Note: Prior to the sermon, Pastor Simmons and Pastor Clifton presented the children’s book “The Runaway Bunny” in dramatic form as a modern parable to help understand the scripture.
Francis Thompson was an English poet who, in 1890, 
published a poem called The Hound of Heaven about a man running away from God, even as God steadily pursues him:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’
- The poem goes on like that for another 167 lines, describing the poet’s desperate attempt to flee from God and find happiness in the pleasures of the world. But his flight does not bring him happiness, as the voice of the pursuer points out by saying: “Naught shelters thee, who will not shelter me.” And yet, the poet keeps running, and the sections which describe his desperate and futile search for love and meaning sound frantic when read out loud.
- The Hound of Heaven is a long poem, full of archaic language we don’t use today, and can be very confusing. But Jesuit theologian J.F.X. O’Connor sums up all 182 lines of the poem with his own very short poem: The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and unperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace.
- Thompson named his poem The Hound of Heaven, but O’Connor adds his own touch by describing the fleeing soul as a rabbit. And that got me thinking about what happens when a dog catches a rabbit. Things generally don’t end well for the bunny and that is just what the poet fears: if he lets God’s love into his life, will it destroy him? But what the poet fails to realize is that in driving out God, he driven out the very thing he desires most: love.
I always think of The Hound of Heaven whenever I read Psalm 139, because depending on how you read the psalm, it can be either comforting or a bit disturbing.
- Think of the opening verses:
Lord, you have examined me.
You know me.
You know when I sit down and when I stand up.
Even from far away, you comprehend my plans.
You study my traveling and resting.
You are thoroughly familiar with all my ways.
There isn’t a word on my tongue, Lord,
that you don’t already know completely.
That can almost sound like “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness’ sake!”
- Or how about these lines,
You surround me—front and back.
You put your hand on me.
Does this mean that God nabs us, like a cop who gets his hands on a fleeing criminal?
- And then we come to the part which could be most troublesome:
Where could I go to get away from your spirit?
Where could I go to escape your presence?
If I went up to heaven, you would be there.
If I went down to the grave, you would be there too!
If I could fly on the wings of dawn,
stopping to rest only on the far side of the ocean—
even there your hand would guide me;
even there your strong hand would hold me tight!
If I said, “The darkness will definitely hide me;
the light will become night around me,”
even then the darkness isn’t too dark for you!
Nighttime would shine bright as day,
because darkness is the same as light to you!
Why would we want to run and hide from God?
The answer, I suspect, is in how we see God and how we base our relationship with God.
- It’s been almost 300 years since Jonathan Edwards preached his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, but the effect of that sermon lingers and I’m sure there are Christians today whose relationship with God is based in fear – the fear that they will mess up and earn God’s anger. They may not even realize this is how they feel, but this is the view that underlies their relationship with their Creator. They take the phrase “the fear of God” literally, seeing this not to mean respecting God, but as actually being afraid of God.
- But when Jesus referred to God as Father, he was encouraging us to see God as a loving parent – which brings me to the Runaway Bunny and a rabbit who symbolizes the faithfulness of God’s love. The little bunny obviously is not serious about running away – he is just testing his mother. And she responds not by becoming angry with him, but by reassuring him that no matter where he goes, he will always be in her care. He may try to abandon her, but she will not abandon him.
- But what if the bunny were a teenager and what if the mother bunny were abusive? Then the bunny might be very serious about running away and would probably not be reassured by the mother’s insistence that no matter where he ran, she would track him down.
- The line between faithful protector and stalker can sometimes be hard to identify, which is why Francis Thompson apparently hit a nerve when he titled his poem The Hound of Heaven. The idea of God as a hound who doggedly follows the fleeing soul resonated with the people who made this poem so popular.
But here is the question I want to ask: if God is seen as the Hound of Heaven, is the hound a Doberman or a St. Bernard?
- Now, I know from working for a veterinarian during high school that Dobermans can be very nice dogs. But they can also be trained to be very aggressive. Think of the movies you’ve seen where the hero is about to scale the fence around the bad guy’s property until he is met by a group of Dobermans baring their very sharp teeth and snarling up at him from the ground on the other side of the fence. Dobermans, rightly or wrongly, have a reputation for being rather vicious – you don’t want to anger a Doberman.
- So, if we see the Hound of Heaven as a Doberman, then God in this poem and in Psalm 139 can be seen as someone to fear.
But what if the Hound of Heaven is not a Doberman, but a St. Bernard – a friendly dog with a flask of brandy around her neck, determined to rescue a lost traveler?
- Search and Rescue teams routinely use dogs to help find people who have gotten lost in the wilderness. A dog can follow the lost person’s scent and lead the team to the stranded hiker.
- And when the team finds the lost person, he knows the team has his best interests at heart and so has no fear when they show up. Their dogged pursuit of him has been life-saving and the hiker is deeply grateful for their persistence.
And so how we read Psalm 139 probably reflects how we see God. Is our relationship with God based in fear, or in trust and gratitude?
- When I was in college and living away from home for the first time, I was one of the few students in my dorm – and later my sorority – who got up on Sunday mornings to trudge across the campus of the University of Illinois to worship at the local Presbyterian campus foundation.
- You don’t know cold until you have walked across a wind-swept prairie landscape on a frigid winter morning. But I made the trek each week no matter the weather because I needed to be in worship. I needed to lift my voice in song, I needed to encounter God’s ancient word made ever new through the excellent preaching of our pastor, I needed to bring my joys and concerns to God in prayer and to be reminded that I was not the center of the universe, and I needed to be in the company of other people who had gotten up early on a Sunday morning to the same reasons.
- For me worship was the time that God and I looked back on the previous week, all the places I had roamed literally or figuratively, and God laid God’s hand on my shoulder to gently guide me back onto a good path.
- When God laid God’s hand on me in worship (and God still does this), it was not scary – it was welcome. I felt like I was back on track and ready to face another week.
- And I think this kind of faithful guidance is what Psalm 139 is really about. So, I’d like to give you a few minutes to reflect on Psalm 139 and what it means to you, and Lindsey will give you instructions as to how this is going to work.