God knows
Bob Colerick
Friday, September 7, 2007
First Christian Church It’s hard to go home. I went home a little over a year ago.
The first home I remember living in, was gone. Gone also was the garage where I discovered how it hurts so much to get an electrical shock. My father rebuilt the engine to his 1954 Hudson there. A man went back to his childhood home. It was still there, vacant, with empty and tattered rooms. The attic where he used to rummage, now, so tiny. The woods where he used to play. In those woods he was in another world. In reality, he discovered, he had always been in plain sight by the adults in the house. He thought he was alone, but he wasn’t.
He thought of Psalm 139.
It’s a favorite. It speaks of matters deeply personal, feelings, beliefs, our relationship to God. We can see David, here, writing in a garden surrounded by beautiful flowers. He’s calm. He can think clearly. He is comfortable with his reflections.
This can be hard for us. We are busy. Things happen that test our faith—bad things, tragedies, loss—we become bitter, doubtful. We feel like a yo-yo, our lives on a string—will it break? The yo-yo goes faster. Like the yo-yo, we go around the world and long to come home; we have to do lots of tricks, jump through hoops, all of which can lead us farther from home. But we can come home, to nest in the hand of the Creator.
Psalm 139 is really about our relationship to God, like the home we never fully forget.
The Psalmist reveals there is, between each of us and God, the Creator, the deepest and strongest of connections. God, who is “nearer to us than we are to ourselves,” has formed us and been personally, fully involved with us … I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful…
I worry that we place such value on looking young and beautiful. We are obsessed with plastic surgery, live cell therapy, Botox injections, liposuction, placenta extracts to make us look young and beautiful.
Some of the most beautiful people I have seen are men and women in their 80s and older, wrinkles and creases on their faces, living in nursing homes with the assurance of the promise and love of God.
The Psalmist declares: God leads and guides us.
We all have and need guides. I get so sad when I think about some of the “heroes” for our young people, today: Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dog, Homer Simpson. Not only has God created us to be who we are, God leads and guides each of us to be the person God wants us to be. This is Good News—God leads us. Billy Strayhorn, legendary jazz musician, in a book “The Awesomeness of Being Known By God,” said, “Bill Cosby knows my name, he used it in one of his shows. ... Duke Ellington knew my name, Ella Fitzgerald knows my name, Count Basie knows my name. ... Any jazz musician worth his salt knows my name…[I] wrote “Take The A Train”…and a whole bunch of others... Lots of people know my name but they don’t know ME. But that’s OK.”
That is OK, because the Psalmist proclaims God does know his name — and God knows your name, too. Amen.
F “Sunday Sermon” is a forum for Emporia area ministers to share their sermons, thoughts and observations. This week’s sermon is from the Rev. Bob Colerick, senior minister at Emporia’s First Christian Church.