This message is a meditation and reflection on
Psalm l39. It was given by Pastor Gene Preston at
Community Church Hong Kong on Sunday, January 16, 2000.
SPIRITUAL UPS AND DOWNS (Psalm
l39)
Like pigeons, we human have homing instincts. We
practice going home all our lives. We've just come away
from a Christmas holiday season when expatriates, who
could, went home and those who couldn't thought about
home. We are approaching another holiday, Chinese New
Year's, when many Chinese will make every effort to go
home.
True, as we mature, we learn what the American writer
Thomas Wolfe was getting at when he titled one of his
books, YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN.
We grow up and grow away from home; we keep looking
for home, often in strange places. The young Karmapa
Llama had his home in Bhutan and Tibet and Beijing but he
felt compelled to trek l400 kilometers into India in his
search for home!
Just as strong as our homing instinct is our wandering
nature. When we flap our wings we may intend to fly in an
opposite direction from home. We may even want to flee
from home. Perhaps home wasn't such a great place after
all; even if it was, time carries away the very persons
and places which made home.
Still, as the poet W.H. Auden has said: At the end of
all our wanderings (and adventures and misadventures) we
will find we have arrived at the place from which we
started.
We need to be mindful and concentrate upon our homing
instinct, or we can miss our home. We can be religious
and think we have found our home through religion, but in
reality be far from our spiritual home. For my better
health I need to walk a couple of kilometers daily. I
choose most days to do that on a treadmill at the gym. I
get the exercise accomplished but it's very boring
because once the odometer tells me I have completed my
required two kilometers and 30 minutes, I have gone no
where.
Religion for many is a treadmill. And that is equally
true if our religion is our career or any other idol. As
someone has said, there are few among us who on our death
beds will regret that we did not have the chance to
attend one more church meeting or take one more office
call!
Jesus seems to have had a beautiful and true sense of
where his home was: His home was heaven and he was
enjoying it on earth. Jesus was not otherworldly like
some of his followers are, or pretend to me. Jesus loved
life and felt at home with an extended family on earth.
He was not, like many in his time and ever since his
time, alienated from life and other people. Jesus loved
people and enjoyed a good time. Jesus kept his eye on
the sparrow and on heaven at the same time. He looked to
heaven as his home and said heaven began here and
now.
Where did Jesus get his wondrous sense of his home and
the way there? I suggested just before Christmas that his
mother, Mary, most likely gave him many of the stories
which he later used. We also know that he knew the
scriptures very well and among them the psalms which he
often cited.
All the psalms are narratives of going home or of the
sadness of not being able to go home. I imagine Jesus
knew well Psalm 139 which I want to use now to guide us
in a meditation about going home. You may want to follow
the l8 verses in our bulletin of today, or you may prefer
to close your eyes and meditate with me for I will read
the Psalm as we go along.
******
The psalm begins with a prayer acknowledging God's
power and presence in the life of the writer; can we be
the psalmist for a few minutes!
O LORD, YOU HAVE SEARCHED ME AND KNOWN ME. YOU KNOW
WHEN I SIT DOWN AND WHEN I RISE UP. YOU DISCERN MY
THOUGHT FROM FAR AWAY.
It's comforting to know that our lives are open books
to God. We can hide from others and pretend to ourselves,
but that's not possible with God. God knows our past,
knows how our earlier experiences have shaped us; what
our parents taught us, what we learned in school and
outside classes, how exposure to religion helped or
hindered us. God sees not only what looks obvious about
each of us, but what is deep below the surface of our
personalities. If we are carrying pain from the past, God
knows all about it. If we are trying to forget something
that has happened to us, God understands.
This last week Ted Turner got about three billion
dollars richer when AOL offered a fantastic price for his
9% ownership of Time/Warner. Turner is quoted as saying
that the deal was a better orgasm for him than when he
first had sex at l9. Most of us don't so publicly
disclose our greed nor our sexual experiences like Ted.
And with God we don't need to admit to them or any other
confidence. God knows all of us.
YOU SEARCH OUT MY PATH AND MY LYING DOWN,
AND ARE ACQUAINTED WITH ALL MY WAYS.
EVEN BEFORE A WORD IS ON MY TONGUE, O LORD, YOU KNOW
IT COMPLETELY.
God, you know our frustrations, fears, resentments,
temptations, as well as our hopes, joys and triumphs. You
know of problems in our relationships, decisions we have
to make. You can sense what is going on with us right
this second; how we feel speaking this message to you and
hearing it. You know if we are eager or reluctant this
morning. If we are distracted because of something in our
lives that troubles us. But you also know, that one way
or another we are here to worship you.
YOU HEM ME IN, BEHIND AND BEFORE,
AND LAY YOUR HAND UPON ME.
SUCH KNOWLEDGE IS TOO WONDERFUL FOR ME;
IT IS SO HIGH THAT I CANNOT ATTAIN IT.
