Search Me, O God

Search Me, O God

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

July 23, 2017

Scripture: Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Do you have favorite Bible passages? Most everyone who knows the Bible does. I certainly do. My most favorite passage is Romans 8:38-39. I’ll paraphrase it: For I am convinced that neither life nor death nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It’s in the lectionary for next Sunday, and it’s a pretty good bet that I’ll be preaching on it then. Part of another of my favorite passages is in the lectionary for today. It’s Psalm 139, or most of it anyway. We just heard some of it. It speaks so powerfully to me that all through seminary I kept a copy of it at the front of class notebook. I suppose it spoke so powerfully to me back then because my sense that God had searched me and known me was why I was in seminary in the first place. God surely knew me better than I had known me. When my subconscious first started to tell me that that I really am is a preacher my ego dismissed that thought as utter nonsense. When my subconscious began telling me in dreams and otherwise that I had come to the end of my time as a lawyer and that I needed to be doing something else, my ego resisted and denied what the Spirit was telling me through my subconscious. God knew better than I did who I really am. God was calling me to do something new with whatever gifts and abilities God had given me. Psalm 139 speaks the truth that God knows us better than we know ourselves: “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.”

That’s how Psalm 139 begins. It says God knows our thoughts. God knows our movements. God knows what we are going to say before we say it: “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.” Yet Psalm 139 is so rich that it speaks other truths as well, and some of that other truth I think is also part of why I find this psalm so powerful. One other truth that it speaks is that God is with us always and everywhere. It asks: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” It answers, in effect, “nowhere.” God is with us everywhere. Whether we are in heaven or in hell, God is there. If we flee to the farthest corners of the earth, God is there. If we try to hide from God in the darkness God is there, for darkness is as light to God. The psalm’s line “if I settle on the far side of the sea” reminds me of the story of Jonah. He thought he could run away from God by heading in the opposite direction from where God had told him to go. It didn’t work, and Jonah ended up on a beach in a pool of whale vomit before he figured out that he couldn’t run away from God. Psalm 139 speaks that truth without anyone getting swallowed by whale. No matter where we go, Psalm 139 says, God’s hand will always guide us and hold us fast. That, folks, is perhaps the most profound truth of our faith. It says in different words what that favorite Bible passage of mine, Romans 8:38-39, says, that nothing can ever separate us from God and God’s love. Our response to that great message of God’s unfailing presence and love can only be one thing: “Thanks be to God!”

Or at least our response to that great message of God’s unfailing presence and love must begin with “Thanks be to God.” That’s the starting point of our response, but when we really think about it we quickly realize I think that it is only a starting point. After all, Psalm 139 doesn’t just say God is with us everywhere. We know that it also says to God you have searched me and known me. It returns to that theme in its final lines. It says: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” The NIV translation we use here says “know my anxious thoughts.” The NRSV translation just has “know my thoughts” here, and surely God knows more than our anxious thoughts. Surely the psalmist would want God to know all his thoughts, not just his anxious ones. Moreover, right after the psalm asks God to know the psalmists thoughts the psalmist calls on God to lead him “in the way everlasting.” That’s how the psalm ends, and that seems to be the point to which the whole psalm leads up. Lead me in the way everlasting.

That last line suggests, I think, that God being with us always and everywhere and God knowing our thoughts has consequences. God knows us. God knows us intimately. God knows us better than we know ourselves, and God loves anyway. God certainly loves us better than we love ourselves, and God loves other people a whole lot more than we love most of them. God’s love is free and unconditional, but it calls for a response. That’s what being led in the way everlasting is about here. God leads always in new ways, and God expects us to follow. That surely is one of the messages of Psalm 139.

I think the psalm really does say that, or at least it implies it pretty strongly. That is part of Psalm 139’s message. Yet that really is not the good news of Psalm 139. The good news of Psalm 139 is rather in the parts of it that tell us that God is with us always. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had times in my life when it was only my awareness of God’s presence with me that has gotten me through. For me those have particularly been times of grief, but we all have times of pain, sorrow, loss, despair, that only God can get us through. Psalm 139 assures us that God is always there in those difficult times.

That is surely very good news, but really, presence by itself doesn’t necessarily mean much. God could be present in a way but be passive, or uncaring, or even harmful. Yet that is not how it is with God’s presence with us. See, God’s presence with us certainly isn’t uncaring and even more certainly isn’t harmful. God’s presence with us isn’t even passive. God’s presence is an active presence. It is a presence of solidarity and care. It is a presence of love, a presence of grace. When we are in need, when we struggle, when we suffer, God is there with us offering us the help that only God can give. God is there acting in solidarity and love. God lifts us up when we are burdened down with grief, pain, or guilt. God gives us hope when all seems hopeless. We can hope in the presence of God in a way we never can without God because with God we know not that everything will be all right from a worldly perspective but that everything will be and is all right from a cosmic perspective, from a divine perspective. We can find strength, courage, and hope in situations where those things seem in very short supply because we know that however we may be suffering God has suffered too in the person of Jesus Christ. God has suffered what we suffer, and worse. God is always there not just to be there but to help in ways only God can. Thanks be to God!

That’s why, I think, Psalm 139 connects God’s unfailing, universal presence with a call for God to search us and know us. God searches us and knows us not to condemn but to save. Not to punish but to sustain. God searches us and knows us so that God will know, deeply and intimately, what we need every hour of our lives. Only when God has that knowledge of us can God give the divine help we need. Now please understand what that does not mean. It doesn’t mean we won’t suffer. It doesn’t mean we won’t die. In Jesus on the cross we see that ending suffering and death is not how God relates to them. Rather, God relates to them the way Psalm 139 says God relates to them. By being present with us in them. By suffering and dying with us and promising us that suffering and death are never the end for any of us. That’s the good news of Psalm. 139. That’s the good news of the Christian faith. Again, thanks be to God!

In one of the Old Testament’s great stories Jonah tried to run away from God and ended up on a beach in a pool of whale vomit. The psalmist of Psalm 139 knew both that it isn’t possible to run away from God and that there is no reason to run away from God. So let’s take our cue from Psalm 139. Let’s open our hearts and minds to God’s loving and saving presence with us every moment of our lives. Let’s open our hearts and minds for God to know us fully and deeply. Let us rejoice in God’s unfailing, sustaining, grace-filled knowledge of us and presence with us always and everywhere. That is the good news of Psalm 139. It is the Good News of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God! Amen.