Living into God’s Promises
Awe and wonder. This is what I feel when I read Psalm 139. This Psalm – which is a poem and the lyrics of many a song – expresses the deep and abiding and unique relationship God has and desires with you and with me and with each one of us. It is a Psalm that speaks to people regardless of your age or situation. Howard Thurman, the great and prolific African American poet, pastor and theologian prayed this psalm, as a prayer, every day of his adult life. It is a Psalm that we will be singing or chanting or reading every Sunday in June. This is a Psalm to bookmark – in your Bible or on your phone.
So what is it that makes this Psalm so enduring?
First of all, this is a prayer to God written in the first person. So when you read it or sing it you can claim this Psalm, this song, this poem as your own prayer to God.
It begins by acknowledging that God knows you. God knows you from the inside out. God knows ALL about you. There is no place to hide. God’s gaze reaches across the entire universe from the highest heavens to the depths of hell. Darkness is not dark to God. God sees it all.
God knew you and saw you even when you were in your mother’s womb. For God created you.
This is a Psalm that I learned as a child through a beautifully illustrated storybook that my mother read to me and to my children called, The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown. Maybe some of you have read it too. In this story, a little bunny threatens to run away from home. But his mother says, “If you run away, I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.” The little bunny counters by imagining himself as shape- shifting into something else: “You yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
“If you run after me,” said the little bunny, “I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.”
But his mother says, “If you become a fish in a trout stream, then I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.” Not to be deterred, little bunny then tells his mother he is going to a rock on a mountain, a bird in the sky, a sailboat, and then…a little boy, so that he can swim, fly, or run away from her.
But the bunny’s mother counters that if he does that, she will become a mountain climber, a tree to nest in, the wind upon the sea, and… if he becomes a little boy, she will become his mother, “to catch you in my arms and hug you.” In the end, the little bunny agrees that he will just be a little bunny and the mother rabbit will be his loving mother.
The Runaway bunny is a sweet story for children of any age. But it would be a mistake to identify Psalm 139 as a childish Psalm. For as we grow and as we age, like Howard Thurman, we can read this psalm as our prayer too. For when you say this Psalm as a prayer, you are speaking to God saying: “I will thank you because I am marvelously made.”
This can be hard for us – to say to admit because our culture has a very narrow view of what kind of body is “marvelously made.” We idolize beautiful, thin, athletic and youthful bodies. No matter what our age, it is tempting for us to want to change something about our bodies – we want to lose weight or gain muscle or change something. And, yet, at the same time, we often neglect to take care of our bodies as a gift from God. Like the runaway bunny, we can become so busy running and doing and comparing ourselves to others, that we forget that God made our bodies beautiful and vulnerable and for relationship with God and with one another.
However, when we read this Psalm as a devotion, as a prayer to God, admitting to God and ourselves that we are “marvelously made” by God who knows us and loves us and who has created us to be mortal… and that this too is good.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul compares our bodies to “clay jars.” We are marvelously made – AND we are mortal, like a clay jar that is not meant to last forever. Clay jars were the biblical version of disposable containers. Marble statues were meant to last forever; clay jars are were not. And yet, clay jars, like our containers today, are essential for daily life. We need a container, a vessel to hold the water that we drink and the food that we eat and for so many other essentials.
And so, Paul reminds us both that we should not be too proud of ourselves and think, like the little bunny, that we don’t need anyone else nor should we despise our bodies, even though they are vulnerable and subject to becoming broken and cracked like a clay jar. For Paul reminds us that God has given us a great treasure to hold within our vulnerable and mortal bodies.
Paul also acknowledges that life is not always easy and that by being Christian, we will not be protected from the sufferings that are in this world. However, while “we may be afflicted in every way – we will not be crushed; and while goodness knows we may be perplexed at times and wonder how on earth God is going to prevail over the challenges that we and or the world is facing at this time and although people around us may throw up their hands – we are not to despair. And, even if we are persecuted, we will not be forsaken for God has promised to be with us. And, even if our church attendance dwindles and our community seems distracted by all sorts of other things – we as God’s people will not be destroyed. And although we do not understand how it can be true, God has got this.
For it is the same God who made heaven and earth and who made your body that, as Paul writes, “shone in our hearts” to reveal to us the mystery of Jesus Christ as the one who died for us so that we, though mortal, may live forever with Christ Jesus.
In baptism, which Victoria, also known as Tori, will be receiving today, we are adopted into God’s family and made brothers and sisters with Jesus Christ. Theologically, we proclaim that the power of sin over us has been drowned in the waters of baptism and that we have died with Jesus Christ and that we are reborn as children of God. The treasure that we are given is the gift of promise of Jesus to live in us and to walk with us – forever. God already knows us – and loves us. But in baptism, we are joined with Jesus Christ in his death so that we may be heirs to the promise of new life in and with Jesus Christ.
This is why Paul writes that the life of Jesus may be “made visible in our bodies”(2 Cor. 4: 11). For we ask Jesus to lead and guide us in our living and in our choices so that we can be reflections of the way of Jesus. Paul then writes, “death is at work in us but life in you.” 2 Cor. 4: 12 How can this be? Death is at work in us – we are still mortal – but, by proclaiming Jesus as Lord, we are passing on to others God’s gift of new and renewed life.
Today, as we witness the baptism of Victoria, we are also reminded of our own baptism and that gift that we too have received from God, the promise of life with God now and forever. And so, brothers and sisters, friends in Christ, it is our challenge, our task, regardless of what else is happening in the world around us, to hold fast to the promises of Jesus which are given FOR YOU.
One of the ways that Howard Thurman did this – despite the challenges that he experienced as an African American in a time of racial civil unrest– was by meditating and writing his own poetry on Psalm 139.
Here is one of his poem prayers: Dear God: Search me and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting… I will fly in the greatness of God, as the marsh-hen flies, filling all the space between the marsh and the skies. By so many roots as the marsh grass sends in the sod, behold, I will lay me a hold on the greatness of God.2
Like Howard Thurman and Paul and all the saints who have gone before us, may you too lean into the promises of God, and dare to pray for the presence of God to be the Lord to search and keep you today, tomorrow and always. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Faith-Lilac Way Lutheran Church + June 2, 2024 + Pastor Pam Stalheim Lane
1 Margaret Wise Brown, The Runaway Bunny.
2 Thurman, Howard, “Prayers (1962-06-01),” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed May 30, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/168.