Sometimes this is a funny job that I have, being a pastor. You just never know what you’ll deal with next. This week, for instance, I had a random voicemail left on my office phone (this happens a lot).

It was an anonymous male with a deep voice, and with obvious passion, who said “Pastor, I just want to say that I have witnessed the power of God, and Jesus…and in fact, now I understand that I AM Jesus Christ! I’d like to schedule an appointment with you and I’d like to share a message with your congregation about this. Please call me back.” The bummer of this is…he didn’t leave a number to call back! I’ve waited my whole life for a call from Jesus, and no return number?!

Our text this morning continues teaching us how to be a praying people. We’ll look at the first 18 verses of Psalm 139 together. Please stand with me if you are able.

Reading: Psalm 139:1-18

Some of you are pretty familiar with Psalm 139. It’s one of the more beautiful pieces of poetry, one of the most profound prayers of praise and some of the most comforting verses in all of scripture. And I hope that won’t make us miss the sense of just how radical these words really are.

Rick Warren, that famous California pastor and pray-er at President Obama’s inauguration wrote a book called The Purpose Driven Life back in 2002. It’s not really my favorite book, even though it sold 40 bazillion copies, but I do love the way it started: “It’s not about you.”

What he meant was that if you were going to find purpose and meaning in life, you need to start with the God who made you. It’s where the Psalmist starts in Psalm 139. This prayer starts and ends with God. Twenty-four times the writer prays “You” or “Your.”

Almost every time, every sentence, every phrase starts with God, and then moves to the writer. “O Lord YOU…have searched me and known me. // YOU know…when I sit down and rise up. // It was YOU who formed my inward parts. // In YOUR book were written all the days that were formed for me.” We want to start there too.

We consider who we are in the light of who God is and what God has done. Not vice versa, we don’t figure out who we are and then who God is. We look at who God is and then at ourselves.

Two weeks ago I was at a church over in Bellevue for a Presbytery meeting. I was sitting with a few Bethany and other folks at a fellowship hall table, just finishing up dinner. Ten feet away from me, a woman in her seventies who was helping to serve the dinner blacked out, keeled over and fell hard to the bare floor.

I’ll tell you right now she turned out to be okay. But at the moment, it was pretty scary. People scrambled around her, some calling for doctors, some checking her pulse. I grabbed my cellphone and waited for someone attending to her to tell me if I should call 9-1-1 or not.

As I waited, I had one of those sort of surreal moments. Everything seemed to go quiet and into slow motion. As people continued to attend to the woman, I turned to the table behind me and saw a Vietnamese pastor friend of mine named Truong. He was standing at his dinner table by himself, eyes closed, arms out and palms upraised, fervently praying.

At the time, all I could think was “that’s exactly right.” In a room full of pastors and elders rightly attending to a physical need, it seemed like he alone recognized that more was going on than just the physical, and he acknowledged the presence of God, praying in the Spirit. We’ll never know, of course, what would have happened if he had not done so.

There are three things that really grabbed my attention this week in Psalm 139. The first is what Truong embodied that night, and what I want to spend most of our time on this morning. We are whole people. Our lives include both the physical and the spiritual. One is not distinct from the other. God has created us to be whole people. Our bodies, our minds, our souls are all part of what God has made, and put together in one integrated whole. This is the beauty of the Hebrew conception of the human being. We are created as whole- physical, spiritual.

When Jesus said the most important commandment was to “love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,” he wasn’t advocating that we somehow separate ourselves and deal individually with each part of our make-up, he was saying “love God with ALL that you have- with everything you’re created to be.” We were made to be whole people. Known by God. Created to be with God. Knit together in the womb by God. Physical, spiritual, whole people, meant to live whole lives.

Every time we try to separate human beings into different components…we end up in trouble. And we end up in the biggest controversies. So let’s talk about one.

Abortion. It’s a highly controversial topic in our country, and right now there is heatedly renewed discussion in light of 3 recent governmental actions:

a) the recent removal of a ban on federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortions

b) an executive order that loosened federal restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research

c) the likely removal of extra legal protection for healthworkers who voice moral objections to participating in abortion procedures.

Much of the rhetoric around this topic comes from arguing over the point at which a fetus become a person. Now, I’m talking about abortion because Psalm 139 is the single most referred to text in all of scripture for those who oppose the practice of abortion as a means of birth control.

I’m one of those people. I don’t think we are qualified to separate the formation of a soul, the breath of life, and the development of the body of a child in the womb. I don’t think we can think of an unborn child as simply an accumulation of ligaments, bone and muscle, as something only physical. “Your eyes, O God, beheld my unformed substance.” God breathed life into us, as whole people. We cannot take that lightly. But we do.

Our culture supports abortion for the purpose of birth control in a way never before experienced on our planet. Since the 1970’s, there have been 45 million legal abortions. Currently, there are somewhere around 100,000 performed each month. Our culture seems to view unborn children as something purely physical. I don’t think we can separate the physical from the spiritual, from the soul. Whole people. “You formed my inward parts, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

But I can’t say that without also saying this- I think in general, the church, which includes me, has missed badly on dealing with this. In general, the church in the United States has said “no,” or voted against or complained about abortion and yet done little in terms of action to deal with the underlying causes that make this such a difficult issue.

In general, the church has not gone out of its way to care for single unwed mothers (who make up 2/3 of those who have abortions), nor to work towards medical care, or childcare for employment’s sake, or poverty issues, or better adoption availability that would provide strong alternatives to abortion. It’s not enough to simply trumpet a theological position.

