Sermon Title: "God Knows You"
Date: September 5, 2010
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

A week ago, just as I began to look for a scripture text for this Sunday, Carolyn Remley’s daughter brought in her two-week-old daughter to meet me.  Remember, this is the first child whose name I knew and baptism in November was scheduled before she was born!  Charlotte Rose had regained all of her birth weight, yet at seven pounds, four ounces, she looked very tiny, much smaller than Aubrey who was baptized today. 

And that tiny child helped me choose Psalm 139 for today’s lesson. 

“O Lord,…it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. … 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.”  (139:13, 15-16)

The Hebrew for “unformed substance”—the only place it is used in the Old Testament—can be translated “formless being” or “embryo”—this formless little coming together of egg and sperm that then multiplies cells and produces beautiful children like Charlotte and Aubrey.  I consider conception to be God’s greatest miracle. 

It could be that our very life began with the breath of God:   “For it was you [God] who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (v. 13)  You are not an accident.  You are not a mistake.  There is a reason.  Your life, your soul was inflated with the breath of God.

It could be that your body is a miracle!  “I praise you [God], for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.” (v. 14)  Our body is a material, corporeal entity that converts nutrients into energy, that can heal itself, that perceives reality through five senses that robotics engineers and microbiologists for all of their training and Ph.D.s can only mimic in the crudest of ways.  It’s a body that discards waste, takes in fuel, and can reproduce.  The nervous system and pain provide an early warning and detection system.  It signals us that something is wrong.

I remember a church member here who died in 1999.  Paul Kircher was one of those Ph.D.s, a professor at UCLA.  I can’t remember his field of study, but I remember distinctly what he said:  “Imagine, God created even the hairs in your nose to filter out pollutants.”  Something we don’t think about, but I suppose it’s true.  And we could go on and on.  It’s a miracle!

As this Psalm begins, written by, for, or attributed to David, David declares that God knew him even before he was born.  It is a marvelous affirmation to realize that God knows you!  In some places in the Bible, several writers come to realize that God even called them before they were born:  the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah and the apostle Paul for instance.  (Isaiah 49:1, Jeremiah 1:5, Galatians 1:15)

That got me to thinking about my own call to ministry.  While it happened in college, I remember at age five being at Sunday School; by age ten I was taking notice of what happened in worship; and by thirteen I was folding worship bulletins.  Did God always know that I would be a Christian minister?

Our daughter Amy used to play school with her stuffed animals.  While attending third grade over at Lowell Elementary, she declared that she wanted to be a third grade teacher.  That child never wavered, never considered another profession.  I did tell her after college graduation that when she was applying for a job, don’t turn it down if it’s not in third grade!  Now in her eighth year of teaching, I wonder if God always knew Amy would be a teacher?

The question posed by UCC minister Curran Reichert in today’s Meditative Moment is provocative:  “What do you think God was thinking on the day you were created?”  Twice she asks this of us.  “What things, perfect things, was God thinking about while you were being formed in your mother’s womb?”  Did God indeed know in what profession we would ultimately end up?

One verse in David’s praise of the Lord may puzzle us:  “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them yet existed.” (v. 16)  Just because the ancients believed God has in advance a record of our yet-to-happen days does not mean that they are fixed.  While some Christians do believe that, characteristically Christians tend to believe in providence, not fate or “divine determinism.”  God may know ahead what we will choose, but they are genuine choices; and our outcomes depend a lot on our choices.  We are all free to take one path, and then retrace our steps and start off on another if the first does not seem to be working.  Then we might see that our whole lives are in God’s hands, and David takes comfort in being able to rely on God’s safekeeping.

David is so overwhelmed that he ends this section of the psalm with exuberant praise.  He marvels at the Lord’s weighty, difficult to fathom thoughts, impossible to count as they are.  He says that even when he comes to the end, or awakens, “I am still with you.” (v. 18)  In all of life, from beginning to end, David is now as present with God as God is with David.  The central biblical affirmation is “God is with us.”  If so, then too “We are with God.”  Various languages give expression to this truth.  “Goodbye” in English is a contraction of “God be with you.”  “Vaya con Dios” is Spanish for “Go with God.”  The eternal, majestic God, who created you and me and loves us and knows us perhaps better than we know ourselves, personally cares for each of us and always will, from birth through life to death to new life beyond death.