THE INESCAPABLE GOD Psalm 139 July 3, 1966
Communion
At first thought it might seem that nothing is more remote from our
experience than the suggestion that God is inescapable.|In our catalog
of things a man must do in his life time, only paying taxes and dying
have meaning for every man. \ After all, the majority of the people in

our nation have, in fact not only escaped God, but they seem to have

done it with no effort. |More people than not simply don't go to church
and don't demonstrate any particular religious sansitivity watsoever.
A loving tow ie 8 complereiy bane thought to them. \They have escaped
or have they?

I have an idea that the writerof the 139th Psalm would say they have
not_escaped.\They, and we may be among them, perhaps have succeeded Le
temporarily shutting out any God~conse iousness | they may have succeeded
is closing the¢yes and ears of the spirit| they may have
saaceeded in filling the gap in their lives with something else, but the

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Psalmist dares to suggest that God remains .\ He knows them and us, he

understands their motives and ours, there is no where they or we

can go that will remove us from the sphere of God\ that Suggestion, when

ought to be, profundly disburbing.\Before we explore the implications

here, however, let's become a little more acquainted with the text itself.
Psalm 139 is, without a doubt one of the greatest passages in the

ov. \zt has always spoken very weeply to ne .\ Oneot the natural hazards

of going to college and studying in Sem. and being a miniter is tendency

to lose prsonal integrity along the way \One can get_so caughtup in

preparing to doa sartatn job and learing all the profession tricks oi the

trade that the questins of ["who am 1? Do I realy want this? Do I

really believe this?" are lost in the shuffle .\1 have discovered the

139th Psaim to be an effective daxyam deterent and ego deflator at this

He is one aptly described in the title of a book by J.B. Phillips, God

.
Our Contemporary.|\This is the God to whom the Psalmist cried: \ "Wither

shall I go from thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from thy presence? If
I ascend to heaven thou art there. If I make my bed in Sheol, thou abt theg¢
If I take the wimgs of the morning and dwell in the utermost parts of the

Sea, even there thy hadd sha}l lead me, and thy right hand shall hold

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me." /

Unlike this man with his exquisite sensitivitie to the presence of
God, the contemporary beleiver likes to feel comfortable with a remote
seity | the God of American Religiosity is a benign father-figure who
sits ona throne out there in the great somewhere .| His purpose is” limited
to getting things started in creation, and welcoming everybody back home

after life is oven | Bit in the meantime his remoteness requires only that

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we tip our hats in his direction with a vague acknowledgment that he exists,
"God is dead" is the rallying cry of the new theologians, and they

are correct. \F or an God never existed - and if he did he wouldn't be

worth petharing with, \ te "God is Dead" theology, even though understoo@Z

by few, has a¥t least forced many people to be honest at this point \rt has

forced us all to see clearly that if God is not here, in our midst, if he

is not actévely involved in the world, his creation, he simply does not

eXist.|4nd so we have had to open our eyes to the God who is our contempors |

Theological rebels like Bishop Pike and Maleplm Boyd have had the audacity

to assume the Biblical role of * rophet by pointing to the divine presence

in the midst of life. .
ang yet, this too can be a profoundly disturbing suggestion \ Bor_in a

very real sense it's more comfortable to beleive in a remote God | When

confronted with the possibility that God is present in the neighbor we

cannot stand, or that he is active in the freeing of a race of people we'd

rather keep at a considerable distance, we rebel. We don't like our God's

that close at pand.\ T's a reaction nobly expressed in Francis Thompson's

poem, The Hound of Heaven.

to each other - because the one next to us is evidence of God in our midst.

Wee come humbly acknowledging the inescapable God.

As we commune together this morning, let us do so in the spirit of

this great Psalm. \Let us come to the table - not to give, but to be

given something: \ not to do somethign symbolically - but to have something
very immediate we done to us: not to say something about ourselves or
our faith, but to hear what the contemporary God, the inescapable God,

might be saying to us.

Amen

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me