"The Wonder Of It All"
We may not know, but we are known.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, May 4, 2003
Text: Psalm 139:1-17
I could tell by the look on her face that she was uncomfortable. As she came up the steps onto the streetcar and sat opposite me, I could see that life was hard. Particularly so, because she was no more than 13 or 14 years old and clearly, to use the biblical phrase, "with child." There was a certain look of despair on her face as she sat there and stared at me.
As we rode along King Street, I began to think about this young woman and her life. I wondered what others must say about her or think of her. Would some see her as a pariah, ashamed of the misfortune that had ruined her life? Would some see her as a heroine, brave, ready to embark on a new path and bring into the world a new life? Was she belittled by her friends, ostracized by her family or loved and embraced by those who know her? I sat there, gazed into her eyes and wondered.
I wondered what she thought of herself. Was she riddled with guilt? Was it an accident, an unavoidable mishap? Was it something that would affect the rest of her life in a negative way? Was she full of joy? Was she proud? Was she glad to be bringing a new life into the world? Was she full of despair because of the unknown and the daunting challenges of motherhood? I sat there, gazed into her eyes and wondered what she thought of herself.
I began to imagine a biography of this young woman as every facet of her life started to unfold in my imagination, I eventually wondered what her new life would be like with her child and what the life of the child would be like as it evolved and grew. I sat there, gazed into her eyes and I wondered what I thought of her.
Then I realized that I knew nothing about her. For all my speculations and meandering thoughts, I had no sense, no idea what she was really like. And indeed, that goes for so much of human existence and human relationships. Even those with whom we are the most intimate in our lives, those to whom we're married or with whom we've lived for a long time, our spouses, our parents, even our children. We think we know what they are really like. We think we know what they are thinking. We try to understand, but deep down we don't really know.
Indeed, if we are really honest, we don't really know ourselves either. Oh, we delve into our minds and our souls. We try to understand what we are like. We think we know ourselves, then all of a sudden, out of the blue, we'll do something that seems so contrary to our own vision of our character. As the Apostle Paul said in Romans, "The good that I wish to do, I do not." We surprise ourselves.
For example, last Wednesday night I went out for dinner. I had a plan in mind: lettuce, tomato, unbreaded meat, no dessert, and water. I consumed: steak, potatoes, dressing, lemon meringue pie and red wine. Then I was mad at myself for having done it. "Why did you do that?" I said (as I didn't sleep for two nights with high sugar levels). Why? The good that I will, I do not. I don't even know myself, let alone anyone else.
We live in a world that thinks that it knows, thinks that it understands. We make huge decisions on the basis of our apprehension of the other or of ourselves, when in fact it is so limited. We know so little.
Out text this morning from Psalm 139 is one of great introspection. The psalmist looks at himself, but rather than saying that he knows himself, he makes a most dramatic statement. He talks not about the fact that he knows, but that he is known. He talks about the omniscience of God - that God knows everything. He talks about the omnipresence of God - that God is everywhere. And whether it is God's knowledge or God's presence of him that is greater than his knowledge of himself, above all things there is a Knower, and the psalmist is known. He is not wrapped up in what he knows, but is in wonder and awe that he is known.
This, my friends, turns the table on the way that the modern world looks at itself. We are obsessed with knowing - not just knowing things that are around us, but knowing God and knowing the divine. Every since Descartes and his meditation of First Philosophy came out with that famous phrase: cognito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), we have been obsessed with knowing ourselves so we can validate our own existence with our knowledge of ourselves as the centre of things. We are the principal knowers and everything else out there is that which is known by us.
The great philosopher Hegel said basically that the way we know the infinite is by looking at the finite things - at things that are around us. We have even been obsessed with trying to know God, to know the divine, by looking at the things that are around us - by looking at the state of the world and determining from that what God is like.
You can see the implications of this in an article from the Toronto Star on April 26th by Robert Buchman. In it he talked about the fact that the second largest religious category in Canada right now is atheism, and that all we can really know about God, all we can say comes from our own psyches - a spark within us, and that by looking at that spark we can then talk about our own divinity - even if we doubt the existence of God. Again, self-knowledge and knowing the world around us become the centre of our existence, for we are the knower and everything else is the known.
Our passage today turns that on its head. It said: Oh, you might think you know, but there is someone - something - who knows you and who knows the world. There is a divine Knower. Through that divine Knower reality takes shape. Through that divine knower the world and our existence finds a new form, a new reason for being. Look at how the psalmist describes it. He says that God knows our very thoughts. He says: "Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You perceive my thoughts from afar. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely."
I've often wondered about that and thought to myself: "Lord, if you know what I'm going to say before I say it, it would be nice, once in a while, for you to stop me from saying something stupid! Before I say that unkind word, make that judgement or utter that erroneous statement from the pulpit."
It would be nice. But God doesn't work that way. We are not automatons. We are not robots. Nevertheless, God knows our thoughts. God knows them before we ever express them. For God searches us and knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows, then, our conscience. God knows our motivation.
My friends, at the heart of moral, social and ethical problems, at the heart of the relativism of our day and age that says there is no right or wrong or no truth, is the fact that the world has forgotten that there is a Knower, who knows our thoughts, who knows our motives and intentions. And, it seems to me, one of the purposes of the church is not to tell us how we should act and to prescribe for us some moral code, it is to remind us that at the depths of our knowledge of ourselves is a God who knows what we're thinking.
