Welcome to Springfield United Methodist Church! This is an inclusive, multicultural church that loves God and one another.
[T]he Psalmist says there are no doors with God. God knows our sitting down and our rising up—the mundane rhythms of an ordinary day, not just the highlights reel. God discerns our thoughts from far away, even before we've finished forming them ourselves. God knows the word before it's on our tongue.
For some of us, that is unsettling news. The idea of being known can make us feel vulnerable, like the lights coming on in a room we'd rather keep dim.
But the Psalmist doesn't experience it as threat. He experiences it as : “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.” This isn't the language of someone hiding from a divine surveillance camera. It's the language of someone who has just realized that the One who knows himbestis also the One who loves him most.
Then the Psalmist asks . . . “Where can I go from your ? Or where can I flee from your presence?”
The Psalmist runs through every hiding place he can imagine—heaven, the grave, the far side of the sea, the cover of night itself—and finds God there ahead of him every time. Not as a hall monitor making sure everyone is where they are supposed to be, but as a loving presence that simply willnotlet go. “Even there your hand shall me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
But love this doesn't erase the hard parts of the Psalm. Ironically, the liturgical scholars who assembled the Revised Common Lectionary chose to skip over a long middle section of this morning’s Psalm—verses about violence and enemies and a fierce hatred of wickedness that don't sit easily alongside talk of tender, pursuing .
But it's worth noting that the Psalmist's honesty runs in more than one direction. He is honest about being fully known, honest about being unable to outrun God's presence, and just as honest about the anger and the grievance he's carrying. Nothing is edited out for God's benefit. Nothing needs to be.
And that honesty is precisely what makes the Psalm's final turn possible. Having named it all—the wonder, the shelter, even the —the Psalmist doesn't end by asking God to fix his enemies. He concludes by asking God to examine him:
me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
God’s love makes that kind of openness possible. When you know deep down that you are held rather than judged, that you are pursued rather than merely tolerated, you can finally stop managing your hiding place and start asking to be searched. Being fully known becomes not a threat to resist, but an invitation to trust.
And, finally, because we are fearfully, , relentlessly loved by God, we have the privilege of reflecting God's love—sharing God's love—in our broken world. That’s what it means to be fearfully and wonderfully made, to be created in the image of God. We are created to reflect God’s relentless love for all creation.
The of God is one of those stained-glass phrases that can seem elusive. But it is really quite simple: the Kingdom of God is wherever thewillof God is realized—where justice rolls down like water, and righteousness like a never-ending stream.
And Jesus told us our part in it plainly: God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
You are fearfully, wonderfully, loved. But you know, the world just outside these walls is full of people who need to hear that God loves them too. Don’twaitfor them to beat a path to our doors. It probably won’t happen. Go find them. And make room.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.