting to cramp your style and restrict your freedoms then maybe this would not come as any great comfort, that there is nowhere you can go that God is not there, but I think the sense of what the writer is trying to convey here is something much more fundamentally positive and it is something like this. Even in what might be for you the darkest and most difficult of situations you might ever find yourself in, God is there. Yes, even when the world seems to be rushing headlong to the world of the dead and into darkness, hope will still shine. So, even when your own personal world is falling apart and hope is fading faster than the light on a cold winter’s evening, yes even when you think you have been, or that you are, or that you are going to be somewhere where God, surely, cannot possibly reach you or want to be with you, God will be there if you reach out to him to lead you and to help. God is not the God only of the pious, the religious, the churchgoers, the pray-ers, the saints and the safe and quiet places…

Maybe something of this hope has been in the minds of those in the political violence and turmoil of Burundi’s recent history that I imagine Charlotte Hutchinson will share something of with us later today if you are able to join her for the lunch [here] at St Paul’s. And let us pray that something of that hope can still be found by those in Aleppo and Mosul  - and many other places no doubt - who even as we sit here are having to witness the world of the dead..

Which brings me, sort of, to another reason I chose Psalm 139 this morning and that is because last January I heard it read most beautifully and powerfully at Jennie’s Dad’s funeral by his brother, now in his 80’s and the last remaining of six children. I am not sure if I can recall a passage of scripture being read that struck me more powerfully or stuck with me for longer. “The days allotted to me have all been recorded in your book, before any of them ever began,” Uncle Alan read. None of us knows how long we have but God was there are the beginning and will be there at the end. And Jennie’s uncle finished with the words from verse 18, which tell us that, after everything that has happened to us or to others, wherever we go and however long we have, whatever our lives may bring or take us through, then for so long as we live we can say,

“When I am awake, I am still with you.”

There is the second set of thoughts. That wherever we find ourselves, God is there.

And then there is a third set of thoughts that for me this psalm is getting across and that is this, that the God who created us and the God who will be with us wherever we find ourselves in this life, this God knows us in the very depths of our being, behind all the layers that make us up and the impressions we try to create or to adopt. God knows us and wants to guide us through the days he has for us, guiding us to do what is right for us:

 “Lord you have examined me and you know me. You know everything I do; from far away you understand all my thoughts. You see me, whether I am working or resting; you know all my actions.”

Again if you just want to see God as the one who wants to restrict your freedoms this may not sound like comfortable news but again I think the writer of this psalm is wanting to say something much more fundamentally positive than that. I think he wants to say that our Creator God knows us well enough to know what is the best for us and to guide us if we will let him.

“You are all around me on every side and you protect me with your power. Your knowledge of me is too deep, it is beyond my understanding.” Can you see that the God who knows you so well might just be on your side? I am reminded of a conversation I had once with someone who, although very aware of God in his life, when he was younger had not looked after his family as much as he should and, it turned out, had not honoured his marriage vows as he should. But when he was older and had changed he said that one thing you realize as you get older is that life is quite short. I think and hope and pray that he had come to understand that God does know what is best for him.

Perhaps with the writer of this psalm we can all pray, “Examine me, O God and know my mind; please test me and discover my thoughts. Please find out if there is any evil in me. I trust you. Please guide me in the everlasting way. Please show me how you want me to live.“

So there it is, this picture of the God who made me, the God who will always be there with me wherever I find myself and the God who knows and loves me enough to want to guide me through my life, for however long he has allotted my days. I’ll take that as a description of my life with Him and that is why I chose this psalm…

Now before we finish, the sharp-eyed among you will probably have seen those verses 19 to 22 where the psalmist launches into what can only be described as a rant against God’s enemies. I hate them and wish, Lord,  you would kill the lot of them is essentially what he says. And I bet there were one or two of you who thought I’d just missed them out as too difficult and inconvenient. Well what I would say about them to finish is this.  I think it was Trevor or maybe Ben early on in this series of sermons on the psalms who said that what you find when you read them is that the writer does not hold back, you get the reality of his anger as well as his praise. And he certainly has not held back here. I am not about to encourage you to start ranting yourselves against anyone you might see as an enemy of the God you might believe created and guides and knows the best for you, but I would not discourage you from saying what you really think to God. “My God my God why have you forsaken me!” said even Jesus from the cross, fearful that at his own point of death he had been abandoned. But we know that he had not and we know how that story ends. But, by all means question and be honest with your Creator and say what you think…I hope and pray that even through any of your own doubt or anger you may still see the God who made you, the God who will never abandon you and the God who knows you well enough to guide your steps through however many days he has already planned for you.

Amen