"Known"

Joshua J Sander
1/15/12
Second Sunday after Epiphany—Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Neutral Pulpit at Zwingli, East Berlin, PA
"Known"

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
John 1:43-51

Good morning! Instead of jumping directly into today’s Scripture I thought it would be appropriate to acknowledge that things are a little out of the norm this this morning. I am a guest in this pulpit today and that means a couple of important things: first, it means that I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to preach for all of you and secondly it means that you don’t know me yet. So let me see if I can put you a little bit more at ease. I am Rev. Josh Sander. I grew up in Connecticut. I have a BA in Philosophy and Religion from Culver-Stockton College and I went to Seminary at Andover Newton Theological School. I love reading and creative writing and my personal heroes are Jim Henson and the most successful televangelist of all time: a Methodist minister known to the world simply as Mr. Rogers.

The good Reverend Fred Rogers once referred to a space that lies between what the preacher is saying and what the congregation hears as “The God Space” and it is my most sincere prayer that you find God working in that space this morning.

Psalm 139 reminds me of a story that circulates the internet every so often. As the story goes, the children at a Catholic elementary school were lined up for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples.  A nun made a note, and put it on the apple tray, "Take only ONE. God is watching." As the children moved further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chip cookies. A child had written a note, “Take all you want. God is watching the apples.”

Now, I for one believe that God is more interested in watching the children than the food. But that story still reminds me of today’s Psalm because it’s so easy to read it as if God were a scary, all seeing combination of Santa Clause and a hall monitor: He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He saw that bad thing you did and boy, are you in trouble because you can run but you can. Not. Hide.

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? 
If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”

Despite the kind of creepy overtones of the inescapable God, Psalm 139 is one of my all time favorite Psalms. And there’s a strong argument that I like Psalm 139 so much because of Mr. Rogers. I’m one of the two generations or so who grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, and in the midst of traveling by Trolley to the Land of Make Believe or visiting with a concert pianist or a crayon factory I was learning that making mistakes is a part of learning and that I make the day more special just by being me and--most importantly--that God loves me just the way I am.

When it hits you that God knows you better than anyone else, that God knows all your dirty little secrets and loves you anyway this Psalm suddenly becomes a whole lot less creepy. When you realize that God loves you unconditionally, it suddenly becomes okay that you can’t get away from God. Even if you make mistakes, even if you decide to take those extra cookies, even in those times when you don’t particularly deserve it, God loves you. And nothing--absolutely nothing--can separate you from the love of God. Knowing this truth is an amazingly powerful thing. In fact, this special truth has it’s very own word: it’s called “Grace.”

I can’t begin to tell you how tempting it is to make this one of the shortest sermons of all time and just leave us here, basking in the Grace of God’s love. But it’s just not enough. It’s not enough because it is possible to respond to Grace poorly. Luckily we have plenty of examples of how we should respond to the fact of God’s unconditional love. One of these examples is the story of how Jesus called the Apostle Nathanael to follow him.

The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me." Then Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found the man that the law of Moses and the prophets wrote about. It is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth."

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" replied Nathanael. Philip said, "Come and see." When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said, "Here comes a truly honest Israelite!" "Where did you get to know me?" Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you." Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

I think that this may be the least flashy miracle Jesus performs in the Gospel, and yet if feels the most Godlike to me. When Jesus sees Nathanael coming and says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” he is referring to what Nathanael had said about nothing good coming from Nazareth. Jesus overhearing that conversation is a little bit like if there were two guys standing on a street corner. One guy says to the other guy, “I hate Pittsburgh. I hate it so much. There’s absolutely nothing good about Pittsburgh.” Then he turns around and sees a third guy standing there in a Steelers jersey.

So in the Gospel story, Nathanael is the guy bad-mouthing Pittsburgh and Jesus is the guy standing behind him in a Steelers jersey. But Jesus doesn’t respond with hatred. Instead, he praises the man’s honesty. Why?

Think about it this way: any dabbler in the art of illusion can appear to see or hear something they couldn’t possibly have seen or heard. In fact, most simple card tricks create that effect. But what Jesus is doing here isn’t a trick, it’s an actual miracle. He didn’t simply overhear Nathanael talking underneath a fig tree--he searched him and knew him. Before the words were even formed on Nathanael’s tongue Jesus knew what he was going to say. And even knowing that Nathanael would say those unkind words, Jesus loved him anyway. Faced with these truths, Nathanael chooses to respond by saying, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" and then he follows Jesus.

So what does that mean for us, today? What does it mean for us to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the King of Israel? What does it mean for us to follow the teaching and the example of Jesus in the year of 2012? Well, those are big questions that go beyond the scope of one sermon. Those very questions are a big part of why we come to worship together and learn together every week instead of once or twice a year. But I can give you an example of how Grace works when we show it to one another.

Mental Floss Magazine writes, “According to a TV Guide profile, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town. Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, “‘If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.’”

Now, even though this story has been widely reported, nobody seems to be sure if it ever happened. Or if it did happen, that it happened quite like the story. I for one have no problem believing, however, that a car thief would have no trouble stealing a stranger’s car but think twice about making off with Mr. Rogers’ Impala. I’ve never known a car thief personally, but I suspect that there aren’t a lot of people crowding around to tell them how special they are, or that God loves them. But Mr. Rogers did.

Yes. I believe that this could have happened. And you don’t even have to try to fill Mr. Rogers shoes to make it happen. You can simply emulate Julio Diaz. According to a National Public Radio interview in 2008, the 31-year-old social worker habitually ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner. But one February night as Julio was walking toward the stairs from the nearly empty platform, a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife. He wanted Julio’s money, so he just gave the boy his wallet and told him, “Here you go."

But then, as the teen began to walk away, Julio told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim and asked, “Why are you doing this?'"

Diaz replied: "If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me... hey, you're more than welcome.” So Julio and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

The manager came by, the dishwashers came by, the waiters came by to say “Hi” and the teen said “You know everybody here. Do you own this place?"

"No, I just eat here a lot," Julio says he told the teen. “But you're even nice to the dishwasher." the teen replied. "Well, haven't you been taught you should be nice to everybody?" "Yeah, but I didn't think people actually behaved that way," the teen said.

When the bill arrived, Julio told the teen, "Look, I guess you're going to have to pay for this bill 'cause you have my money and I can't pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I'll gladly treat you."

The teen "didn't even think about it" and returned the wallet. Then Julio gave the teen twenty dollars... in return for the teen's knife.

I’d like to leave all of us, myself included, with some difficult challenges. When life is difficult to bear, take comfort in the fact that God knows you and loves you just the way you are--and nothing can separate you from God’s love. I know that there are times when it doesn’t seem that way, but it’s still true. By the same token, when the people around you--and I’m including the folk you see on TV and whose words you read on the internet--when other people are being unloveable we should remember that God knows them and loves them for who they are, too. And finally, knowing that God has given you Grace, show Grace to everyone you meet.