Feb 15th 2026 sermon:

Passage: Psalm 139:1-12

Sermon: Fleeing from God’s Real Presence

By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Today we are starting a Lenten series on the Rule of life, the first part which involves the regularity of attendance at public worship and especially at Holy Communion

As a child, I used to attend church religiously, virtually every Sunday. It was just what I did.  In our family, adult men never attended church except for high holidays like Christmas, maybe Easter, baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Though my grandpa Hird religiously avoided funerals until his own funeral.

As a teenager, after getting confirmed to please my religious mother, I religiously attended the golf course and ski hill, but still came to church for high holidays like Christmas and Easter.  Once a month I was a server/acolyte at the 8am communion service. I attended an Anglican youth group until it finally collapsed because it never allowed anything religious, like Jesus, prayer, or singing about God.  I even went on a youth retreat where God was completely missing.

I never struggled about my faith.  I was a believer but not a receiver. I never imagined that I needed to have a born-again experience.  I was an Anglican. I, like many, had been inoculated against a genuine experience with God.  I never disbelieved in God or church. I just found it boring, and emotionally disconnected.

My religious mother and very religious grandmother both thought that I would become an Anglican priest.  I thought that was ridiculous. I was going to become an electrical engineer like my beloved dad who I caddied for at the UBC golf course.  My dad’s favorite time for golfing by the way was Sunday morning when his wife and children were otherwise occupied.

When I began to genuinely wrestle at age 16 with the meaning of life, I polled my friends at High School as to the meaning of life.  Some talked about being happy or partying. No one, including myself, even mentioned God or Jesus.  I was hiding from God in plain sight, without even realizing it. 

When I received Jesus in January 1972 during the Jesus Movement, I was given a New Testament which I began to devour. It actually started to make sense.  Before that, the Bible was largely a closed book, though I enjoyed the battles in the Old Testament with David and Goliath. 

They also gave me a Four Spiritual Laws booklet.  How many of you have ever read either the Four Spiritual Laws & Billy Graham’s Steps to Peace, which you can find at the back of our church in English & Punjabi?

The follow-up section in these booklets includes Hebrew’s 10:25 KJV: “Don’t forsake the assembly together of the brethren as some have been doing.”

NIV: Don’t giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Regarding the importance of regular public worship, Charles Spurgeon wrote: I love to be in the house of God. There is no better place on earth than where Christ is preached and his people gathered

When I was radically converted, I told everybody and lost a lot of my secular friends, but God gave me new friends.  I actually began to love going to church and worshipping God.

In our high school in 1972, many closet Christians were coming out of the woodwork.  There were many secret Christians in our high school, but not one in five years had ever shared Jesus with me. Not one. Why are we so afraid to share our faith?

Psalms 139:1

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.  

Have you noticed the strong action verbs applied to God? Has God ever searched you out? What was it like? What are your strongest action verbs for God?

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

God is remarkably perceptive. He doesn’t miss a thing. He is never distracted.

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

God is remarkably discerning. What do you think that all my ways mean? All means all. The Latin word for all is omni, as in omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. The Greek for all is pan, as in pandemic,

Vs. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.

Does your spouse or family ever complete your sentences? God has us completely figured out. We can’t con God. He sees through all our pretending.

Vs. 5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.

How do you like it when God hems you in?

Vs. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Does God’s wonderfulness ever overwhelm you?

Vs. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

CS Lewis wrote in the  Letters to Malcom “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.”

I never really understood CS Lewis until I read Leanne Payne’s book Real Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Works of CS Lewis.

You will notice the Hebrew parallelism in vs 7: to flee from his presence is to flee from the Holy Spirit.  Yet as vs 8 puts it, the Holy Spirit is still there. He is inescapable.  As vs. 10 puts it, He’s still guiding us. He’s still holding us fast. As vs. 11-12 puts it, there is nowhere to hide from the Holy Spirit, there is no darkness where his light can’t shine in.  Where have you hidden from the Holy Spirit in your past?

Why are we as Canadians tempted to flee from the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit? We are often reluctant to change. How many like changing? How many like changing other people, like your spouse? How’s that working? Do they always thank you? Do they ever thank you? You cannot control the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity who is imaged in the bible in action, as wind, water, fire, a dove. You can’t box the Holy Spirit.

While I would say in the creed ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit’, I knew nothing about the Holy Spirit. I had no experience of the Holy Spirit. It was just a concept.

We were at a funeral yesterday for our oldest member of the BC Christian Ashram retreat, Norma Carruthers, age 98, the only one who actually met my hero E. Stanley Jones.  It was a nice funeral but Jesus was missing. Have you ever been to a funeral where Jesus is missing? Have you noticed that half the people in BC no longer have funeral or even celebration of life services? Many of those who do completely leave God and Jesus out of the service. He is no longer welcome. The only Jesus-centered part of the service was when Norma’s spiritual daughter Carol shared how she was born again at the BC Christian Ashram retreat. The rest of the service was spiritually antiseptic.  God in many Canadian churches is no longer allowed to be called Father. That would be ‘sexist’.  Many Canadian churches no longer talk about Jesus dying on the cross, shedding his blood to forgive our sins. Many Canadian churches either completely ignore the Holy Spirit or depersonalize the Holy Spirit into a star wars ‘the force be with you.’  Many Canadian churches are being subtlely invaded by the New Age movement.  No wonder so many of us as Canadians are unconsciously fleeing from the Holy Spirit.  

Sadly, many of us as Canadians have become wilfully blind & deaf. Many don’t want to hear. If you share the gospel with them, some will cut you off. They don’t want to hear. Imagine what might happens if Canadians woke up and stopped going through the motions, especially in our Canadian churches? Imagine if Jesus was welcomed back into Canadian Churches? How might that change Canada? While I am hoping for political change, I know that this will not save Canada. We need Jesus. We need the Holy Spirit.

Janice and I are writing a Light Magazine article on Pastor Bernice Gerard who was raised far from God. I’d like to invite Pastor Roman & Pat Kozak to come up for a moment as they knew Bernice well.

Can you tell us how Bernice’s stepfamily was fleeing from God’s presence?

One of Bernice’s social workers did not want Bernice to be involved with the Holy Spirit, so they sent her to St. Philip’s Anglican Church in Dunbar to protect her from the Holy Spirit. They even had her teach Sunday School there to Grade Six boys, in what was then the second largest Sunday School in North America with 1,400 children. St Philip’s is where I was baptized in 1954 and later was ordained in 1980 and then 1981. The Holy Spirit is very hard to keep out of churches. He has even been sneaking into many Anglican Churches like All Saints. 😉

In conclusion, what does it mean to take communion each Sunday at All Saints?  Sadly, we can flee from God’s presence even as we are taking communion, by taking it for granted, by taking it distractedly, by rushing to get it over so we can move on to the next thing, by taking communion while hanging on to resentment and unforgiveness.

Dr. Derek Prince gave us three helpful eanings of Holy Communion 1st) Present Proclamation 2nd) past Remembrance of the past 3rd) Future Anticipation, looking forward to his second coming. Derek insightfully says about Communion: No past but the cross; no future but the second coming. Derek said three key things about Christ’s body in Holy Communion 1) Recognition 2) Participation 3) Sharing

Derek Prince said that to recognize is to discern looking below the surface. I am feeding on the body of the Lord if you partake rightly, by faith with thanksgiving. We the living body of Christ will today be receiving together the body of Christ

Commmunion is not just about remembering but also covenantly receiving by faith with thanksgiving both your forgiveness and your healing in body, mind.  When taking communion, we need to receive by faith what was already given to us. There is a supernatural power we receive in Holy Communion.  We often expect too little when we receive the Eucharist

The Greek New Testament term in Ephesians 5:31-32 for sacrament is mysterion. Holy Communion is a holy mystery. We will never completely figure it out. But we can still receive its benefits by faith with thanksgiving.

It is the body of Christ spiritually rather than physically. Spiritually means the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer said that we receive the body and blood in a heavenly and spiritual manner.

Our secular default is that the spiritual is not the real or the true. So a spiritual presence can’t be a real or true presence.

The real presence of the Holy Spirit is sometimes experiential but always transformative.  Jesus hosts us at his Table, at his heavenly banquet. There is a food here that I can’t get anywhere else. Spiritually speaking, we become what we eat.

Article 25 of the Anglican thirty-nine articles calls communion an effectual sign, means that it conveys the grace it signifies to those who receive it by faith with thanksgiving: …And in such only as worthily receive the same (sacraments), they have a wholesome effect or operation.

Article 28 also teaches that The Supper of our Lord …is a sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death; insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ…And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten is faith.

How many of you have ever been touched by the Lord as you receive communion? Would you like that to happen to you today? Shall we receive God’s real presence today in Holy Communion, by faith with thanksgiving? Let us pray.