Living in the Presence of God

 

There was once a country church that was very pleased with itself.  On its nameplate were inscribed the words, “This is the gateway to heaven.”  Underneath, was another sign: “Closed for July and August.”

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Psalm 139 is a psalm of intimacy and protection that means that God is present at all times not just when we are at our best.   If God is with us at all times then God knows us better than we know ourselves.  In some cases maybe better than we “may want” to know ourselves?

 

The realisation of God knowing my every thought as well as my every action used to frighten me.  The theology I remember from childhood is one that taught me God would punish me if I did something wrong.  Even my thoughts were known by God, I was told, so I lived in fear that I would get hurt or something bad would happen to me because my memory recalls that I was not the perfect child!  I remember being told when I banged my elbow or fell that I must have done something wrong and was being punished.   I would wrack my brain to recall something bad and at times I actually couldn’t think of anything.  Oh well, I thought, God must know best!

 

It wasn’t until I was an adult with children of my own that I came to know God in a totally different way.  The God I know today doesn’t punish me or make bad things happen.  God loves me without condition.  God allows me to make my mistakes and hopefully, learn from them.  I believe that judgment comes from myself.  When I am Lying awake at 3 in the morning recalling and worrying about something that I have done and thinking about how to correct the mistake, to me, is punishment enough.  I don’t know if any of you have experienced this, but if you have, you understand what I’m talking about.

 

In Tom Harper’s book “Life After Death” he says that the people, whose near death experiences he has recorded, say that when their lives have passed before them the judgment comes from themselves and not from God. They see the people they have hurt or the situations they could have handled differently. I like that idea and it certainly makes good sense to me.  It was a relief for me to read that because I had a hard time wanting to stand before a God who was going to point a finger at me and give me the long list of mistakes I have made.  As I have come to know a more loving, supporting and guiding God I feel comfort and have truly learned to love that God deeply.

 

Being aware that God knows all my inner thoughts and can still love me is very liberating for me.  God has become my trusted companion.  It seems to me that the realisation that there are no secrets from God, allows me to be myself and accept myself.  There’s nothing left to hide.

 

The sense of intimacy of relationship with God can be both comforting and terrifying for some because there may be parts of our lives that we want to pretend don’t exist.  I think that’s what the psalmist is saying today.  It’s too wonderful and it’s also too terrible for us.  To be able to stretch ourselves and work through the reality of God knowing all our innermost being is part of our faith.  How do we live comfortably knowing that we are always in the presence of God?  Living with the holy?  The spirit of God residing within us.  Living in the presence of God and being aware of it may help us to avoid some of the wrongs we may do.  Each one of us has to work this out in our own way and our own time.

 

The theme of God with us continues in our reading from Romans.  I believe that the same spirit that lived in Jesus lives in us.  Jesus was so tuned to this spirit that lived within him that he lived his life not in the flesh but in the spirit.  What an example of living with the holy!  Jesus made choices based on his oneness with the Holy. Mostly everything that happens to us is because of the choices we make.  So we are the captain of our ship.

 

The choices Jesus made are the examples that we follow as Christians.  The choices that he made concerning the oppressed and the marginalised caused him to be put to death not thinking of himself but of others.  That is being one with the spirit.  Living in the flesh he would surely have saved himself from the suffering and betrayals he was subjected to.

 

In our readings today we are talking about living in the presence of God and how that feels to us.  How we cope with that.  Knowing that God knows our innermost beings and how that make us feel.

 

This theme continues in Matthews’ parable.

 

This has been a difficult passage for me because it raised the question about judgement.  Judgement of others.  Who am I to say who are the weeds and who are the wheat?  Sometimes that seems to be easy for us when people have broken the law in some form or other. 

 

There is a story about a member of a church who had a son who was executed for committing a murder.  You can see the damage that’s done to the father, to the brother, to the mother.  Society said, “This weed must be plucked,” but the damage that was done to the wheat was terrible – it caused terrible pain to that family.  The father wasn’t negating the fact that the son had done this awful deed…but there were still people who surely loved that boy.  Sometimes if we pull out the weeds, the wheat will get disrupted too.

 

I began to look at this passage from a different angle.  Could it be that Jesus was also talking about the weeds and wheat in our own lives?  This made me wonder about judging myself and asking for forgiveness and guidance to change that which ought not to be in my life.  The words repentance and conversion came to mind and then I read something from Jim Taylor.

 

This is something from this weeks resources that he wrote.  He said “I hear people talk about doing a 360 degree turn; 360 is a full circle.  So you turn around until you face exactly the same way you faced before.  It’s hardly a new direction.

 

Others suggest that you turn until you’re facing the opposite way.  That’s certainly a change of direction.  Unfortunately, it makes repentance a one-time event – because if you ever repeat it, you’ll find yourself facing the way you were going in the first place.

 

Some people describe it as a complete change of personality…but if you change everything, you might change much that is good, along with those things that need to be change.  I’m not sure that’s an improvement.

 

Repentance really demands an understanding of what’s good and what’s evil, and being selective about what you change.  You have to get rid of the weeds without destroying the valuable grain.

 

The gospel’s sometimes use the image of “winnowing” for repentance.  Winnowing was a way of sifting the worthless chaff and straw from the grain.  It’s highly selective.

 

When I (James Taylor) was a child in India, I watched Indian peasant farmers winnowing wheat.   They tossed a basketful of grain into the air.  The wind carried the lighter chaff away, a long golden shadow spread across the bare earth.  The grain fell in dunes on a sheet spread on the ground.

 

Winnowing kept the good stuff, and got rid of the worthless stubble.  So does repentance and conversion.”

 

This all takes time.  We seem to keep growing weeds in amongst the wheat but we are always given the opportunity to remove the weeds.  We must take care when removing the weeds that we don’t uproot the wheat. 

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Let us then allow God to help us with our inner garden.  We know when the weeds get too big.  We will probably never remove the weeds all together but let’s remember that the greatest gardener of all is walking with us. When we get past our fear of God, we are free to grow into what God would have us be.

 

God is ever-present and works with us to weed our gardens.  God is a gentle gardener who is there to guide us on our journeys.  As for the wheat and weeds within each one of us, we too “groan with all creation” as we seek to give birth to the gifts God has given us and to grow in freedom, strength, wholeness and happiness.  We are invited to open our lives to God in patient trust – to God’s cultivation and care.  Amen.