Psalm 139: There's Knowing and there's Knowing

A Remembrance Sunday Sermon.

This morning we’ve heard the story of how the Grave of the Unknown Warrior came to be, and a poignant and moving story it is.

We’ll never know who’s buried there in Westminster Abbey, and that, of course, is exactly the point. It could be any of the men who were lost in the battles of the First World War, and that’s what makes this particular grave such a powerful symbol for so many people.

In treating this one man with such honour, that honour was conferred on every other soldier who fell in battle and was never laid to rest in a marked grave that could be visited or tended. Tens of thousands of families who were left in limbo, with no place to mourn, now had somewhere as a focal point for their remembrance, and the comfort that their loved one was thought fit to rest among kings.

It was as noble a gesture as could be managed, I think.

But a gesture is all that it could ever be. The reality it could never erase was the unimaginable carnage of those fields in France where a whole generation was lost in war.

I’d heard of the Grave of the Unknown Warrior before today but didn’t know the story behind it, and the more I read the more I found myself reflecting on that word ‘unknown’.

In one sense, of course, the soldier was exactly that. Unknown. We don’t know his identity. But in another sense, he is known, and known completely.

Around the Warrior’s tomb are four Biblical quotations:

The first – John’s gospel - speaks about sacrifice: GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS: (that he lay down his life for his friends)

The second – 1st Corinthians - speaks about hope we can have in the face of death – IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE. One of the claims of the Christian story is that Christ’s work will overcome even death in the end.

The other two speak about knowing:

Paul – 2nd Corinthians: UNKNOWN AND YET WELL KNOWN, DYING AND BEHOLD WE LIVE.

2nd Timothy: THE LORD KNOWETH THEM THAT ARE HIS.

The consistent witness of the Bible is that God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves.

Psalm 139 conveys that truth with beauty and conviction.

1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.

We are known.

And the apostle Paul emphasises that in those words we heard right at the beginning of our service.

“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.”

No matter where we are in the world’s pecking order. No matter if our unformed eyes never get to see the light of day beyond the womb. No matter if we die in a foreign field with no headstone to honour our sacrifice.

We are known., valued, understood, remembered and loved by God.

There are no nameless people in the eyes of our maker.

The story of the man who lies beneath that slab of marble in Westminster Abbey is no mystery to God. And nor are the stories of the hundreds of thousands of men who could equally well have occupied that space. And nor are the stories of the people they left behind; and nor are your stories, or mine.

We are all of us, however we live, however we die, known by God.

And that might be enough for us to hear today on this Remembrance Sunday. And I would love to leave it there.

But conscience doesn’t allow me to, because as I reflected on this I realised that the Bible has more to say on this, and what it says, we may not wish to hear.

What it has to say is that there is knowing and then there is knowing.

Let me illustrate with a story from Billy Connolly’s childhood.

Connolly tells a story about one Friday evening when his neighbour, Mr Cumberland, came home from his work at the Shipyard. Now I think Mr Cumberland had already had a refreshment or two on the way home, and he was fully intending to go back out to the pub after he’d delivered his pay packet had his dinner.

But Mrs Cumberland was having none of it. She’d been inside with ‘they weans’ – all day and if he wanted to go out for a drink he would need to get ‘they weans’ bathed and off to bed before he even thought about it.

So Mr Cumberland, rather the worse for wear, set off round the streets to round up his ten children and get them ready for bed. The only problem was he missed out two of his own kids and rounded up two Connolly’s by mistake – Billy and his sister. And before they knew what was happening they were scrubbed, changed and tucked up in bed with the Cumberlands!

Meanwhile, two wee Cumberlands were wandering the streets wondering where on earth the rest of their clan had gone!

There is knowing and there is knowing.

There’s a knowing which is about knowledge and there’s a knowing which is about intimacy and relationship.

Mr Cumberland knew he had ten children. He got that fact correct. But with a few drinks in him, he didn’t know which ten they were!

Couldn’t fault him on the facts. Did a bit less well on the relationship side of things!

There’s a knowing which is about intimacy.

Anyone who’s ever dipped into the King James version of the Bible will be familiar with phrases like “And Adam knew Eve, and they conceived a son”. “And Joseph took Mary home to be his wife, but he knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son. And he called his name Jesus”.

Knowing is about intimacy – mutuality.

Sometimes, years into a marriage, a man and a woman can find themselves on rocky ground, and one of the things that’s often said in those times is “I just don’t know you anymore”. And what’s meant is that the intimacy’s gone.

And we need to realise that when the Bible speaks about our knowing God, and being known by God, it’s not mere knowledge we’re speaking about. It’s talking about intimacy – a two-way relationship that’s right at the heart of things. This is what God wants for all his children.

In a sobering passage at the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus speaks about the day of judgment when the peoples of the world will be gathered before God to give an account of themselves. And it’s a very interesting read – not least because some with little or no expectation are welcomed into the kingdom. while some others, who are a little too sure of themselves, come a cropper.

And the words God says to those who are sent away from his presence are haunting. He says “I never knew you. I never knew you.”

In once sense, we are all known by God. No-one is nameless. No-one is forgotten or unknown. But we’re also called to a deeper knowing; a two-way relationship between the creator and the created, and it’s the work of Jesus that makes that kind of a relationship possible.

We’ve been thinking about how the Unknown Warrior became a representative of all those men who fell and were lost in battle.

One of the ways the Bible speaks about Jesus is as a representative. A representative of all humanity. We’re told that on the cross he took the blame for all our wrongdoing, so we could know peace with God, sinners though we are, if we trust in him.

And just as the honour that was afforded the Unknown Soldier spilled over to bring glory to his fallen comrades, so those who trust in Christ get to share in the honour that belongs to him, as the only begotten son of God.

There’s a story told about a young man who desperately wanted to see President Lincoln about an urgent matter, and he travelled all the way to the White House to get an audience with him.

But the man had no credentials, so the guards on the door refused him entry to the building.

As he sat disconsolately on the front steps of the White House, a young lad came running round the corner, and noticing he was upset, he sat down beside him and asked him what was wrong. The young man poured out his story and the wee boy drank it all in.

When he’d finished talking, the boy said – “Come with me, I think maybe I can help you”. The boy took him by the hand, led him into the White House through another entrance, and led him all the way to a grand oak door which he knocked in what sounded like a secret code.

He pushed the door open, and there behind the desk sat Abraham Lincoln. “Hello Tad – what can I do for you?” he said.

“Well, Father, I met this man outside and he’s desperate to talk to you” said the wee boy. And before long, the young man had his chance to talk with the President.

He’d known Lincoln by name and reputation. But now he had a different kind of knowing. The beginnings of an intimacy in relationship, made possible because of what the son had done.

There’s knowing, and then there’s knowing.

The good news of the gospel today is that none of us are strangers to God. We’re all known.

But the challenge of the gospel is whether we’re prepared to take things further and pursue the intimacy with God that Jesus made possible.

As ever, he leaves the choice in our hands.

Amen, and thanks be to God for the promises and the challenges of his word.