Psalm 46
I have long wanted to take up today’s question,
which comes in many forms,
but I believe I heard posed first thusly by our very own,
Professor Peter Jansson.
“when were you last still?”
Stillness feels to me an urgent concern,
in a world in which we’re constantly connected,
constantly comparing ourselves to another.
in a community in which there’s literally always something we ought to be doing:
an assignment, an email, a paper, a proposal.
in a world that values us for our output and production,
in the midst of a newscycle,
in which there’s always somethings that commands our attention,
our anger, our grief, and action.
Stillness is a bold and countercultural thing.
And hard to achieve.
And my answer to this question,
when was I last still?,
tends to be when I am set apart.
When I am in a quiet place.
I learned to be still when I was in the woods,
at a campsite,
late in the evening as dusk turns to dark,
or drinking an early morning coffee by a secluded lake.
Stillness for me,
has tended to mean quiet and separate from the noise of cities and people,
there, I have felt peace with the world,
I spent much of most summers during college,
on trail,
with campers on the rivers and lakes of Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Where I began to forge the beginnings of a mature connection to my faith and practice,
though I didn’t know it at the time.
A couple of years before Lillian was born,
Joanna and I spent a summer month,
at a retreat center in the Cascade Mountains,
called “Holden Village.”
To get there we had to take a plane,
and then a train.
And then a bus.
And then a ferry boat.
And then a school bus up a mountain,
to this old mining village.
Where I split firewood,
and carried peoples’ luggage,
in return for free room and board.
And it was quiet there,
and still and set apart
from the noise and business of the world.
It is those places – away from normal life –
when I think of this line,
“Be Still and Know that I am God.”
I think I have always loved it
Be still and know that I am God.
But I think too I always set it apart,
from the rest of Psalm 46.
A tagline,
a watchphrase,
a spiritual practice.
Divorced – like me in the woods –
from its context.
Stillness feels, I think, deeply important.
deeply countercultural,
deeply resonant.
But also – in this sense of separateness and retreat –
a privilege.
And so I will admit,
that as reports of violence escalating in Syria came about.
As we learned the name of another Black American,
Atatiana Jefferson,
killed in her home by police,
while playing games with her nephew,
as our national conversation turns to the chaos of impeachment,
and our local conversation to the pressing demands of a changing climate
I paused and wondered if “stillness” was appropriate.
The world is hard and the news is terrible,
and isn’t – I wondered –
this simply another release from responsibility.
Another avoidance tactic.
A disavowal of our weekly prayer,
“on earth as it is in heaven.”
To make things right in our souls,
even though they are not in the world.
Now, don’t get me wrong:
There is much in the world,
in our faith,
and in our scripture that commends
the idea of ‘retreat.’
In Mark Chapter 6,
Jesus says to his disciples,
just before he feeds a multitude of people,
“Come with me to a private, quiet place, and let’s rest awhile.”
I need that sense of quiet and separate sometimes,
and suspect many of you do as well,
otherwise you’d likely not have ended up with me here,
in this quiet chapel in this quiet town,
in this quiet part of Central PA.
If Jesus needed solitude – and he did –
we can too.
We don’t have to be in it all the time.
But I don’t think that’s what Psalm 46 is about.
And I don’t think it was until this week,
when I dug into it,
that I learned to love the entirety of this Psalm.
Which I think is telling us something different
That we need to find a stillness,
that we can find a stillness
in the midst of the chaos.
Now, to be fair,
it takes a bit of work to love this Psalm.
it’s hard to avoid to overtly militaristic picture of God
and one could easily come to the conclusion that God is,
here,
the cause of natural, military and political disaster.
The bringer of desolation,
and the melter of the earth, according to verse 6.
And if you grew up like I did.
You can’t read this Psalm,
without thinking
of Luther’s classic hymn
“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
Which is based on lines 1 and 2.
Forgive me if you are a fan.
