Cradle of Grace

Exodus 33:12-23
Psalm 139:1-14, 23-24

October 16, 2011 Northridge Presbyterian Church


What does it mean to be known? Now, I’m not talking about the fact that the Ranger’s are now known for being the ALCS champions.

In our social media driven world, you and I have the opportunity to be known in many different ways. With the click of a mouse you can create a facebook profile and let friends know as little or as much about you as you prefer. You can share your favorite TV shows, what you ate for dinner, pictures from your last vacation, and what Wall Street Journal article got you thinking. Hop onto twitter and you are known 140 characters at a time.

You and I know that social media cannot every replace the understanding that comes through incarnation, relationship, and community.

Think about any relationship that lasts beyond the honeymoon phase. Whether it’s your best friend or a partner, you know that other person’s faults and strengths. You know everything from the mundane details like their favorite pizza topping, to profound like their hopes and their fears. You know them, and you love them “warts and all” as the colloquial phrase goes, “for better and for worse” as our marriage vows go.

Families also know in this way. Your mom knows what you need when you are sick, and your grandma has the uncanny ability of speaking truth into your life. Your siblings know just how to get under your skin and your dad knows you’ll never ask for help, so he offers.

If you are a parent, particularly a new parent, knowledge about your child grows exponentially with each passing day. You know that mole above your baby’s left eye. You know how to hold her to soothe her. You know his cry distinct from any another child in the nursery.

The Psalmist uses this definition of knowing to describe God’s relationship to you and me. God, the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, is brought down to earth in Psalm 139. What is striking is God’s concern, God’s intimate knowledge, and God’s connection to the human experience. Several times the Psalmist uses a word in Hebrew, “yada.” Our English translation “know” doesn’t quite fit. Yada meansnot just head knowledge, but intimate flesh and blood knowledge.

The Psalmist uses, “yada” throughout the entire hymn of praise. God searches us and knows us. As a mother knows the cry of her baby, so “God knows when you sit down and rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.” God does not simply know us in a casual way. God knows us intimately, and is active in not only knowing, but forming and fashioning us from the beginning, in our mother’s womb. God has flesh and blood knowledge of us.

The subtitle in our pew Bibles for this Psalm is “The inescapable God.” God behind you, God before you, God in your mind, God all around you. John Calvin wrote of Psalm139, “It is impossible to deceive God. God discovers every secret; there is nothing that can escape God’s notice.”

Perhaps God’s intimate knowledge of you may not be appealing. God knows your thoughts; God hems you in, behind and before. If God knows everything, why do we walk through the valleys of the shadow of death? If we affirm a belief in the Triune God who knows us, who goes before and behind us, why do we suffer? That is the quandary isn’t it?

Or, to pose another question. If God knows me and holds me, why don’t I always sense God or feel God?

Theologian, Serene Jones wrestles with this very question in her book Trauma & Grace Theology in a Ruptured World. Serene started with this question, “How do people, whose hearts and minds have been wounded by violence, come to feel and know the redeeming power of God’s grace?”

Serene shares a story in the book from her church that got her thinking about this connection between trauma and grace. Serene was teaching at Yale Divinity School and living in New Haven, Connecticut, and worshiping at a UCC congregation in downtown New Haven. If you have ever spent time in New Haven, you know it is not a safe sleepy college town immune from violence. It is rough.

One afternoon a 14 year old youth from her church was walking home and she witnessed a drive-by-shooting and death of a young man. Since this youth was the only eye witness, she had to deal with the trauma of what she witnessed and the trauma of recounting it on the witness stand during the trial and conviction of the perpetrator.

The church walked beside this girl and her family. One Deacon took her to her therapy appointments as her mom was not well, another sat with her in the courthouse, and most importantly these deacons listened to her as she processed what she saw. Together, the entire deacon board started a weekly Bible study with the girl and her family.

Jones recounts that the Deacons, “turned to the Psalms for solace and guidance as they walked with her. In the midst of their well-orchestrated, support-group-style Bible study, they asked Serene to provide scholarly interpretation of these much beloved poems.” A Calvin scholar, Serene brought John Calvin’s commentary or all things which they read alongside each Psalm, one by one. They read the Psalms of lament, the cursing Psalms, and in time, Serene, the Deacons, and the youth came to the Psalms of rejoicing and thanksgiving, like Psalm 139.

Serene writes, “In these Psalms, hope returns not because evil is explained or immediate justice is invoked, but because through the activity of thanksgiving, the goodness of God is publicly attested to and reaffirmed. By invoking such goodness, the world in all its complex wonders returns as a gift from God.” Hope returns through the activity of thanksgiving and the testimony of God’s presence with us in life and in death.

