God is Crafty

Message by Holly Johnson
Pastor at Spirit Garage
Psalm 139
June 9, 2024

When I was 21 years old I got a job out in Seattle. My grandmother, I am told, told my father, “you can’t let her move out there. She doesn’t even know how to change a tire!”

So my dad taught me how to change a tire and I packed up my little Honda Civic and drove to Seattle. Good thing too, because while I know there are people who can go their whole lives without having a flat tire, I had two of them in the first year and a half.

One of them I was driving on I-5 with a friend, it was November and raining, of course, and we were out there changing the tire, and my new friend said to me, “this is like the worst weather to get a flat in.” 

And I thought to myself, “honey, you have no idea what the worst weather to get a flat in is.” 

But truthfully, while I was in a car with a new friend on that day, mostly I didn’t know anybody in Seattle at all. I went from College where I was surrounded by my people; some of my closest friends ever, to no one. My colleagues at the church I worked at were all near retirement. The kids in my youth group were the closest people my age, but they were high schoolers. 

On my days off, I would think to myself… if something happened to me today, no one would even think to look for me until Tuesday morning when I didn’t show up for staff meeting. When you live alone that’s just kind of the reality even if you do have community, like I do now. 

But then, the experience I had was that nobody knew me. This was both freeing and also really scary. 

Psalm 139 is a beautiful poem that talks about being known by God, in a really intimate way. God, you have searched me and known me. You know when I rise, when I sleep. You know when I go to the highest mountains, to the deep depths. There’s no where to go where you aren’t known by God. 

I wonder if this story was written by someone who had an experience like Jonah. Jonah boarded a ship to try to get away from what God was calling him to do. But then there was a storm, and they threw Jonah overboard because they figured he was the reason for the storm. He ends up in the belly of a whale. 

Even there, God is with him. 

Last week, when we started our summer series of exploring God as being at least as creative and quirky and curious as all of us, we talked about big cosmic things-the beginning of time, how God created with words, how God is still speaking; creating out of words that have a way of taking on flesh and dwelling among us. 

But this week we have a very different picture of a creative God. We have an intimate picture of a crafter who knit us together in our mother’s wombs; who hems us in; I love all these crafty images for God. God as knitter, God as sewer. It brings to mind images of my grandmother, with me standing on some stool, her sitting on another, pins in her mouth, going around me and pinning the hem in place. 

Me. God created me. Not just the night and the day, not just the waters and the dry land. Not just the animals in general, but this little fingernail. 

And you of course. That eyelash. That part of you that was one thing for awhile but is now something different. That part of you that is smart and knows what to do, and that part of you that is scared and wants to hide from the world. 

See if this rings true: Those of you who have come out to people, it seems like a lot of people have this experience of thinking it’s going to be a really big deal to tell someone that they’re queer in some way, but then have the experience where this loved one is not surprised at all-kind of “knew.” 

God knows like that. 

This God who knows what breaks your heart, what makes you sing, what is going to hurt now but eventually lead you to a place of freedom and purpose, what f-ed up thoughts you have sometimes. Where your self doubt is. Who and what you’re jealous of. What confuses you, where your blindspots are, what makes you shine. Where you are all the time, because you’re living in creation. Or maybe it would be better today we are living in creating, since it’s all always happening and we’re living in it. And we’re a part of it, and we’re changing it, from the inside out. This means, in fact, we’re co-creating with God in some very tiny way.

Because God is big, with numerous thoughts that are too weighty, too vast for us to comprehend encompasses all of who God is. All of who we are. All of what all is. And all means all. 

And that could be a scary thing I think; like that old Police song, 

“Every Breath you take… 

every move you make, 

every single day every step you take 

I’ll be watching you.”

But maybe instead of it being stalker-esque, we instead can understand it as never alone in a good way. 

Centuries later, we have Paul, the leader in the church who went all kinds of places to spread what he had experienced as Good news; the grace and love he had discovered in Christ. He says to us in a text we often hear at funerals: 

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Where can I go to hide from your spirit? No where. because there’s nothing that separates us from that. It’s everywhere all around us and we’re just in it, in this world that’s in it’s creative process all the time. 

Jesus, the Word-Made-Flesh, met a woman at a well one day. We hear this story in John 4. And I don’t think we know their whole conversation, but we do know that she was a woman, alone, at the well at mid-day, which meant she was probably some kind of not-included-in-community. Their conversation started with Jesus asking for a drink of water. And then somehow they got on the subject of the 6 men she’d been with; married to the first 5 but not the current one. And after their conversation, this woman goes running back to her village and she says to them, “come and meet the man who has told me everything I’ve ever done!” And this was apparently good news for her. 

I lost a friend a couple weeks ago. Brian was his name. And Brian also lived alone, so this is one of the reasons I’ve been thinking about those early years in Seattle, when I lived alone, before Brian became my roommate for awhile. 

And he still lived out there; lived alone, so his body wasn’t found until he was missed at an event a couple days later. hard. 

Except I don’t believe he was alone. I believe he was known and loved and with God in every breath he took. He was known when he laid down that night, and known when he didn’t rise the next day. He was known in every breath he took, and he was known beyond, when the breathing stopped. Brian was known and loved intimately by the Creative God who fashioned him in his mother’s womb. 

Like we all are. All a part of the creating living world, but known down to the bruised spot underneath the toenail where you dropped the chair on it. 

Known down to the deep dark things you don’t tell people about. 

Known in the things you only share with the ones you trust. 

Known before you knew it yourself. 

All of it. 

You’re just never alone. God’s next to you crafting with pins in her mouth.