But do I want to be hemmed in behind and before? Are
you cushioning and supporting me, Lord, or confining
and frustrating me . It's wonderful that You are always
available to me, but why do I sometimes feel entrapped by
your divine attention?
There is a dark side to going home:
WHERE CAN I GO FROM YOUR SPIRIT?
OR WHERE CAN I FLEE FROM YOUR PRESENCE?
IF I ASCEND TO HEAVEN, YOU ARE THERE;
IF I MAKE MY BED IN SHEOL (or hell) YOU ARE THERE.
Powerful though the homing instinct is we all like
prodigal children want to try our wings on our own; we
want to flee from home to the exotic, inviting other
place which assures us we can we in charge of ourselves
and do what we like. Oh to make our beds in Las Vegas, or
Hollywood, or Hong Kong, so that God could then find us
and rescue us!
IF I TAKE THE WINGS OF THE MORNING
AND SETTLE AT THE FARTHEST LIMITS OF THE SEA
EVEN THERE YOUR HAND SHALL LEAD ME
AND YOUR RIGHT HAND SHALL HOLD ME FAST.
IF I SAY, SURELY THE DARKNESS SHALL COVER ME,
AND THE LIGHT AROUND ME BECOME NIGHT,
EVEN THE DARKNESS IS NOT DARK TO YOU
THE NIGHT IS AS BRIGHT AS THE DAY
FOR DARKNESS IS AS LIGHT TO YOU.
God finds us in the light and when the way home is
clear; He finds us when the way is obscured and we are
in the darkness.
In the darkness of my soul the gracious God finds me.
God's knowledge of us goes right to our depths. O Lord,
You can discern our darkest impulses. You know we find
our world dangerous, not friendly. And sometimes our
fears get the most of us. You know that a moment of
insanity can change our lives; you know that there are
people and forces which want to shape us to alien status
from you. You know our temptation to allow our hurt
feelings to get the worst of us. You know when we are in
danger of letting our anger control us. You know that we
can countenance a rage so great that anger will change
us. so that we are not recognisable to ourselves. Do we
remain recognisable to you, O God?
God knows us intimately, as body and soul, and there
is no secret with God. God is fully aware of how our DNA,
our instincts, appetites and weaknesses have determined
certain things about us.
FOR IT WAS YOU WHO FORMED MY INWARD PARTS;
YOU KNIT ME TOGETHER IN MY MOTHER'S WOMB.
Are we amazed that God knows us so intimately, unlike
any other? Or can we finally relax and call God, Father,
because He knows us completely?
I PRAISE YOU, FOR I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY
MADE.
WONDERFUL ARE YOUR WORKS; THAT I KNOW VERY WELL.
MY FRAME WAS NOT HIDDEN FROM YOU,
WHEN I WAS BEING MADE IN SECRET, INTRICATELY WOVEN IN
THE DEPTH SOF THE EARTH. YOUR EYES BEHELD MY UNFORMED
SUBSTANCE.
Ah, the way home presents no obstacles to our passage:
God requires no password, no PIN, no platinum credit
card, no digital code. Unlike all other doorways, God's
threshold stands open to the wanderer. Come home,
child!
And You know our future, God:
IN YOUR BOOK WERE WRITTEN
ALL THE DAYS THAT WERE FORMED FOR ME,
WHEN NONE OF THEM AS YET EXISTED.
HOW WEIGHTY TO ME ARE YOUR THOUGHTS, O GOD!
HOW VAST IS THE SUM OF THEM!
I TRY TO COUNT THEM - THEY ARE MORE THAN THE SAND;
I COME TO THE END…I AM STILL WITH YOU.
Thank you, Lord, for giving us these days. Keep
showing us the way. Guide us so that every day, every
hour counts, in practising our homeward journey. Show us
more clearly what you see in us. Let us see the strengths
we could yet develop, the love we could still show. Show
us the good in us that can be nurtured and developed.
Show us the paths we ought to take; help us make good
choices. Work within us so that what you see and know in
us can be more and more who we are.
******
For Christians, we feel that Jesus Christ is our home.
It's very comfortable to think of Jesus as our home.
Jesus encouraged us to think of him as our family. Jesus
is the Christian's older brother; Jesus invites us into
his family with Father God. As Christians we desperately
want to be at home with Jesus. We want to touch him; we
want him to take our hand. How do we get to him?
We call Christ "the Living Christ" in order to
reassure ourselves that Jesus is not only someone who
lived in the past, and is no longer here. He is
ever-present. We invoke the name of Christ in order to
touch him. We come to his communion in order to be at
home with him. Many worship him in order to reach out and
touch Christ. Christians gather together in worship and
study and service and fellowship in order to practice
going home to Jesus.
We do need to walk mindfully, to try to find Christ,
to use concentration in order to recognise the way with
Jesus. He is the way. Jesus' home is our home. Jesus'
heavenly Father is our heavenly Father.
Psalm l39 ends this way and these verses are not in
our bulletin:
SEARCH 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.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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