We’re whole people. That’s true of the beginning of life, but it’s also true in the midst of life. You’ll notice this Psalm covers the whole span of life. Body and soul, physical and spiritual. Every time we separate a human being into different components, we end up in trouble. It’s not just abortion. So let’s talk about sex for a minute (If I’m going to get a bunch of irate emails or phone calls this week, I might as well get them all at one time!).

Everywhere we turn in our culture, it is reinforced that sex is a mere physical act. You might know I’m not a big television watcher. You also might know I’m a huge NCAA basketball fan. In fact, I had a personal crisis last week when the colleges our two boys attend played each other! That means I’ve been uncharacteristically watching a lot of television the last two weekends, which means I’m mostly watching a lot of commercials.

I’m absolutely amazed. Maybe I’m more sensitive to it more because I don’t usually watch, but my goodness. Ads for rental cars are about a couple getting to a hotel so they can obviously have sex. The ads for upcoming network television shows mostly have people not married figuring out how they can get in bed with each other. And if I have to sit through another ridiculous ad for Viagra…I might give up watching basketball altogether! But the message is, “it doesn’t matter, it’s my body, these little flings are “just physical.”” It’s just a body. No it’s not!

We are unmistakably made body and soul together. And what happens in sexual intimacy is that the two are melded together: body and soul, physical and spiritual. Whole people. Sex is an amazing gift from God, and it is also a holy act, a yearning for the other person which somehow echoes our yearning for God. It is not casual at all. It is something very profound. It is holy. It is more than physical. And to engage in it puts not just body on body but soul on soul. And we have no right to touch someone’s soul outside of a commitment to God and the reciprocity of the other person in this mystery that we call marriage.

Every time we separate the physical from the rest of us, we get in trouble. It’s why there is so much guilt and pain tied up with sex outside of marriage. We think it’s just physical, but it’s not. It’s partially why prostitution is such a travesty. It’s partially why sexual abuse is such a horrible crime. It’s partially why pornography is so damaging, because these things encourage us to see or engage in sex as something that is just physical. It’s not, and it does great damage. We are whole people. This is something very different from what we are constantly taught in books, in movies, on television shows, in school…or on ads for rental cars or Viagra.

So the first thing from Psalm 139 is we are whole people. The second thing is that we are not alone. The theological word is “omnipresence,” that God is with us. Everywhere. All the time. No matter where we are, says the Psalmist- heaven (God is with us), the depths (God is with us), the farthest part of the sea (God is with us), in great darkness (God is with us).

Many times, we can’t see it until later (God is with us). Many times we need people to turn us towards it, or show us where God (with us). What the Psalmist says is: God IS with us. WAS with us. WILL be with us. We can’t outrun Him, intentionally or unintentionally. He hems me in, behind and before. His “right hand shall hold me fast.”

Most of the time, it’s a great comfort that God is with us. The flip side is sometimes sobering- we can’t escape God. It’s God we have to deal with. We are not alone.

So we are whole people, we are not alone. Finally, the third thing that keeps resonating from Psalm 139 is that we are known people. The Psalmist also says God knows everything about us. “Omniscience,” is the theological word. God knows everything. Says God knew us in beginning, even before we were born. Says God knows us in the midst of our lives. But he also says God knows about the end of life as well. “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed…I come to the end- I am still with you.”

Sometimes it’s hard to trust that God has known me since even before birth. Sometimes it’s hard to trust that he knows me now. But what about the end? Is this the place that we are asked to trust the very most? What if my days are up very soon? Can I trust God that whatever that number of those days is, he knows them and will be with me?

Last weekend I led a graveside memorial service for my cousin Paul. He’d had a heart attack when he was in his 30’s, and another in his 40’s. Two weeks ago at 53 he had a final one, and died sitting in an easy chair in the evening. I didn’t know him well, not since we were kids. Don’t really know where he was in terms of faith.

But as I stood there at the Washelli Cemetery, gathered with family members in great shock and grief, it gave me great comfort to read again these words of Psalm 139. To hear that there was more going on than just physical absence. We were on holy ground in God’s presence. God had known Paul before he was born, loved him during his life, and was with him still when he took his last breath. I pray that Paul responded to His presence, somehow, someway, at some point.

The scope of the Psalm 139 prayer stretches from before the beginning of life until after the end. Nothing is left out. Nothing is thrown away. Nothing is insignificant. This is our life. This is the life that God took on in Jesus Christ. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? That the way God chose to be God was to come born as a baby developed in a womb. To live in all the confusion and joy of a short life. To reach the end of days in death. And to come out the other side in resurrection., with a resurrection body. Jesus lived a whole life so that we might be whole people.

What do we DO with this? We are invited to simply respond. To love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Everything we have. What’s that sound like?

I heard an echo of it as I looked at the end of an old movie, Garden State. It’s a peculiar love story that looks like it might fall apart at the end at an airport as the young man and woman separate, but one comes back to find the other with these words: “I don’t want to waste anymore of my life without you in it.” Just responding.

We heard it in the Psalmist’s voice: “Lord, you hem me in, front and back. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.”

We heard it in the Apostle Paul’s voice: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! For from him and through him and to him are all things.”

It’s not about me.

And the sooner we understand that, the better we’ll know that we are whole people, that we are not alone and that we are known by God. Let’s pray.