“You Are Not an Accident”

Psalm 139:1-18

Psalm 139 is one man’s up close and personal prayer. It displays his intimate, day in and day out relationship with God. The psalmist knows God as well as any human can. More importantly the psalmist is aware that God knows him - inside out, upside down, and crossways. He has known him since conception. He will know and be with him all the days of his earthly life. He will know and be with him in the life to come. As the opening line our denomination’s “Brief Statement of Faith” so aptly puts it, “In life and in death [he belongs] to God.”

There are several different approaches a preacher can take in regard to Psalm 139. One – the one I use in conjunction with Romans 8:31-39 when I prepare a funeral sermon – is to highlight the reality that God is always with us. No matter where we go there God is – even if we’d rather he not be. His presence is neither our choice nor our decision. Furthermore, to use Paul’s words to the Romans in chapter eight, there is nothing in all of creation or beyond creation that can separate us from the love of God.

If we are in Christ, the loving presence of God accompanies us through every moment of this life and the life beyond. Even death is not a lonely experience, for God is with us. “In life and in death we belong to God.”

The approach emphasized in this sermon is summed up by these words from the psalm itself: “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb… My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret…. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.”

As two different commentators put it, “God [sees us] as an embryo long before any person [sees] the evidence of our development… God [records] our development day by day…” [and] “When I was but an embryonic speck [God] took charge of me and knitted together my bodily frame.”

It should be obvious that mine is a pro-life stance. At this time in the life of our nation and our church abortion is a hot-button issue. No longer is it just a matter of morality and ethics. The debates over it have long passed from the ecclesiastical stage to the political and legal. One would have to be unbelievably naïve to think that there are no economic implications. There is a lot of money to be made in the abortion business.

For me, however, abortion is one of those up close and personal issues. It’s not merely a legal issue. Nor is it just one more political football to be kicked around out there. Although it is for me a moral, ethical, theological, and biblical issue, my beliefs transcend all of that. As a Christian husband, father, and grandfather my pro-life stance is grounded in that indescribable mystery that is God’s act of creation. Life is a miracle. It can not be dealt with impassionately.

As soon as Sandy and I saw the sonogram image of Erin and Allen’s new baby we claimed that speck as our grandchild. That little one in my daughter’s womb is neither an ethical dilemma nor point of theological debate. He or she is not a political issue in our home. While it’s true in the cold hard scientific language that is so often used today that this little bit of life may simply be a fetus, to us that little bit of life a baby. He or she is our grandchild. With months to go before that child is even born we love and cherish it. We anxiously await his or her birth. Meanwhile we prayerfully place that child in God’s hands.

And we do so on faith, knowing that he or she is already in God’s hands. Wherever that baby is, God is there. From now until forever that child is surrounded by the love of God, just as is every unborn little girl or boy. Those specks of tissue – those fetuses – those clumps of cells are creations of God. It is at his initiative that they exist. It is he who breathes life into them. Although we learn more and more each day about the conception and development of children, we don’t know everything. Although we are becoming more and more aware of the many physical and emotional facets of each person’s in-utero experience, we have much, much more to learn. The ultimate creation of life is a mystery – and a miracle – initiated and understood only by God.

The bottom line of all this is that our little grandson or granddaughter is not an accident. Nor are we. You and I are creations of God, and pretty important ones at that. As Psalm 8 puts it, God has made us only a little lower than the angels; he has crowned us with glory and honor. It was God who knit us together in the womb. Even there we are glorious. As the psalmist puts it, “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works…” You and I are wonderful works of God.

And we are his wonderful works from the get-go. “In life and in death we belong to God.” From embryonic speck through every stage of life we are God’s very own creation whether we want to be or not. “Where can [we] go from [his] Spirit? Or where can we flee from [his] presence?” Nowhere. No such place exists, not even within the deepest recesses of our minds and hearts. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me… “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.”

That psalmist knew that he was not an accident. He knew and believed with all his heart that he was a creation of God. So did the prophet Jeremiah. Listen to what God told him: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…” God created Jeremiah, and he created him with a specific purpose in mind. “… I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” The truth of Scripture is that our lives in God begin even before we are conceived.

The Apostle Paul was very aware of the fact that his calling to be an apostle was not an accident. He knew that he was not an accidental, incidental Christian. He knew that way back in the immeasurable depths of eternity God formed him for his vital role in the life of the early church.

Paul didn’t just believe that about himself. From his perspective no Christian is an accident. With no intention of getting into that wonderful mystery of God that is divine election, or to take this sermon for a walk through that theological minefield called predestination, let me share with you these words from Romans 8: “For those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son… And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

We are not the accidental result of two random cells uniting. Nor are we just some unintended consequence of two people’s passion. Some children are conceived in love. Some are not. Some of us were planned. Some of us were not. Some of us are wanted. Many children are not. But in the eyes of God none of us is ever an accident. Not you. Not me. We were conceived according to the oft times inexplicable purposes of God. “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.”

But what about that child whose conception is the result of rape? Or that child who will be born with extreme mental or physical disabilities? What if we must choose between saving the baby and saving the mother? Those are questions without easy answers, serious questions that demand serious and prayerful answers.

Many things I do not know. These things I do. Abortion is never, ever to be used as a means of birth control. Babies are not to be aborted simply as a matter of convenience or as an easy way to deal with the results of our foolishness. No life, born or unborn, is ever to be taken cavalierly. Not on a battlefield. Not in an executioner’s chamber. Not on an operating table. Not when there is any other option.

For it was God who formed our inward parts, who knit us together in our mother’s womb. We must never go lightly about the task of destroying what only God can make. Amen.