Known and Loved
Second Sunday After the Epiphany ~ Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18
Kenwood UMC ~ January 18, 2009
You can’t run away. You can try. I did, when I was about eight. I can’t remember what I got upset with my mom about, but I packed my bags and decided to run away. My grandmother, who was visiting at the time, was horrified when my mom said, OK, and started to help me pack. But I couldn’t do it. All I could do was try.
We can try to run away from God. We can try and try and try. But no matter how hard we try, we eventually come face to face with that unavoidable truth—God knows us better than anyone. No matter what we try and hide or disguise, God sees through it all. God has known us from the beginning—from before the beginning.
God knows us. A small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial — a grandmotherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, “Mrs. Jones, do you know me?”
She responded, “Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a rising big shot when you haven’t the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.”
The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do he pointed across the room and asked, “Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?”
She again replied, “Why, yes I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. I used to baby-sit him for his parents. And he, too, has been a real disappointment to me. He’s lazy, bigoted, he has a drinking problem. The man can’t build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him.”
At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, “If either of you asks her if she knows me, you’ll be jailed for contempt!”[1]
God knows us. Whether we like it or not, God knows us. But, you know, we should like it. Because there are lots of people in this world who think they know us—but don’t. There are lots of people in this world who want to know us for all the wrong reasons—what we can do for them, how we can enhance their lives.
But God? God knows us just because we are. And, God loves us just because we are.
Sometimes it takes something momentous for us to realize God knows us. A life or death diagnosis that leaves us fighting for health. A job loss that leaves us grasping for professional identity. A terrifying moment that strips us of all that we use to identify ourselves. All of these are situations where it becomes very clear that God knows us—and loves us.
One of those moments happened this week for the 155 crew and passengers of US Airways flight 1549, which encountered trouble during take-off. We presume that was trouble related to birds in the engines. And that trouble led to a miraculous emergency landing in the frigid Hudson River with no loss of life.
Passenger Alberto Panero said that immediately, he smelled smoke.
“All of a sudden, the captain came on and said brace for a landing, and that’s when we knew we were going down,” he said.
As the plane headed down toward the river, the cabin was mostly silent, he said.
“After he told us prepare for impact, it was pretty evident we were not going to make the runway.”
At first, it felt like the plane was gliding, [another passenger, Fred] Berretta said, as if no engines were working.
People started praying, and there was a lot of silence, and the realization that we were going in was really hard to take in at that moment,” he said.
“I think a lot of people started praying and just collecting themselves,” Berretta said. “It was quite stunning.” He said he was expecting the plane to flip over and break apart, but it didn’t. “It was a great landing,” he said. [2]
You have to wonder what they were thinking. It’s a “life flashing in front of your eyes moment” if there ever was one. And maybe in that moment when it seemed like all was lost, they were thinking of loved ones and lost opportunties and missed chances. But in the next moment—the moment when they realized all will be well—they were thinking about how lucky they were and how much they were loved. Not only by their families and friends, but by God, the God to whom they prayed while desceding to the icy waters, the God who they might not have totally bought until that moment, but the God who has known them since the moment they were knit together in their mother’s wombs.
And did you hear what came next? Praise. “It was a great landing” said passenger Beretta. The pilot is praised for a heroic act. Mayor Bloomberg of New York hands out keys to the city. Praise. Praise and thanksgiving.
And that’s what disciples do. The first response of every disciple, the response to being claimed in the waters of baptism, is the response of praise. We see it in the Psalm. The psalmist writes
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
Why does the psalmist know how wonderful God’s works are? Because he has had one of those face to face moments, one of those moments when he has realized that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot run away from God. God knows him more imtimately than anyone ever will. And that is not a source of fear, but a source of praise.
God knows us. Our shortcomings. Our potential. Our unrealized moments and our real moments. And God loves us. In spite of everything and because of everything. We are known and loved. We belong to God.
[1] Homiletics Online, January 15, 2006, Soulift.
[2] CNN.com accounts of the crash of flight 1549.