This wrestling with the tension of God’s presence in life and in death is not new. Pastor and theologian, John Calvin wrestled with this throughout his ministry. Like us, he lived in a context that was filled with conflict and violence. At that time Geneva was filled with refugees that found their way to Calvin’s church. Geneva was also a city wracked with violence. Parishioners and pastors were being burned at the stake in Geneva. Torture, trauma, and suffering abounded.

Calvin was the sort of pastor that was not afraid to jump into the struggles and messiness of life. Ministering in the midst of the reformation must have been a challenge. Calvin turned to the Psalms. He found the Psalms contained a powerful exploration of the painful and wonderful nature of life, and of God’s intimate presence. Calvin was so compelled by the Psalms that he included Psalm singing in every single worship service I think, both as a source of comfort and challenge to the congregation. Imagine singing the words of the Psalms so frequently that you had them memorized. The words of the Psalms would come to their lips during times of struggle and joy.

We don’t have to go far to imagine this tension as you and I live in the midst of life and death each day. The Psalmist writes in verse 7 “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.”

Theologian, Neal Plantinga writes about Psalm 139, “The stubborn fact is that we can’t get away from God…our only choice is to surrender. Inside the cradle of grace, our only choice is to take our heart in our hands and offer it to God.”

You and I are inside the cradle of grace.

Now, perhaps the metaphor of cradle brings to your mind a number of images. What do you think of when you hear the word cradle?

Maybe you think of a running back cradling the ball, trying not to fumble. Now, many of you know I’m not a huge NFL fan, or sports fan for that matter. So, the image I have in my head is of a parent cradling a baby in their arm.

You have to be strong, yet tender to cradle a baby.
Cradling provides security.
Cradling implies love.

Or, I think of the noun. A cradle is a bed that holds a baby while it sleeps.
A cradle is both delicate and strong.
A cradle has protective sides so the baby will not fall out.
A cradle has movement, it is not static, but perhaps it swings, offering comfort to a colicky infant.

Whatever your image, God cradles us in grace from conception, throughout all of life and in death. Grace cradles us regardless of the stumbles and sleepless nights.

God’s graces cradles us, envelops us, holds us.

That metaphor is deep and powerful, but we forget it. I know I forget about the safe cradle of grace when I have watched yet another news story about the famine in the Horn of Africa, a tornado in Joplin, or the miscarriage of a friend’s baby. I don’t always sense the strong arms holding me when I try to do something myself.

You and I need eyes to see the cradle of grace in the midst of life and death.

Again, drawing from Calvin, we need to put on the spectacles of Scripture regularly, so we can see the cradle of grace. The Psalms offer a unique cradle, for they contain praise, lament, and thanksgiving.

The entire worship service each week helps us experience the cradle of grace. Through the movement of confession, assurance, song, the Word, our affirmation of faith, and offering of prayers and tithes we begin to notice the love of God that goes with us into the world. We hear God’s grace through song, Scripture, and prayer.

Yet, we don’t just need to hear the cradle of grace; we need to see and touch the cradle of grace.

Each Sunday you sit in front of a Table and Font. Calvin said that the sacraments are signs and seals of God’s grace.

The table is always set each week, to remind us of the grace of God. The font always has water each week to point to God’s claim of us as covenant children.
All of your senses are engaged as you touch the bread, and taste the cup.

This morning you not only see the water in the font, you can hear it when I will baptize Sierra Grace. Baptism is perhaps the most powerful sign and seal of the cradle of grace.

As you know, our Reformed tradition practices infant baptism. We baptize infants because we affirm that God’s grace comes to all of us even before we can see it or respond to it on our own. Although Sierra won’t be able to answer any questions this morning, her parents will, and you the Northridge family will. You will promise to love her and support her in her faith because you can see the cradle of grace, entering into a covenant.

Some of you teach about this cradle of grace in Sunday school. You open up the Bible and help us all see and understand God at work.

Some of you engage in mission. You serve meals at the Stewpot, teach English at ELM, or travel for a week long mission trip and you feel God’s grace as you serve a meal or hold a hammer.

Youth, you model for all of us what it means to ask questions about this cradle so we can understand it more fully, and what it means to follow God into the world with passion.

All of you come alongside one another as the body of Christ.
You listen.
You pray.
You comfort.
You study.
You discern.
You serve.
You know, “yada”.

You know...through sweat and tears, in life and in death you know, “yada” the loving God who hems you in, before and behind in a cradle of grace.

In the name of the Triune God who Creates, Redeems, Cradles us all, Amen.









References:
Title and cradle quote from Dr. Neal Plantinga's Psalm 139 devotional in My Heart I Offer. Published by the Calvin Alumni Association in 2000. Page 1.

Serene Jones quotes from viii,44, 63. Much of the Calvin section and crafting of this theological point is from chapter 3 in Trauma and Grace.

Calvin quotes from Calvin's Commentaries Volume VII. Published by Baker in 2003. Page 207 is directly quoted.