All Knowing Creator

Psalm 139, CEB

1 Lord, you have examined me. You know me. 2  You know when I sit down and when I stand up.  Even from far away, you comprehend my plans. 3 You study my traveling and resting. You are thoroughly familiar with all my ways. 4 There isn’t a word on my tongue, Lord, that you don’t already know completely. 5 You surround me—front and back. You put your hand on me. 6 That kind of knowledge is too much for me; it’s so high above me that I can’t reach it.

13 You are the one who created my innermost parts; you knit me together while I was still in my mother’s womb. 14 I give thanks to you that I was marvelously set apart. Your works are wonderful—I know that very well. 15 My bones weren’t hidden from you when I was being put together in a secret place, when I was being woven together in the deep parts of the earth. 16  Your eyes saw my embryo,  and on your scroll every day was written that was being formed for me, before any one of them had yet happened. 17 God, your plans are incomprehensible to me! Their total number is countless! 18 If I tried to count them—they outnumber grains of sand! If I came to the very end—I’d still be with you.

INTRO

This week, we continue our Ascribe to God sermon series, a journey of deepening our understanding of who God is and how God is at work in the world. Each week, we will explore different attributes and qualities that we ascribe to God. Last week, we began by understanding God as an all-consuming presence. We were reminded that God is always with us, and when we allow God to truly consume us, we are perfected in love so that we might share God’s love with others. We discussed Isiah’s experience in light of the divine presence he encounters, and it leads him to a fourfold order of worship. Whereby he is called and welcomed by God into the holy presence of God, he hears the proclamation of God, receives forgiveness, responds to God’s self-revelation, and is sent out in the world by God.

This week, we are reminded that not only is God all-consuming, but God is also all-knowing. Acknowledging that God is all-knowing means we must humbly admit that our understanding of God is limited by the boundaries of human knowledge. One commentary notes, “As the author of this psalm acknowledges, it is impossible for humans to fully comprehend the mind of God. Theologians from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to Paul Tillich and Karl Barth have long recognized this fact. The abstract language of transcendence, immanence, and omniscience (along with their colleague, omnipotence [all powerful]) was developed by theologians to attempt to capture this reality. Even that language falls short. As Aquinas argued, while we rightly claim that God knows all, we cannot give that claim any content because our finite minds cannot fully grasp what it would be like to know all.”

Thus, the psalm and the whole assembly who sang it in worship concentrate on one dimension of God’s relationship to humanity. You know me, you search me, you test me, you, O God, judge me. To know, search, and test are activities that are used to describe God’s activity as the creator and judge who discerns and assesses our hearts. It is to speak of the all-knowing creator.

As people who are usually very private, this kind of knowledge is alarming. When asked, “Who in your life really and truly knows you…” our answer almost always goes to my significant other, who is the only one who knows me that deeply. That’s how we prefer it to be, too, if we are honest. Sharing our hearts with too many people is overwhelming and requires too much trust on our end. It might not sit well with us to know that our very being, our thoughts, the words on the tip of our tongues, the way we process, rationalize, and our mannerisms are all known by God.

To be known in this way is scary. Maybe part of our issue is that we like to think of God as distant, out there, ruling the universe somewhere from afar and close by only when we ask God to be. We feel this, especially when bad things happen in the world. If God were close by, if God really knew what we needed, then God wouldn’t let bad things happen. We hear about people who tell us never to doubt or be angry at God. Yet, a God who knows us well…God knows our anger even if we do not profess it. Our inability to be open to God is found in these moments of vulnerability when we try to “shut God out.” We tend to praise God for the blessings we have received, not that this is bad, but the psalmist praises God for who God is, and sometimes that praise is done even with anger, disdain, and hurt.

But the truth is, God knows more than we can know or can ever learn. We can never comprehend where God is, has been, or the ways God extends from past to future. And even though God knowing everything can be scary, our privacy means nothing to God. God doesn’t simply watch us like a soap opera on TV, but God comes into our lives and touches us. Our text says God knit us together in our mother’s wombs. The truth is the God of creation continues to be involved in our lives, knitting us together as we grow, mature, and change. God is all-knowing because God continues to create us each and every day. God is all-knowing because, as God says to Moses, “I am.” God exists beyond time and space. God always has been and always will be. Because God is God, God knows us.

