May 2, 2024
We Proclaim Christ Jesus
Psalm 139 1-6, 13-18; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12
Sometimes, more often than we realize probably, the words of scripture have the power to stand on their own – if we will sit with them, let them resonate with us and in us. In the most ancient sense, that is very much what worship is meant to do: to give time and space to hear a word from the Lord through the ancient text of scripture. That’s why we read from the Old Testament and the New Testament each week.
There are some passages of scripture that really need a sermon, they cry out for some explanation and interpretation. You’ve heard passages read that made no sense to you at all and you sat there hoping that the preacher could dig out a relevant word?
That’s the job of sermons, to make it plain, to direct the word of scripture into our contemporary lives. But there are some passages of scripture that are resonant, so beautiful, so clear, that most of the preacher’s job seems to be to simply get out of the way.
Like the two readings we have today, both assigned by the lectionary, both among my very favorite readings of scripture.
In Psalm 139, David invites God to search him and know him. On the surface, this might seem like a ridiculous thing. Who among us does not live with secrets? Every one of us has parts of ourselves that are hard, even terrifying to share, because we’re afraid that we will be rejected or ashamed.
In this Psalm, the psalmist – probably David – had much that he tried to hide hoped no one found out. But he invited God to search and know him because he believed in two things. He believed, first, that God’s knowledge is more vast and more high than anything he could imagine. There is simply no sense in hiding from God. There is no posing with God.
God knows us inside and out because God is God. And that may cause a person to want to hide from God, but not David, because David believed another thing about God: that this very great God is also very good.
David does not invite God to search his heart and know his inmost thoughts because he believes that he can stand up to that intense light! David invites God to search his heart and known his thoughts because he believes that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
God is not looking for a reason to reject or punish David; God already knows David and wants to embrace him with mercy.
Some of us here today – probably all of us – long to be known and embraced. We long to stop posing and stop performing. We long to be seen as we are, with our beauty and our brokenness, to be embraced. We long to get over the deep fear that we will be rejected. We long to be loved with a love that goes bone deep.
Not only on our best days, but also on our ordinary days, and especially on our worst days: when life is so messy, when we are at our wits end, when our kids are in trouble, when we’re consumed with regret, when faith is displaced by anger or worry, when we don’t fit in the box that others made, when we aren’t sure who we are or where we’re going.
If any of that resonates with you, listen to these words again. They are written by a person who had great gifts and great failings, who was believed that God was both great and good, and that nothing would separate him from God’s loving presence.
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.
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.
(Reading from 2 Corinthians 4:6-12)
These words from second Corinthians are some of the most encouraging words in the Bible. They speak to where we are. They are a gift to us because they come from the pen and the heart of a man who was beat up. Let me explain.
The Apostle Paul is writing to a church that he started in the Greek city of Corinth. Paul was a missionary, and he would get a church started, and then stay in touch with them by letter while he went to other places.
From what we can tell in this second letter to the Corinthians, things have gone wrong while Paul was away. He is defending himself and his work, and from what we can surmise, he’s come under attack from critics.
Some accused him of being too clever and trying to deceive people. Some accused him of not being popular enough, because so many of their friends had rejected his message. Some accused him of being arrogant and self-aggrandizing, of pointing to himself too much.
So, Paul has to defend himself and his work, and in doing so, he writes some of the most beautiful words our faith tradition has about the light of Jesus Christ that is placed by God’s grace into fragile human beings.
He starts with echoes of Genesis: the same God who called light out of darkness in the dawn of the world, has also, by sheer grace, shone in our hearts the light of Christ. This light is a treasure that we have within us… but it is a treasure in a clay jar. That’s both the glory and the rub.
Clay jars are fragile and brittle. If any of us wanted to keep something safe, we would put it in a steel box – not a clay jar. Clay jars were used in the ancient world to store precious things, but not for long. Because eventually clay jars crack and chip and crumble back to dust.
All of us are clay jars. We are useful to be sure, but we have imperfections, and we are subject to chips and cracks, and eventually to return to dust. No matter how many gifts or abilities we have, our knowledge and insight is limited to our time and place. All of us have selfish impulses, and personal quirks, and our ego gets us in trouble, and we have opinions that are wrong as often as they are right. We wear, we show cracks, and most of us, like clay jars, don’t last as long as we wish.
When Paul told them the story of his own life, this is what he said: he was afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, struck down. He wasn’t just speaking in metaphors: Paul was beaten by stoning, Paul was run out of town by a mob and had to escape through a window; he was imprisoned, he was shipwrecked; by this time he was an old man and his body was covered in scars. One time Paul was even mistaken for a corpse.
He was beat up, but he did not lose hope. He was afflicted, but not crushed. Perplexed but not driven to despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. There was something resilient in him. Why? What was it?
The life and light of Jesus lived within in him.
According to the Apostle Paul, there is a resilient strength that is made available to us by the mysterious power unleashed on the world by Jesus’ death, in the pouring out of his blood and the breaking of his body.
His risen life is made visible in our mortal bodies. By some strange mystery of grace, the more humble life makes us, the more cracks we have, the more God’s grace and love shines through.
Most of us know we’re clay jars. We know that we’re useful, but we’re also imperfect, we’re sometimes brittle and more fragile than we care to admit.
Some of us here today are beat up. Life has dealt us more than our fair share of hard things. We haven’t caught the breaks we needed or wanted. We aren’t where we hoped we’d be. We need to be reminded that there is a resilient power of life at work within us.
We long to hear – we need to hear – from the pen and heart of a man who knows – that there is a light that cannot be snuffed out, no matter how worn or broken or fragile we may feel.
This is the good news of our faith, the heart of the mystery we proclaim week by week. We proclaim Christ Jesus, through whom God is repairing the world. We do not point to ourselves, for we are only humble clay jars. We point to Jesus, the light of the world, to the love of Christ within us, who is our confidence and hope.
If you are feeling beleaguered and beat up, if you are feeling chipped and fragile, if you can feel the dust flaking off of the clay jar as I speak, hear these words once more. They were written by a person who staked everything he had on the eternal life of Christ alive within him:
“For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;10always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”
May the life of Jesus be made visible in our bodies
and in our lives, in your bodies and in your lives,
beautiful and broken,
fearfully and wonderfully made.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina