Carl, in worship committee, once said he really enjoyed hearing peoples sermons because they revealed so much about them. I'm not so sure I like the idea. You might, for example, find out that my favorite club is the misanthropists club of which I am the president, founder and only member. Given the high percentage of introverts in this group as well as our experience in recent years with others in our denomination, I know that many of you will be interested in joining. Sorry. Membership is closed. Though perhaps if you are really persistent I may let you join the curmudgeons auxiliary.

But, as much as I am and introvert and enjoy my privacy, I'm afraid I can't avoid letting you get to know me better in preaching this sermon. It took me years of frustrating struggle and a chronic illness for me to understand that, though I enjoy other people and would not want to be a recluse, I am still happiest when I am involved in solitary activities, or with one or a few other people. Having been given the ideal of the extrovert by my culture, however, I tried valiantly and painfully for many years to exemplify it.

Throughout this time my interaction with who I thought God was varied. There were times when I felt like trying to be a leader and communicating effectively with groups was trying to improve myself according to God's will and I begged God's assistance. There were other times when I felt my failures in one or another of the areas in the outer world on which I concentrated my self improvement efforts was a sign that God was not present and didn't exist. There were times when the consequences of my sometimes clumsy attempts to be a better person were bitterly painful and I felt angry and like it was unfair that God had placed this burden on me. Finding that throughout these difficult tasks my inner development was chugging steadily along was a great surprise to me. But throughout this struggle to come to terms with who I am, I continued to have the feeling that there was some discoverable truth about myself and that some one, perhaps God, knew it.

Does God know us like this? Is there anyone that you have complete confidence will understand who you are and what you are going through at a given moment? Can we know ourselves? Can we know each other?

We see the world through the colored glasses of our own idiosyncratic experiences and expectations. These glasses distort our view of others, of ourselves, of our circumstances. Paul, of course, did not have the benefit of the writings of Immanual Kant nor of the Gestalt psychologists when he wrote what I think is the passage in the Bible that has most influenced me:

1CO 13: [9] For we know in part and we prophesy in part, [10] but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. [11] When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. [12] Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

To know and to be known. When I examined the use of the word "know" in the Bible, it usually referred to us knowing God, God's will or God's purpose for us. While that is certainly a worthy topic for any Sunday sermon, that is not what I am talking about this morning. Today I want to consider how we, each of us individually, are known -- by each other, by ourselves and by God.

Early in our development we have the fantasy that someone else knows us better then we know ourselves. It has to do with the anticipation of our needs, the awareness of our hurts and pains, the knowledge of our likely reactions to anything that happens to us. At that time Mommy or Daddy really knows us.

In infancy, this is a true description of our status. Our care givers do know us better then we know ourselves. We have just this vague discomfort, the slight urge that we act upon. We cry. We coo. We giggle. We know only undifferentiated pleasures and undifferentiated discomfort. We express these things and the attentive parent monitors our well being. For a few blissful months Mommy and Daddy know best. Then, of course, we get to be toddlers.

The nature of this early relationship has been likened to our relationship to God. We are but infants. God is the all knowing master of the surrounding universe and our trivial fates within it. We have vague urges and inclinations. We experience pleasure and pain. But it is God who knows the significance of these things, so much so that the true significance of our immediate perceptions is overridden by what God knows.

It is this kind of knowing that I think the prophet Jeremiah was writing about in

JER 1:4 The word of the LORD came to me, saying,

JER 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

before you were born I set you apart..."

There have been abuses of this understanding of God's ultimate knowledge of us. Church authorities sometimes think that because God has ultimate knowledge, they share that knowledge. They see the world through the glasses of ecclesiastical orthodoxy and feel confident to use ancient formulas as if it is the formulas themselves that contain ultimate meaning, rather then being the transitory vessels that carry grace in a particular time and for a particular person or community.

My most dramatic memory in this area is when a friend lost his wife. He told me he went to his priest for comfort and what he got was a formulaic "It is God's will." This response was experienced as so cold and unfeeling that my friend felt betrayed by his Church. Such phrases would, perhaps, provide comfort for some, but had this priest known this man, he would not have spoken in this way. God may know, but we do not.

