how well do you know that God knows you?

September 5, 2010
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Psalm 139 1-6; 13-18
How well does God know you?
Year C
15th Sunday after Pentecost

Let me ask you, what is it that you know for sure about life? You know your name, you know your address, you know where you work or go to school, you know where you spend your time and your money; you even know that 2+2 = 4. Those are the facts, but I want to ask you again, what it is that you know about life? What is it that you know for sure?
The French actually break it down for us; they have two words for our word know. Savoir and connaitre. In English we say that we know that 2+2=4, but we also say that we know sally, or Johnny, or Pete.
In French you savoir facts - you know what your name is, and most of the time you are right about that fact. Connaitre is only used for people, and the direct interpretation of the word is to be acquainted with. You can give birth to a person, you can marry a person, you can live with a person, you can talk with them every day – but you can never truly say that you know a person. You can know a lot of fact about a person, but you can never truly know the inner being of a person, or what is really going on in the inside of their mind. No matter how deep your relationship with someone, the best you will ever do is to be acquainted with them. And that is not a bad thing – because if we truly knew one another, and we knew what we were going to say, there would be no reason to talk or to listen. We would get bored with one another pretty quickly.
And yet the psalmist says that God knows each of us in just that way. God knows our inner being; God knows our thoughts and words before we do. God can search our lives and know when we are lying and when we are telling the truth. God not only knows us – God formed each of us for a reason, and has a purpose and an intention for us.
The problem is that God knows us, but some of us don’t know that God knows. We live our lives as if we are in control. God gave us free will, we know how to use that – but we don’t know that our free will works best when it is in obedience with God’s will – which has been determined way before we were ever born.
This week's lectionary psalm (Psalm 139) begins, "O Lord, you have searched me and you know me." As one continues to read the psalm, it is an affirmation of how much God loves us, cares for us, and will abide with us. Unfortunately, though God has searched our souls, sometimes we fail to do so. When we do not live a life of self-examination, as God has put before us, then we will wander from the holiness of the Spirit into the passions of the flesh.

Ben Roethlisberger, the two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, for years lived the unexamined life. And as we know, it has brought him lawsuits, physical injury, and suspensions. His former coach with the Steelers, Bill Cowher, tried to mentor the young athlete -- but it was to no avail. Though Cowher often cautioned Roethlisberger about his off-field behavior, the response he would receive was always the same: "But we're winning games. We're winning championships." Cowher then would try to explain, "Yeah, but there's more to it than that. It's the whole body of work. It's you as a person, what kind of legacy you want to leave." Cowher, who is now retired from coaching and works as a television analyst, thinks that Roethlisberger's most recent suspension may finally have taught him that lesson. One can only hope. One can only wait and see.

God examines our lives; we are to examine our own lives; and godlike individuals will examine our lives, offering invaluable advice. Through self-examination that is informed by the scriptures and highlighted by the insight of others, we can live according to biblical principles and have a positive self-image. Then we will be able to say, as the psalmist does, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

***

You never know about some people and their free will – will they ever truly get it? You can only hope and pray……

That story about winning points, actually out another point. That is that you can’t win a football game by yourself. You have to play as a team. So it is okay to think about our personal relationship with God, but we also have to think about our corporate relationship with God, who are we as a people and what is God saying to us.

Jeremiah was pondering this issue one day, as he probably went to pottery row to get something repaired. They didn’t have china or glass in those days. Everything was made of pottery, and when it broke, you needed to go to a pottery shop to fix it. In a large city like Jerusalem, there would have been a whole street of pottery shops.

The potter starts to do his job, putting the clay on the wheel and shaping it, but it doesn’t come out right- so he just balls the clay up and starts all over again.

And he realizes that God is talking to his people about the need to repent and start all over again.

God is holding the people accountable and saying that you are just like clay – if you don’t do right, I will crush you and recreate you. We think that holding people accountable when they have gotten out of hand is wrong. But it is the nicest form of love to help someone get back on the right track when they have strayed. Or else they continue down the same path and never get back to right relationship with God.

Yesterday God was talking to the people of Israel, Today I believe God is talking to the church.

The church is dying; our way of doing church is dying. Not just here but the whole Methodist Church. Not just the Methodist church, but the Presbyterian Church, the Lutheran church, even the Catholic Church. And as quiet as it is kept, the Baptist church was growing a few years ago, but it is on the decline also. We are not reaching people the way we used to.

And yet God does not change, God’s message for the world does not change. So what is it that is going on? What is the problem?

Perhaps God is telling us that it is time for us to be reformed, reshaped, and reenergized. We live in a time when all of our institutions are being questioned; those which are not relevant are disappearing.

The good news is that clay is a forgivable medium. If you sew a dress and you cut it wrong and sew it up, it is still useless you can’t use it. If you knit a scarf and you make a mistake, you have to unravel it and start all over again, if you paint a picture and you make a mistake, you paint over it so you can’t see it, but the mistake is still there.

But with clay, if you knead it, and work with it to get pliable and easier to work with. If you are making something and it doesn’t quite work out, then you ball it up and start all over again. The shape is gone, mistake and all is gone.

Clay is pliable, forgivable, and undoable. It never loses it clayness – it still is what it is. But it is willing to be shaped.

Every time I think about this verse, I keep telling myself to go to the store and get the real clay that I used to play with in grade school. Play dough doesn’t have the same sticky consistency of real clay. But it will have to do for now.

God is telling us that the condition of our hearts needs to be as pliable and willing to be shaped as clay. God is telling us that we have to be obedient and willing to be used just like clay, we have to be flexible enough to be balled back up and reshaped into a new thing.

Our sins, our mistakes, our bad ideas, our unwillingness, our hatefulness, our misjudgments, or beliefs about the way things are, our need to hang on the what we understand, all need to go back into the ball. So that we can be used by God to do a new thing in the world today.
What happens in your life what you don’t listen to God? You go back on the potter’s wheel – what happens when you do listen to God? What is it that you become? I know in my heart that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Let us pray……