To the politicians, for example, who might do something out of expediency, thinking that they can fool all the people, all the time, there is the reality that they are accountable to one who knows them. And I would suggest to you that at the heart of any moral struggle is the belief that you either understand that your thoughts are known or you don't. And if you don't, then expediency rules. But if you do, you understand that you are accountable. Accountable to one who knows you - and when you understand that, your thoughts change.
Now, if you're starting to squirm at the idea that God knows your every thought, there is also the comforting side: God also knows, then, your needs, your anxieties and your concerns. God knows your heart. God knows what you really believe to be true. For those who are anxious and concerned about the future, there are these words from the psalm "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts."
When we think that nobody understands what we feel, that nobody appreciates the deep thoughts in the recesses of our soul and our psyche, the psalmist reminds us that there is one who knows - the Knower - Almighty God. We're not alone. He not only knows our thoughts, He knows our very existence.
My friends, as individual human beings, we are, each one of us, unique. I couldn't help but think that this week, as on Thursday night I went to the symphony and listened to a marvelous performance of Chopin. As the musicians fingers danced across the keyboard, I was transported back to the times when my grandfather used to ask my uncle: "Arthur, please play Chopin for me. I've always loved Chopin."
Then on Friday night I went to "Moulin Ruth" and had an entirely different experience - but a great one, nonetheless. It was young people taking a biblical story and bringing it to life with a rock beat, a pounding sound - it was glorious. I wondered what all the people listening to Chopin last night would think of this? I wonder if all the people who went to "Moulin Ruth" and were standing up, applauding and jigging around, would have done that at Chopin? I don't think so.
There are different trends. There are different values. There are different loves and there are different hates. That's why I love the great conductor Vladimir Jan Kochanski's response when asked if he liked any rock group and he said: "Yes, one - Mount Rushmore." We all have our different likes and tastes. We are all as different as night is from day but here is a constant: We are wonderfully made.
The psalmist said: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." In other words, you made me. I'm yours. Human beings are wonderfully made in the image of God. Oh, we're fallen, yes. We make mistakes, yes. But we're known.
I'm reminded of the great painting by Michelangelo of "The Creation of Adam." I look at it time and time again in a book, (I've never been to the Sistine Chapel but I hope to go someday) where God, with a woman and a child under His arm, reaches out to Adam and Adam's left arm is stretched out. God looks down at Adam and Adam looks up at God and you realize when you look at the Sistine Chapel, when you look at the magnificence of Michelangelo that yes, indeed, as human beings we are wonderfully made by our creator.
I was asked not long ago, "Andrew, does belief in God really make a difference?"
I said: "Of course it does!" Because it means that every individual on this earth, every child, illegitimate or otherwise, every person of every colour and every creed, disabled or sound, makes a difference. They are wonderfully made. They are known. And because they are known by God their existence matters - their life matters and they are worthy, surely, of our love.
God not only affirms our existence, He knows our location. One of the most glorious parts of the psalm: "If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!" Like Job, there is this sense that no matter where I am God knows me and I cannot escape God's love. "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea..." In other words, from the beginning of the day, when the sun rises in the east and the birds begin to soar, to the end of the world (remember, they believed that the world was flat) when the sun went into the sea at the end of the day, you're there. "Even the darkness is not to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee."
Whether it is day or night, then, God is there. You see, one of the great and sad realities of life is that we believe God is only there when the sun rises. We only believe that God is there when we are good enough to ascend to heaven. We believe that God is only there in the daytime. The Bible asserts that even when we are not worthy of God, God is there. That even in the darkness, God is there. At the end of the day, God is there. We cannot go anywhere without God, without the Knower, who knows where we are.
All of this depends on one thing - faith. We really do have to make a statement of faith: that we believe that there is a Knower and we are known. It is that statement of faith that becomes the centre of our lives and the foundation for everything else that happens. That is why I applaud those of you this morning who are making your confession of faith. It is one of the great statements of life: that we are known and that we are loved by a Creator who is greater than ourselves.
An Arab prince once told a story about a Persian general. The Persian general was about to execute a spy. As was his custom, the general gave the spy a choice: "Either you are to be executed by a firing squad or you are to open this black door."
The spy pondered both options for a long time and responded: "I will be executed by a firing squad." And so he stood before the firing squad and was executed.
The aide to the general asked: "What is behind that black door?"
The general said: "Freedom."
The aide said: "Well, why did he choose to be shot?"
The general responded: "People will always choose the known over the unknown."
We'll choose the way our experience tells us rather than take a leap of faith. For, in the leap of faith is the unknown. My friends, so many of us just hold on to what we know. We live our lives by what we know. We do not open the door to the freedom of knowing that we're known and that in the knowledge that we are known comes life.
Socrates once said: "Wonder is the beginning of wisdom." That is what I want all of us to have. G.K. Chesterton put it this way: "There is one thing that we will not starve for, and that is wonders. But there is only one thing that we really need, and that is wonder." My friends, we live in a world where we do not starve for wonders, they are new everyday, but we starve for wonder. And the wonder is that there is a Knower, who knows us by name, who searches our hearts, and is with us throughout it all.
I think back to that young woman on the streetcar: I'll never know what she will become. I'll never know what her life will be like. I'll probably never know her child or the life ahead of that child. I will know nothing of her. But this I know - she is known - and in that and in our great God, I will wonder. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.