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177 Psalm 139 Sermon 6 (May 22, 1995) A deceptively straightforward sermon in which Juel asserts that the God who is near to us is not a threat but a giver and keeper of promises who has at all times worked to bring about our salvation. Even our service to this God who searches us and knows us is something for which we have been created and prepared. ——— Spring has finally come. The planting season is at last upon us. It’s time to crank up the machines and begin the seeding. Some of you have been itching for this moment all winter. Others of you may be more apprehensive. You’ve come to enjoy living in the barn, fiddling endlessly with the equipment . Well, it’s time for work. Time of preparation is over. Jesus is out of the tomb, and there is much to be done. The fields in which you will be called to work, to continue the metaphor , are scattered over the whole earth. There are some of you who will undoubtedly feel you are being sent to the end of the earth. One of the things you need to know is that there is no place God has not already been, no place where God is not presently at work, no spot on earth beyond God’s reach. The psalmist knew that and sang of it. But there is a disquieting note in the song. “Where shall I go from your spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence?” Flee? Is God’s presence something from which people ought to run? Apparently so. That’s the story the Bible tells. One of my favorite pastors has just written a book on Lutheran spirituality . His first chapter is entitled “Hiding in the Tall Weeds.” The first 178 Shaping the Scriptural Imagination human beings we meet in the Bible are not God-seekers: they’re afraid. The Bible story is far more about people seeking to escape God than to search God out. Women even fled from the empty tomb at Easter. From the beginning, the story is about God the seeker, rather than God the sought. “Where are you?” God says to that first couple, cowering in the bushes. “What are you afraid of?” They were of course afraid of being known. They had secrets and good reasons to hide. Laying the groundwork for their children, and their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children, by their disobedience, they planted seeds of their own destruction. They sowed the winds, the Bible said; and their children have been reaping the whirlwind. Such things are not unknown to God. God watches, and not from a safe distance. “You know when I sit down and when I rise up . . . even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.” Does it not make you uneasy to think there is someone who knows all about you? Knows your deceits? Can see behind all the masks into that black hole of a self—that’s busy sucking in every spark of light to satisfy its insatiable needs? Isn’t it unsettling to know there’s no place to escape, to survey those vast, treeless plains like barren giants of the earth and recognize there’s nothing to hide behind? There will be times when the words of the psalm will make you shudder. I hope so. For in that shudder, there’s an acknowledgment of God’s real presence and also a sign that faith is still alive. The one from whom there is no escape and who knows you better than you know yourself is intent not on your destruction, but on your liberation and your salvation. In fact, God has been busy with nothing else. He called Abraham and Sarah to a strange new land for you. The reluctant Moses was drawn into bitter conflict with Pharaoh so that slaves could be freed and the promise continue. Jesus came that you might have life. God refused to abandon the reluctant and the frightened to their own desires and imaginings, even though it meant Jesus’ death. God was not put off on Easter morning even by women who fled from the tomb. God will not abandon you to your secret fears and desires, and there will be moments when you’ll know that—when you’ll be able to stand out on the plains with not a tree in sight and simply admire...

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