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The Fourth Sunday
after Epiphany – February 1, 2004
Jeremiah 1:4-10
On Valentine’s Day our family will celebrate the second birthday of our grandson Ryan – the most beautiful, smartest grandbaby ever born!
Ryan, many of you know, was a preemie, checking into this world at just 3 pounds, 1 ounce. Our family is so grateful for all the advances in pediatric medicine that could be brought to bear on Ryan’s fragile little life. More than once in the days after his arrival, I found myself in that pediatric ICU simply awed by all the computers and monitors and strange-looking devices that hooked up to him and gave him a fighting chance. Technology has made the impossible possible in so many ways! But, of course, we knew about that long before Ryan was even born.
You see, like many of you with your kids and grandkids, our family photo album has all the usual pictures - photographs of Ryan from last Christmas, and Thanksgiving, and Halloween; there are snapshots of his first birthday bash at DisneyWorld last February, and his baptism, and his first few moments of life in the hospital incubator. But even more wonderfully, we – like many of you – have photographs of Ryan from before he was even born! They are just little black and white images printed from an ultrasound, but there’s no mistake about it – there he is! – sucking his thumb! – smiling for the camera and saying, “Cheese!”
Who could have imagined that we’d one day live in such a wonderful world where we can actually see and know and make photographs of our children before they are even born? Isn’t that mind-boggling?
Well, some wonderfully gifted and
sensitive human beings imagined that possibility and turned it into reality.
But you know whose idea it was in the first place. It was God’s idea! The Bible
teaches that one of the great joys of God’s life is knowing his children before
the day they are born! Listen to verse 5 of Jeremiah 1:
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you…!”
As fantastic as modern medical technology is, it’s so awesome to know that God’s technology is so much more advanced! Yes, ultrasound can produce a picture of a baby in-utero, but according to Jeremiah 1:5, God does it pre-utero!
“BEFORE I formed you in the womb, I knew you…!”
So I’d like to explore with you this morning the wonderful meaning of this great fact of your life. Before you were born, before the ultrasound picture, before the moment of conception, before the egg dropped into your mother’s Fallopian tube and you outswam a million other contestants to get there first …in fact before you were even the gleam in your mommy and daddy’s eyes….
“…I KNEW YOU!”
A colleague of mine tells me that the Hebrew word “know” that is used in this passage is “yada”. And “yada” is a wonderful word! It means “to know”…in the biblical sense! – like a husband knows his wife. It is a word that describes the deepest intimacy that can be between two persons. Yada does not mean to know about, in a remote or detached way. It means to know everything there is to know!
I wonder if there is someone in your life who knows everything about you? I suspect not, for two reasons. First, our lives are pretty big and complicated and there is no way we could ever convey everything about ourselves to another person. That’s one reason there is no one in your life who knows everything about you. The second reason is because there are parts of our lives that we don’t want anyone to know about – places of the heart we want to hide. Contemporary singer/songwriter Aimee Mann has a song that warns:
“people are tricky, you can't afford to show anything risky, anything they don't know. The moment you try, well kiss it goodbye”
And that’s a truth we all live with. We are afraid to let people in on the ALL of us. Why, if they knew what we really think, what we do when no one’s looking, what our hidden sins and desires and weaknesses are, WHO WE REALLY ARE – well, it could get ugly. They might not like us anymore. Worse, they might reject us.
And yet we crave to be known and accepted for who and what we are. Not to leave Country music out of today’s sermon, I really like Toby Keith’s big hit, “I Love This Bar.” Have you heard the song? It’s about this bar some guy goes to – a bar where all kinds of people meet – where everybody is welcomed – sort of like a Southern version of Cheers. Some of the great lines of the song go like this:
We got winners, we got losers
Chain smokers and boozers
And we got yuppies, we got bikers
We got thirsty hitchhikers
And the girls next door dress up like movie stars
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this bar
We got cowboys, we got truckers
Broken-hearted fools and suckers
And we got hustlers, we got fighters
Early birds and all-nighters
And the veterans talk about their battle scars
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this bar
Then comes my favorite line:
I like my truck…I
like my girlfriend…I like to take her out to dinner…I like a movie now and
then….
…but I LOVE this
bar!
We human beings are powerfully drawn to places and people where we can be known and accepted – it is one of our deepest human needs – but here’s the irony: as much as we want it, we push it away. Even Toby Keith’s beloved bar cannot achieve true intimacy for us.
Only God can! “Before you were
even born…I KNEW you!”
One day, Jesus was in the wrong part of town. He was in Samaria. The people who lived in Samaria were called Samaritans and that was not a good thing to be called. The Jewish people knew the Samaritans to be all messed up religiously. They believed wrong. They worshiped wrong. They lived wrong. Think of the people you see as being on the wrong side of God. Those are the Samaritans.
Well, Jesus spent his whole life, it seems, crossing over from the right side to the wrong side. Did you know that? That’s why they killed him. Spent all his time with people on the wrong side of God.