As one theologian reminds us, “The connection between God and God’s creation is imaged here through physical action (knitting, weaving) that results in the creation of a new physical entity: a human being. In marveling at being “fearfully and wonderfully made” (v. 14), the psalmist echoes the refrain repeated throughout the account of creation in Genesis 1: “It is good.” In focusing on the goodness of embodied creation, this psalm offers a refreshing counterpoint to any tendency within Christianity to focus on souls rather than bodies. It places care for our physical needs and for our material world squarely at the center of divine concern. If these things matter to God, then they must matter to Christians.”

While God can seem to be too present, and we may feel smothered by the divine presence of God in our lives..to be known by God is not as bad or horrifying as we think it is. God is so intertwined with us because of God’s love for us. God’s love, which is interwoven in our very being, the love that knits and weaves us together, causes us to search for God, and in the process, we find value in ourselves, too. In seeking God, we, in fact, live into our own humanity as God intended it to be: a humanity that is beloved by God. This humanity seeks the belovedness of others, including the rest of creation. In learning and seeking God, in trying to understand God’s all-knowingness, we find the wondrous mystery of God’s love. We begin to learn how to better love God and how to better love others.

Our reading of the scriptures this morning does not show the whole depth of the psalm. For example, in verse 19, the psalmist takes a dark turn: “If only, God, you would kill the wicked!

If only murderers would get away from me— 20 the people who talk about you, but only for wicked schemes; the people who are your enemies, who use your name as if it were of no significance.”

The psalmist is aware of a deep conflict in their soul. They are thankful for the life-given breath that they are given by the creator but are tired of the cruel realities of life. Even in a place of darkness, the Psalmist, and we need to let those dark realities reflect into the text. Even when faced with cruel or dark realities of the world, we still encounter God. Sometimes, we hope and pray that God might break into history and intervene in our world. Instead, the Psalmist praises God because God is a “divine host” who welcomes life no matter where they are. God welcomes us even in our frustrations and our rebellion. God is not only intrinsically interwoven in intimacy with the beauty of humanity but also in our despair and suffering.

I’m reminded of the song “O Come to the Altar” by Elevation Worship. The song begins, “Are you hurting and broken within? Overwhelmed by the weight of your sin? Jesus is calling. Have you come to the end of yourself? Do you thirst for a drink from the well? Jesus is calling. O come to the altar, the Father's arms are open wide.” Church, are you hurting this morning? Are you tired of trying to hide how you really feel? Are you tired of feeling like you don’t belong? Are you tired of just trying to make it day by day? God knows you. God loves you. God welcomes you even in the midst of your darkness and brokenness. God is at work in you even when you can’t see it.

But this Psalm is also a Psalm for the community. We are again, invited to get to know on a deep, personal level the people of God who we are in covenant with. If God is all-knowing, if God knows every aspect of our lives, even the sinful parts, even what we are about to say, then we are called to know God’s people in the same ways. We can never achieve exactly the same as God because we are not God. However, if we are not working to know one another better, if we are not opening ourselves up in vulnerability if we are not creating space to allow others to be vulnerable, then we are failing to love like God.

If you have ever thought, I don’t know how I can love them, know that God loves you even when people think that about you. And the truth is, this is why the church is so hard. Because we come here to give our whole selves, just as we are, and some are not ready to receive us. Some reject us as not good enough, not having been here long enough. And yet God calls us to model God’s relationship with us with others. We are to create a space where we are free to be our imperfect, searching, trying selves.

If the church is the body of Christ, if the church is the visible manifestation of God’s kingdom here on Earth, then we have to do better. We have to work to love and genuinely know people so that they might feel God’s love working in and through us. But first, we must open ourselves up to being known by God. After our text, at the very end of the Psalm, the Psalmist extols, “Examine me, God! Look at my heart! Put me to the test! Know my anxious thoughts! Look to see if there is any idolatrous way in me, then lead me on the eternal path!”

You see the Psalmist opens up to not only acknowledge the ways that God is all-knowing, but to truly embrace them. To truly open themselves up to what it means to be in a full and right relationship with God. To embrace God’s ways and to follow after God. Y’all, this is hard work and risky business. Truly embracing the ways of God, and truly acknowledging the ways God knows us means we might end up in places we never imagined doing things we never dreamed. But to get to those missional places and to end up where God truly desires us to be, we have to stand up and say, “Examine me, God.” “You know me God. Find my faults” For in embracing God and God’s ways, we truly find ourselves and all that God meant for us to be.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.