Search me, O God!

(Psalm 139)

I think that Psalm 139 is possibly the greatest poem in all scripture. It is unmatched for the brilliance of its imagery and the beauty of its language. But it is also extraordinary in its exploration of what it is like to live in the presence of God; the real God, that is, not some God of my imagination. So great is the poem on both counts, language and meaning, I feel almost silly trying to speak about it. What can I say that this writer has not already said, and so much more vividly? And yet, this psalm appears in today’s lectionary, and something draws me to try to address it in your hearing. So here goes.

The first thing the psalmist says about God is that their relationship—he with God and God with him—is deeply unequal. God knows the poet through and through. And it is an active, probing knowledge, not a cool detached observation. ‘O Lord, you have searched me and known me …’ And it is not a theoretical knowledge. It is down to earth practical. ‘You know when I sit down and when I rise up.’ And it is not an external knowledge. It is an internal, intimate awareness. ‘You know my thoughts from far away … even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.’ Hmmm … well … what do we make of that?

Theologians have a fancy word for this aspect of God’s activity. They call it omniscience, that is, a knowledge that is absolute and all-encompassing, reaching to the edges and plumbing to the depths of all things, us included. Such big theological terms can be useful, of course. But they are lifeless compared to the experience the psalmist is describing. To be in the presence of God, the true God, is to experience oneself as utterly known. It is to feel searched through and through, to the very depths. And it is to know that the reverse is not the case. God searches us. But God remains an unfathomable, an unsearchable mystery to us. ‘Such knowledge,’ says the poet, ‘is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.’ Yes, indeed. God knows us as we really are. And only the One who knows us as like that is God.

But the psalmist feels deeply that this unequal knowing between himself and God is a burden. The whole deal feels like an unwelcome invasion into his life; a prying exposé. Who can stand such relentless divine examination? Who can bear to have their inmost thoughts so utterly laid bare? Who wants this kind of searching scrutiny? I don’t. And I sometimes feel myself cringe at the very possibility, and try to hide.

And hiding is exactly the psalmist’s reaction. ‘Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?’ Well, where …? ‘If I ascend to heaven, you are there,’ he says. Heaven would seem an odd place to flee to in order to escape God, since heaven, according to usually reliable sources, is God’s own dwelling place. But we know what the poet is driving at. One way to try and escape God is to rush to places where we feel most secure. The various ‘heavens’ of our own making. Work that we enjoy. Family life that we love. Art and music that enthrall and distract. But, says the poet of these places, ‘you [God] are there.’

Alright then. ‘If I make my bed is Sheol (hell) …’ and say, ‘surely the darkness will hide me …’ what about that? Hell certainly seems a better place to hide from God. And at times—sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly—I have made my way to such a place; a place where pain or disappointment or loss or jealousy or death have made ‘the light around me become night.’ But even there, according to the poet, even there in places that appear godforsaken, ‘you are here … for even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.’

Finally, the poet flees God in a hot pursuit of the dawning day. ‘If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea …’ he muses. To chase the morning, that is to pursue the new, the coming, the innovative—a pursuit which seems such a preoccupation of our technological society—surely this is a way to evade the presence of the all-seeing God. But no, this too doesn’t finally do the trick either, for ‘even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast’.

And so the omniscient God, the One who knows, becomes for the psalmist the omnipresent God, the One who is there. The true God, not the God who is a projection of my own interest, but the true God is as unavoidable as he is insightful. I cannot outrun God. For God is inescapable. And only that which is inescapable is God.

Then, having meditated on the discomfort of being in the presence of this inescapable God, and being aware of his desire to avoid the scrutiny of God by fleeing here and there, the poet begins to think about God as the creator; God as the source of his own life with all its complexities; its feelings and anxieties, its joys and sorrows. Life. The whole bang lot. Where did all this come from? On what does all this depend? And he answers: ‘It was you (O God) who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’

The searching and demanding presence is also the One who is the giver and sustainer of life. And praise and thanks for this wondrous gift, the gift which is his own being, breaks from the psalmist’s heart. God cares for us enough to give us a share in God’s life. God loves us enough to watch over the outworking of our times. ‘In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.’ God is God of grace and God of life, as well as God of scrutiny and God of knowledge. We humans are intended and embraced in God’s world along with all else God makes. We belong. We have a place. We are welcome. ‘How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!’ Yes, indeed …

But now, having thought about God as the inescapably presence and as the foundational giver of life; having tried unsuccessfully to get away from God and then exulted in the greatness of God’s thoughts; suddenly, out of the blue, the poet explodes in rage and vengeance against others. ‘O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me … Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? … I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.’

My goodness, what an outburst in the middle of such profound and beautiful reflections! What a rush of bile! Where did that come from? Well, it’s not so surprising really, is it? For this is also true of our religious experience. Here the weakness, indeed the wickedness, of religious people is bluntly exposed. I can know myself searched by God. I can praise God for the wondrous gift of life. I can even give myself to God with all my heart. And then . . . then I can subtly begin to think that my idea of God and my understanding of God, really is what God is. My view of things becomes God’s view in my mind. My righteousness (I think) is God’s righteousness. My interests (I think) are God’s interests. Having said just a moment ago that God’s thoughts are high above all he can think or know, the poet suddenly seems to have control over God’s ways and wants to bend God to his own ends. He just knows that his enemies are God’s enemies; and he calls on God to blot them from the face of the earth.

This is the tap root of so much religious violence and hostility in the world. I think my interests are God’s interests and my enemies are God’s enemies. ‘O that you would kill the wicked, O God …’ And I can name for you who they are! Yes, we know this bit of the religious journey in our times too. And it is ugly and fearful.

And then, almost as quickly as the poet gets himself into this righteous rage, he realizes that something is deeply wrong with the way he’s put it out there. What he has said, and how he has acted, run exactly counter to the God who knows his heart, the God who creates his life, and the God who redeems his frailties. The poet suddenly sees this terrible incongruity, this horrible religious mistake, and then utters one of the world’s great prayers; and speaks it right into the heart of this perplexing God. ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’

That’s an amazing prayer given all that has gone before. The poet now asks God to do with him what at the start of the poem he says God does anyway, that is, ‘search me and know my heart.’ In other words, he now asks God to be truly God for him and in him. Now, instead of finding the divine search disturbing and invasive, something to flee from, the poet opens himself freely to God’s exacting presence. He gives himself to God for God to be God, the searcher and upholder of his life. And he discovers at last that only such a judge and only such a creator can redeem the wickedness that threatens to blight his existence. Only God, the one who really knows him, the one whose presence is really inescapable, the true God, that is, not the God of his own imagination and control, only this God can lead him in the way that is everlasting.

‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ Amen, O Lord, amen.

Graeme Garrett

Canberra Baptist Church

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

17 July 2011