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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.
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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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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