You Have Searched Me Out and Known Me

Oh, You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town.

He's making a list,
He's checking it twice,
He's gonna find out
who's naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town.

No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. Nor have I forgotten the date. Of course Santa Claus is coming to town, and a lot sooner to our stores than most of us would like. But I’ve often wondered about that song. When our children were small, I wondered what they made of it. The song was written in 1934. The later, less familiar verses assure us that “the kids in Girl and Boy Land will have a jubilee” as they discover all the toys that Santa has brought. But it’s those middle verses that give me pause:

He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake.

So...You better watch out,
You better not cry
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why.
Santa Claus is coming to town.

He sees you when you’re sleeping? He knows when you’re awake? He knows when you’ve been bad or good? He knows if you cry or pout? Surely that doesn’t describe Nicholas, the 4th century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, from whom Santa Claus has descended? How could Santa see me and know me so well? Can anyone know me that well? Does even my spouse of 41 years know me that well? I doubt it.

Our psalm for today, Psalm 139, beloved of both Jews and Christians, suggests that there is someone who knows us that well, knows us even more fully than Santa. God knows us knows us through and through, God knows us even more deeply than the songwriters could ever have imagined. When we include verses 6-12, left out of our reading this morning, we are reminded that God knew us at our conception, perhaps even before that. God perhaps even marked us out for some special work. God knows us through and through now: “You have searched me out and known me, you know my sitting down and my rising up. You discern my thoughts from afar.” Moreover, and what is more important, there is nowhere we can escape God’s presence, for there is no realm where God isn’t present: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” At the limits of east or west, God’s hand still guides the psalmist. Even in the depths of darkness, “Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.” God is with us everywhere, and there is neither place nor thing that can separate us from God. Echoing Psalm 139, Paul even assured the Christians in Rome that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God is with us, in us, behind us, and before us, at all times, and in all places.

Like children who get caught up in the holiday rush, most of us are scarcely aware of God’s presence in our lives. Perhaps we’re oblivious to God’s presence, or perhaps we choose to ignore God’s presence. We’re “just too busy” to take the time for God. Yet God constantly takes the initiative to come more deeply into our world, and especially to those who earnestly seek God. As the psalmist reminds us, “You have searched me out….” We can experience God’s presence in our lives if we open the door to God even just a little. Rest assured, God will get through that crack! Certainly, we experience God’s presence in worship. Our experience of God is mediated or filtered through hymns, written prayers, and actions, but God is most definitely present to us here. And certainly we Episcopalians believe that Christ is especially present to us in the bread and wine that become his Body and Blood.

But is it possible for us to have an even more direct experience of God’s presence, what some have called a “mystical” experience? Many shy away from that word. I once heard an Episcopal priest say in a sermon that he had never, in forty years of being a Christian, ever had a “mystical” experience. Personally, I would doubt that, since he was a man of prayer. And there is nothing about the word “mystical” that should frighten or upset us. A mystical experience is simply a deep sense of God’s presence, a sense perhaps of direct communion with God (or Christ) that takes us to deeper levels of awareness of God’s presence. For some, mystical experiences may even include visions of Jesus or Mary or the Trinity. For almost all of us, such experiences are ineffable and indescribable. We might say with the psalmist, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.” Yet such experiences are real, and they can transform our lives in unimaginable ways.

Some of you good Protestant folk may again be wondering if I’ve taken leave of my senses. For many good historical reasons, and with some exceptions, Protestants have largely abandoned the pursuit of direct experiences of God’s presence. Yet the mystical experience has a long and honorable tradition in the church. In the 3rd and 4th century desert Fathers and Mothers, who lived in the deserts of Egypt as an act of devotion and commitment to God, in the medieval mystics, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, whom we heard about two weeks ago, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, in the 20th century English mystic Evelyn Underhill, and in the members of the World Community for Christian Meditation, just to name a few, we have a “great cloud of witnesses” of those who have sought and been granted more direct experience of God’s presence.

We don’t have to be monks or nuns. We don’t have to be spiritually adept or steeped in the faith. This is the good news: if we just leave the door slightly ajar, God will take the initiative and make Godself more deeply present to us. There are any number of ways, any number of “thin places” in which we may seek a deeper sense God’s presence. For some people, God seems especially present in nature, in a sunset or on a mountain top or watching animals or birds by a river or a lake, or at night contemplating the vastness of the stars. Sometimes we experience God’s presence in service to others, when we look deeply into another’s eyes or listen intently to another’s story. Many of us have a deeper awareness of God’s presence in sacred and blessed places, especially churches and monasteries where prayer has been offered for centuries. For some, praying with an icon can deepen our sense of God’s presence, as we let the picture be a window through which we can glimpse a bit of divine reality. For some, our own quiet places, wherever they are, can be places where, when we truly open ourselves to God, God graces us with a deeper sense of God’s presence. And for many of us, the various practices of contemplative prayer, and the various forms of prayer preserved in the Celtic tradition, help lead us into that deeper place. All of these ways of experiencing God’s presence more deeply are potentially open to all of us, if we would but take a deep breath and slow down long enough for God to get a word in edgewise. And indeed these paths to experiencing God’s presence more deeply are available to those of other faith communities too. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all have rich mystical traditions. To our surprise and perhaps delight, when we seek God contemplatively, when we seek to experience God’s presence more deeply and more directly, we often find that we are on common ground with those of other faith communities who are also genuinely seeking God’s deeper presence.

Come and experience what I’m talking about for yourself. Every Wednesday that I am here, from 12:00 to 12:30 here in the church, I will be praying contemplatively. If someone else joins me I will take the first 10 minutes of that time to teach a particular approach to contemplative prayer. We will also return to a contemplative approach in the Eucharist on the 4th Tuesday evening of the month. I plan some Quiet Saturday mornings later in the fall and winter, and I hope soon to begin offering a contemplative Eucharist later on Sunday afternoons. But don’t think of any of this as another task to be undertaken in order to be right with God. God is not commanding or demanding that you undertake any spiritual discipline. God is inviting us all into God’s presence. Anything that we may do, any way in which God makes Godself more deeply known to us, is God’s gift to us, a gift that helps us deepen our love for God and our gratitude for God’s great love for us.

I mentioned the Celtic spiritual tradition. I want to close by giving you just a little taste of what that tradition has to offer by sharing with you a prayer for Sunday morning.

I watch this morning
for the light that the darkness has not overcome.
I watch for the fire that was in the beginning
and that burns still in the brilliance of the rising sun.
I watch for the glow of life that gleams in the growing earth
and glistens in sea and sky.
I watch for your light, O God,
in the eyes of every living creature
and in the ever-living flame of my own soul.
If the grace of seeing were mine this day
I would glimpse you in all that lives.
Grant me the grace of seeing this day.
Grant me the grace of seeing.1

1. J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), p 2.