It does not take long for us to grow out of the simple needs of an infant. It is not long before some of us become sufficiently complicated that we have a difficult time conceiving of an all powerful God, or a personal God or even holding comfortably the idea of the existence of God at all.

But put aside these questions for a time, and explore with me the experience of being known. Because it is a lovely experience. Who among us would not like to be absolutely certain that when we hurt or excel, or find comfort or new meaning that some higher, greater person might notice and even find it worthy of attention?

I had an image of God one day. It has stayed with me so much so that I often think of God in this way. In this highly personal image I see God as a large, aged woman, worn and tired from having nursed untold numbers of children. She is hovering above a stormy sea, sitting like the Bhudda with her legs crossed beneath her and prepared to hold whomever comes to her in her arms, like she would hold a child. I imagine myself laying quietly in those arms, being loved and being perfectly known. This is a very comforting image for me and usually after I rest there for a while I am ready to go back to face the uncertainties of the corporal world.

This is a comforting image of God, an image of God as the one who holds us, warms us, carries us. It is the kind of image that Christians have long held. As Jesus says in John:

JN 10:14 "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me-- [15] just as the Father knows me and I know the Father--and I lay down my life for the sheep.

Or as Jesus says in LK 13:34 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings..."

Such an image comes to me when I become aware of needing comfort. In a sense, God comforts when I know I need comfort. It would be nice if the people around us were so responsive.

I cannot tell you the number of stories I have heard both in sessions with patients and from friends where some emotional pain results when they are not accurately known. It is very difficult for us to know each other. Our intentions, our purposes, are often complex and subtle. We often don't know them ourselves.

Most vivid is something that someone has said to me several times when frustrated about an interaction with her father. "He says 'I know you', but he doesn't know me. He'll never know me. He has no idea how I feel."

We will invariably misunderstand each other, and it will not be a rare event. Not at work, not at home, not at Church. In groups we know each other most frequently by the roles we play. At work, we are hired for a role. We are known for the list of skills we bring. Sam can type 80 words a minute. Joe can be counted on to be there when needed. Sally gets the job done. We are known by a set of descriptors that often does violence to our own sense of ourselves. I am more then my ability to swing a hammer, to diagnose a patient, to drive a bus. It is often because of the difficulty of playing these roles that we are so relieved to go home at the end of the day. Yet these roles also shift at home. Here we are known by a different set of people -- spouses, partners, children, parents -- each of whom has a different take on who we are and each of whom makes different demands on us, often having full confidence that they know us and what to expect from us.

It is the same within the congregation. We often talk about the Gifts of the Spirit and think about which ones we might have. But we don't often note that we only use the ones that are needed by the body. To a certain degree the Congregation has a corporate will that knows each of us the way it needs to know us. There are times when we are pressed to be different then we might most comfortably be. We are known by the group, but only in a limited way. It is not just ourselves who see "through a glass, but darkly" but the Church as well.

It is here that I have the most difficulty with the Mennonite theology of community. I don't offer any solutions to this difficulty, but just note that while the community often knows and serves its members well, there are times that it requires people to play roles that do not come naturally or easily to them, or at other times it requires members to neglect gifts and skills that are dear to them. This can sometimes be very painful.

We fail to know each other completely, at work, in families, in congregations. And we often fail to know ourselves.

I tell my elderly clients that development is a life long process. Each new developmental task requires us to access the skills and abilities we know in new ways. I helps us to understand our strengths and limitations. And I've met many older people, people who one would think would know themselves. But I've never met anyone, no matter how old, who I feel has been completely successful in knowing him or her self. I've met people with self confidence. I've met people who could accurately predict how they will feel or what they will do in a given situation. I've even met people who I believe demonstrate wisdom and great self understanding. But I've never met anyone who does not have the capacity to surprise themselves either with unexpected fortitude and ability or with shocking failings at crucial moments.