I‘m not.
those plodding German chords and rhythms,
and those military images,
are simply not how I see and hear God at work in the world.
And every Reformation Sunday in my youth,
and sometimes in between,
we would feel obligated to bring it out,
dust it off,
and drone our way through.
But of course,
the Psalmist – and Luther –
both knew that fortresses,
even mighty ones in the world,
crumble and fall.
The point is not that God is a fortress,
which separates us from the world.
But rather that God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Or, if you noticed the note in your bibles,
a well-proved help in trouble.
Here and now,
and well tested,
God is with us in the midst of it all –
the violence, and the chaos, and noise.
John Goldingay – one of the great commentators on the Psalms –
suggests (Psalms, Vol ii),
“Nowhere do the psalms have an ideal of silence”
rather, they assume, “That one finds God not in silence, but in noise.”
My friend and colleague the Rev. Dr. Chaz Howard,
chaplain at UPenn,
who will visit us here in two weeks,
uses, as one of his central metaphors for God,
a pond in the midst of the city.
In the cacophony of the city, he writes, “I have been desensitized and hardly notice what is around me. I have been lulled to sleep by the loudest song. The pond is in the midst of this. The trees around and the peace within it close out the noise of life.”
and there, Chaz (Pond River Ocean Rain) finds his stillness.
Psalm 46 wants us to recognize,
that God’s strength is not – with due respect to Luther –
in fortification,
but rather in the way God shows up,
in spite of all the walls coming tumbling down.
– from Jericho to Jerusalem, Berlin and our own borders –
God shows up in the rubble and noise and chaos,
and right there says, “Be Still and Know that I am God.”
Thomas Merton,
wrote that the Psalms:
“tell us not merely what we ought to be but the unbelievable thing that we already are.”
we are at the same time in the desert and in the Promised Land. The Psalms are our Bread of Heaven in the wilderness of our Exodus.” (via Eric Mathis)
The stillness is within us and without,
right here amidst the assignments,
and the notifications, the emails and the meetings,
the political chaos.
God is with us saying,
I’m already here,
God is God,
and God’s promises and possibilities are already being filled in us,
And if we can be still,
we might begin to notice it.
And it won’t make us more separate from the world,
but more involved,
more in love with this in between time in which we live.
Both, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Enslavement in Egypt and the Wandering Desert and the Promised Land,
all woven together.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel,
in his essay “The Sabbath”
one of my favorite all-times texts,
asks our question thusly:
Is not our work always unfinished?
In the midst of University life,
that is quite plainly true.
We imagine we will be still,
we will rest,
after the paper, the lab, the assignment, the conference.
And when that moment comes,
we realize the next thing is already there.
But Rabbi Heschel’s question is true more broadly –
the work – to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly –
to love our families and our neighbors and our enemies –
is always unfinished.
There is always something we could be doing.
And so often,
it leads to our doing…nothing.
scrolling through images,
staring at screens,
and most of all, worrying.
And right as that reality sets in,
right where it sets in,
God says, “be still.”
I am God.
Always have been. Always will be.
And I’m not in the woods,
or after the paper’s turned in.
I’m right here with you,
well proved and ever present.
I came into the chaos for you,
and I’ll be there at the end,
saying,
Breathe, and be grateful.
Ask for help.
Pause. Retreat.
And once in a while,
in the whirlwind:
Be still and just know.
Stillness is not merely a privilege,
but a prophetic act,
which will allow us to remember that which is important,
which will allow us to love the world,
amidst the chaos.
And so briefly, let us not distract ourselves,
let us not fear our cracks,
and instead let the light and stillness in:
Say it today as we pray,
as you light a candle,
as you hold silence:
Be Still And Know That I Am God
Pray with me if you would.
God, the world is a chaotic place.
And we have fallen short.
We are worried, and frightened, and tired.
Grace us with your stillness.
Be with us in the noise.
And hear our prayers: of joy and concern, confession and hope.