I hope you spend time over there too – on the wrong side of the tracks! The people I’ve met who are on the wrong side of God are generally much more interesting people than those on the right side of God. In fact, they are often more godly than people who are on the right side of God, although they don’t always know that’s what they are! And the sad part of it all for the people on the right side of God – what makes them very boring and even destructive sometimes – is that they don’t understand that no one is on the right side of God, least of all themselves. All have sinned. All fall short of the glory of God. EVERYONE lives on the wrong side of town. But some of us just don’t know it yet.
So Jesus crosses the tracks one day. Goes over to Samaria and hangs around with some Samaritans. It’s about noontime, and the sun is hot, so Jesus walks over to the town well. There is a woman, drawing water – one of those dastardly Samaritans, you know. Jesus asks her for a drink.
She is shocked. For one thing, men in that culture do not speak in public to women they are not married to. For another, Jews from the right side of the tracks don’t talk to Samaritans from the wrong side of the tracks. I mean, didn’t our mothers teach us to stay away from people like this?
But a conversation occurs. Can you imagine it? There is Jesus breaking all the rules – talking with a woman in public – talking with a Samaritan by the town well. He’s telling her that there is water that is living water. Once you drink it, you’ll never be thirsty again!
She says, “I want that water!” Jesus says, “Okay, but first go get your husband.”
And that’s when the yada hits the fan!
You see, there are layers to her life of which she is ashamed. She has been in and out of relationships with men. There have been five husbands. Now she’s with someone else without benefit of marriage. She wants to hide all that from Jesus.
But Jesus knows! Jesus knows know
only the what of her circumstances, but the why, too. “Before
I formed you in the womb, I knew you…”
Well, the woman tries to lie her way out of it. “I don’t have a husband,” she tells Jesus. Jesus says, “Yes, that’s right. You don’t have A husband – you’ve had 5 husbands, and now you’re shacking up with someone who is not your husband at all.”
“…he told me
everything I ever did!”
YADA!
And God loves you completely!!!!
I think one of the reasons Christianity is a dying faith in many places and among many people is that we have somehow lost the miracle of the yada component of God’s love – the love that embraces people like the woman at the well, and people as human as you and me, in the full knowledge of who and what we truly are – all our warts and beauty marks included!
Contrary to what a lot of religious people are saying today, God loves heterosexuals…and homosexuals. God loves Christians…and Muslims…and even atheists. God loves Jews…and Palestinians. God loves successful people…and people who’ve made messes of their lives. God loves law-abiding citizens…and convicts on death row. God loves Democrats…and Republicans…Howard Dean…and Rush Limbaugh. God is hopelessly, head-over-heels, incurably, passionately in love with all the creatures God made!
God’s love is not selective like our love. God’s love does not look at all like the love you see in most churches. God’s love does not accept some and reject others. God’s love does not condition itself on our response.
God LOVES the world He made! God loves you! And God loves your neighbor too!
And the experience of being known by God is the most powerful and transformative thing that can ever happen to you!
I friend of mine tells of a time in his life when things were getting to be too much. On the surface, he appeared to be a great guy, great husband, great father, great worker, great Christian. He was one of those people everybody could depend on, and they did. But underneath, it was a different story. He was tired. Tired of being the general manager of the universe for everyone. Tired of being responsible. Tired of being depended on. For the first time in his life, he was scared. He felt as if his life was a house of cards and the winds were starting to pick up. It was only a matter of time before it all collapsed around him.
One night, he says, he blurted it all out to God. He told God everything – about how scared he was – about how tired he was of being responsible in an irresponsible world – about how weak he was even though everyone saw him as strong. He told God about secret things – hidden resentments, shameful sexual desires, the utter disdain he had for people who failed. He told God things he’d never told anyone before. He told God how there were times he wanted to just pack up and leave – leave his wife, leave his kids, leave his job – leave everything. He told God there were times he simply wanted to die. And he told God how scared he was of that. And then – just for good measure – he told God about all the things he didn’t like, believe, or accept about God, Jesus, heaven, hell, the Church, and of course about Christians – the most hypocritical bunch of people he knew.
When he was done, he fell silent. He was exhausted. And he waited for the lightning bolt to strike.
But there was only silence. And then, from the midst of the silence, came a whisper – a still, small voice that could be heard only in the heart.
And the voice simply said, “I
know.”
To this very day, this friend of mine will tell you that in that moment of God’s yada, he felt not only completely known, but completely loved. And for the first time that he could remember, he felt whole!
Before the day you were born – before they ever did the ultrasound – before your mama and papa even participated in the process of getting you here - God knew you and fell instantly in love!
And now the two greatest challenges of living the life of faith are these:
Getting to know yourself as
God knows you!
And getting to know others as
God knows them!
And when that happens, you will find yourself drinking from a well of living water that never runs dry, and that quenches your thirst to be known and loved!
Next week, we’ll take a look at how knowing ourselves as God knows us can help us discover the reason God put us here in the first place, and job we have to do!
But today, I want you to bring this thought with you to the Communion Table, and into this new week. Will you say it after me?
Amen.