Our parents do not completely know us. Our bosses and co-workers don't really know us. Our families and friends know us only in part. Our faith community only has a glimpse of what we are really like. We can't even know ourselves.

How much more compelling, then, is the idea that God knows us. It is a wonderful image -- the idea that throughout our uncertainties, our anxieties, our mistakes and our blunders, there is One who is aware of us, loves us, and knows us to our very core.

Suspend the rule of your senses for a moment, and join me in this image. Prepare yourself by positioning yourselves as comfortably as you can. Close your eyes, if you feel safe doing so. Notice your breathing. Take a deep breath and exhale your tension. Breath quietly. I know that each of you have a set of images for God that have accumulated over the years. Call them up to your attention. Review these images. Select one that is a comforting warm image of God. If you don't have one from the past, chose a new one. Good. Now find a place. Chose a favorite room, a favorite site out side, somewhere that makes you feel good. Now take God with you to this place. Sit with God. Let God hold you. Walk with God in your favorite garden. Float with God over a quiet river. Place yourself in this quiet safe place with God. Now rest there. Rest with God. Tell yourself: "Here I am completely known. Here I am understood. Here my pain and suffering, my anger, my hurt, my intentions, my apprehensions, my desires, my wants, my wrongs, my mistakes, my hopes and my hopelessness are all understood. Accepted. Forgiven. Here I am loved." Enjoy this image. Stay with it. Take it home with you today. Keep it as a place you can come to again. Add it to the wealth of other images you already have that sustain you in your duties during the week. Now focus again on your breathing and come back to the world of the senses. Take a couple of quick breaths. Open your eyes. This image will stay with you for use later on, but now you are back in the mundane, hot noisy world again. I want to tell you a funny story about images. Its kind of a cosmic joke on me.

When I was in college there was a religious image that served to encompass all that was shallow and self serving about Bible belt fundementalism and evangelicalism. I don't remember the exact phrase in the country gospel song, it was something about Jesus in the front seat, me in the back seat, or perhaps Jesus riding shotgun in my four wheeler. There are probably several songs of this nature, any of which would send me and my hyper intellectual cronies into paroxism of scornful glee.

So imagine my surprise several years ago when one day as I was driving I noticed Jesus sitting next to me. I was tired, exhausted, demoralized, questioning the value of my work, and there in my minds eye was Jesus patting my arm and making it very clear that what I was doing was what he wanted me to do. As hokey as this would have sounded to me fifteen years ago, Jesus visits me frequently, now. He never really says anything, but I can tell by his body language how he feels. Often he is just hanging out, snapping his fingers and tapping his feet to the music I have playing. He can be a pretty cool guy. Sometimes he is waving his hand to get my attention. Other times he sits silently with tears coursing down his face. Sometimes he reaches his hand out to comfort me.

I pay attention to this image. I know that in psychological terms it is just a projection of my unconscious, a day dream that may tell me what is happening to me under the surface of my conscious awareness. But it is also, and more profoundly, a reflection of my belief that we know the world and ourselves through the lenses we choose to wear, and using the lenses given to us by Jesus, we can see that it is God that ultimately and completely knows us as the Creator and Sustainor of all things and knows me as I am.

As it says in

2CH 6:28 "When famine or plague comes to the land, or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, or when enemies besiege them in any of their cities, whatever disaster or disease may come, [29] and when a prayer or plea is made by any of your people Israel--each one aware of his afflictions and pains, and spreading out his hands toward this temple-- [30] then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Forgive, and deal with each man according to all he does, since you know his heart (for you alone know the hearts of men), [31] so that they will fear you and walk in your ways all the time they live in the land you gave our fathers.

Prayer:

Almighty God, who knows us and understands us in each stage of our growth, let us know you. Let us know your comfort, your compassion, your gentle warmth. Let us know you hovering over the seas, and sitting quietly beside us. Let us know you in your strength and in your sustaining power. Let us ultimately know your love and forgiveness, for this we ask in Jesus Name. Amen.