January 18, 2009
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty
Knowing and Being Known
I heard about a group of Geography students who studied the Seven Wonders of the World. At the end of that section, they students were asked to list what they each considered to be the Seven Wonders of the World. Though there was some disagreement, the following got the most votes: Egypt's Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon, the Panama Canal, the Empire State Building, St. Peter's Basilica and China's Great Wall.
While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student, a quiet girl, hadn't turned in her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she was having trouble with her list. The quiet girl replied, "Yes, a little. I couldn't quite make up my mind because there were so many."
The teacher said, "Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help." The girl hesitated, then read, "I think the Seven Wonders of the World are to touch and to taste, to see and to hear . . . " She hesitated a little, "and then to run and to laugh and to love."
Right now as you are sitting here millions of sensors in your ears receive the sounds around you and send signals to your brain that make words.
As you sit here, your heart is beating, touch your chest and feel its rhythm. Close your eyes and feel its gentle steady beat, day in day out year after year, thirty six million beats per year pumping your blood through thousands of miles of veins, arteries and capillaries, nourishing every cell of your body, pumping more than six hundred thousand gallons a year. No human invention can compare to his masterpiece of the body.
The five pints of blood that course through your body contain twenty two trillion cells. Each second millions of cells die and millions more are born in a pattern that began the day you were born.
Your blood is comprised of a delicate balance of cells, each with a different purpose, and together they keep your body nourished with oxygen and nutrients and carry away what is no longer needed.
Without you thinking about it your lungs take in air distill oxygen from it and pass it to the blood and exhale what is left over; day in and day out over seven million times each year.
Your three pound brain is the most complex system in the universe. Billions of cells capture every taste, sight, sound, perception. And in the midst of it all the gift of memory, the ability to recall a face, a word, a sunset, the cornucopia of fall color on a hillside.
This same three pound brain houses works with the rest of our being to give and receive love, to open ourselves to another.
Look at your hands; 27 bones surrounded by a series of muscles and ligaments and nerves. Covered with skin, which is an amazing and durable thing; your hands move on command of the brain. Hands do everything from transporting food to creating music to performing the most delicate of tasks to wrapping themselves around the hand of someone we love. When was the last time you pondered your hands.
We have the capacity to taste and savor what enters our mouth; fresh baked bread, sweetness of a ripe apple, the satisfaction of a hearty soup on a cold day.
With the Psalmist we proclaim that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
The grace filled, beautiful, holy creation that is you, your body, never before on the face of the earth and never again on the face of the earth when you are no more. We are, all of us, unique and unrepeatable human beings.
And we don’t think all that much about it. When’s the last time you sat down and pondered your body as a truly holy creation. Mostly when we think about our bodies we concentrate on things like height and weight and hair style, we are too much of this and not enough of that. A survey of adults between the ages of 30 and 59 showed that less than 10% of women and men were content with their body. Each year adults spend thirty three billion dollars on weight control products. It’s about how we look and not how we are made.
From time to time it’s a good thing to sit in the miracle that is our human body. And in part that is what the psalmist invites us to do, as a kind of conversation with God, an acknowledgement of God’s design. Pondering our bodies as a holy invention gets us out of the how we look thing into the holy creation thing.
I remember the first guided spiritual direction retreat I went on many years ago, my spiritual director sent me off to ponder my feet. I thought she was whacked. She said, remove your shoes and spend one hour looking at your feet. It was overwhelming; feet are amazing things.
We are fearfully and wonderfully made. The word fear is not intended to mean terror, but awe. To truly consider the work of art that we are is to know awe and wonder.
And considering the creation also invites consideration of the Creator and what God’s intimate knowledge of us demands. Biblical Scholar William Long notes
For while Psalm 139 is about the individual and has a very private feel to it, the psalm is even more about the invasion of our privacy – by none other than God. This is a comforting psalm in terms of God’s intimate knowledge of us care for us. It is also a frightening psalm because to be known so intimately is ultimately to be open to the other.
When taken in its entirety, the Psalmist strikes a balance between the wonder of being created in God’s image and the trepidation that comes from such intimacy. You see God has a lot invested in God’s creatures. God’s intimate knowledge of us leads to places we might not readily consider.
This psalm goes beyond the invitation to bask in the joy of creature hood, because with that comes the realization that there is no way to escape God. God’s intimate knowledge of us is a wonderful and humbling thing. Sit with that for a moment.
This psalm has a somewhat surprising ending, and this is the part that we don’t generally read, it seems a bit of a disconnect after the intimate reflection on the nature of our being.
Smite the wicked, knock them right off the earth, mostly it’s a statement of loyalty to God rather than hatred of others. On the other side of considering the greatness of God comes the devotion to God and to God’s purposes. In other words this isn’t just a navel gazing opportunity, though I suppose pondering your navel might be as amazing as pondering your feet.
Rather the Psalm comes full circle, from awe and wonder to the response of devotion and praise, obedience and faithfulness. Or in the words of a favorite hymn by Brian Wren:
We are not our own. Earth forms us,
human leaves on nature's growing vine,
fruit of many generations,
seeds of life divine.
We are not alone. Earth names us:
past and present, peoples near and far,
family and friends and strangers
show us who we are.
Through a human life God finds us;
dying, living, love is fully known,
and in bread and wine reminds us:
we are not our own.
Therefore let us make thanksgiving,
and with justice, willing and aware,
give to earth, and all things living,
liturgies of care.
And if love's encounters lead us
on a way uncertain and unknown,
all the saints with prayer surround us:
We are not alone.
Let us be a house of welcome,
living stone upholding living stone,
gladly showing all our neighbors
we are not our own!
Sources:
Og Mandino, The Greatest Miracle in the World
Thomas Long: Exegesis Psalm 139 from Text Week