“Known and Loved”
A Meditation on Baptism by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett
Preached at Pleasantville UCC, January 18, 2009

Psalm 139

“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!”
(Psalm 139:7-8) 

His family reported that when he stepped in front of a train on the night of January 5^th, just outside the German city of Ulm, Adolf Merckle was a broken man – crushed beneath the weight of his business losses.  In 2008, Forbes had ranked Mr. Merckle’s fortune at $9.2 billion making him the 94^th richest man in the world.[1]  But some recent speculative investing in Volkswagen caused the loss of hundreds of millions of Euros.  Now I’m not a whiz at math, but hundreds of million of Euros in losses still don’t add up to $9.2 billion dollars in assets.  Yet somehow, a perfect storm of financial loss and public shame overwhelmed the man, and he ended his own life on the tracks near his villa in Southern German.

I remember learning in high school history class about men who threw themselves out of Wall Street windows during the crash of the stock market in 1929.  It was shocking and horrifying to imagine.  And I always wondered about those they left behind.  What were they supposed to do?  But I never imagined that we might see such times again.  Times when people have so lost their way and so lost perspective that the 94^th richest man in the world would take his own life because he made some bad decisions and couldn’t control the outcome.  Something is terribly, horribly out of balance – and it doesn’t take either an economist or a theologian to see that.

O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me!
Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up;
thou discernest my thoughts from afar.
Thou searchest out my path and my lying down,
and art acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

The death of Adolf Merckle is a very personal tragedy for his family.  And doubtless there is a vast story here that we do not know; a story not reported upon by international news sources.  But today I invite his story into our own because of what it may teach us about losing our way and losing our perspective in times of crisis.

I know something about personal darkness.  I know something about sorrow so crushing that it sucks the air from your body and the joy of living from your heart.  I know something about shame and feeling that nothing can ever make it right again.  I know something about living through financial crisis and long periods of economic uncertainty.  These are reality-altering experiences that can cause us to lose our way; they can cause us to lose perspective.

But the Word of God that is given to us this morning is here to remind us today that there is one reality and one perspective that never changes.  No matter how desolate we may feel; no matter how far short we may have fallen from the person we had hoped to be and the path we had hoped to travel, the truth is that we are deeply known and thoroughly loved by the very same God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs.  And this is good news.  This is world-changing, reality-altering news, and this news is worth building a life upon.

We are given Psalm 139 to study and pray upon this morning.  It’s the second time this year that we’ve had this psalm before us; the second time in six months that we’ve been invited to reflect upon its glory and promise.  And given all of the other possibilities, it intrigues me that the church’s calendar of readings draws us back to this text twice in one year.  Except for the fact that it’s so important that we get it. 

O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me!
Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up;
thou discernest my thoughts from afar.
Thou searchest out my path and my lying down,
and art acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,
lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou dost beset me behind and before,
and layest thy hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high, I cannot attain it.

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there thy hand shall lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.

“If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!”  Sheol is a Hebrew word that means the grave or the pit.  It was the place of the dead.  

If I make my bed in ‘the grave’ or ‘the pit’
-- if I make my bed in ‘the place of the dead’—
“even there thy hand shall lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.”

If only Adolf Merckle had known and believed that.

We are celebrating a baptism this morning.  Little Finn Bachman will be baptized at the second service.  And even though we, here (at the 8:30 service), will not witness the event, we are still invited to remember the promises of baptism.  We are still invited to recall how, when Jesus was baptized by John in the River Jordan, as he came up out of the waters, the Spirit of the Lord descended upon him in the form of a dove and from out of the heavens the voice of the Lord was heard to say, “This is my Beloved Child, in whom I am well pleased.”

This is my Beloved Child, in whom I am well pleased.

Everything changes in baptism.  This is the promise: that in our baptism, we too become God’s beloved children.  We, too, are pleasing in the eyes of God.  In baptism, we make promises to God, but more importantly, God makes promises to us.  God promises to know us and love us -- more deeply and more completely than anyone else ever will or ever could.  And this promise means that no matter where we go, or what we do, no matter how far we fall, or how much we fail nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is a very great temptation for human beings to want to be God.  It is, in fact, the very first temptation – and Adam and Eve failed that test miserably.  But their failure revealed something true about the human condition: we are always trying to be our own ‘god.’  We are always hoping that if we reach a little farther and try a little harder we’ll be able to do pretty much anything we set our hearts upon.  We think that if we plan a little more carefully and think it all through a little more completely, we’ll never experience failure.  And what that really means is, if we can just get all the variables right we’ll have no real need for God, because if we don’t make any mistakes, we won’t need any forgiveness. 

But the great irony of the spiritual life, of course, is that failure teaches us much more than success.  When we fail -- when we fall short of where we had hoped and planned to be -- that is when God’s amazing grace becomes real to us.  When we can no longer pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and start all over again, that is when we know that we have always been carried in the arms of love and mercy.

For thou didst form my inward parts,
thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful.
Wonderful are thy works!
Thou knowest me right well;
my frame was not hidden from thee,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.
Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance;
in thy book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
When I awake, I am still with thee.

The psalmist speaks a word of grace-full reminder to people obsessed with success and terrified of failure.  The God who knit us together in our mother’s womb, knows us completely and loves us still.  There is nothing that God doesn’t know about us.  And there is no part of who we are that cannot be redeemed by God’s love.  If only Adolf Merckle had known and believed that. 

On Tuesday of this week, Barak Obama will be sworn into the duties of the President of the United States of America.  As faithful Americans, we pray for him and his family, for his safety and theirs, and we pray for his success in leading our nation out of these dire economic times.  We cannot know what the future will hold; we may need to weather still more difficulties.  But what we do know is that nothing this world can dish out – no amount of trouble, no amount of hardship, no amount of financial uncertainty or even ruin can separate us from the God who knows us and loves us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The knowledge and certainty of that is my hope for every baptized Christian – for Finn Bachman and also for you.

O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me!

Thanks be to God, we are known and loved.  Amen.