Over these last few weeks of spring I have attended a joyful abundance of musical events offered by an assortment of elementary and middle school instrumentalists and choristers. The various events fell under that defining label: “spring concert.” It’s a bit remarkable; how similar the musical selections can be from generation to generation. Now I know how my parents felt when they sat in those auditoriums while we played “In the Mood” or “Satin Doll” or “Take the A Train.” Just this spring I heard “Smoke on the Water” and “Louise, Louise” and “Watermelon Man.” If they would have played “Freebird” or “Stairway to Heaven” or “25 or 6 to 4", I would have thought I was 14 years old all over again! I knew the repertoire, but the songs don’t sound the same these days. There’s something different about it when your listening to your kids. When your watching another generation tap their feet and move their lips as they count their rests. I knew the title, but it was different song. The context has everything to do with how you hear it.

Have you ever stopped and thought about how often the church sings Psalm 46. It’s remarkable really. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Most often, I think, I read those words standing before you at a memorial service, or over at the cemetery. When surrounded by all of the trappings of death and loss and grief, the context of that song could not be more clear. Neither could the need for God’s strength be more clear. And so the church affirms and reminds and assures and hopes and nudges and clings and whispers and shouts and sings. And we sing it over and over again in that time of trouble, God be our strength!

But then find yourself reading Psalm 46 after news of an earthquake, or at Sunday worship following another hurricane somewhere, or when we read it in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, the song sounds different. “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” The message is still about God as refuge and finding strength and stemming fear. Yet, when the powers of nature are shaking, the ears of the faithful attend to the psalmist’s words in a new way. Holding on through the darkness, through the night. The prophets promise for the city of God. God’s promise for those besieged by creation’s storm. “God will help it when the morning dawns.”

Psalm 46. And when the nations are in an uproar? Psalm 46 plays again. The morning news reports death in Iraq every day; civilians, soldiers, US personnel. Not like the numbers my son heard about this week on his trip to Gettysburg, not like the numbers my daughter saw in her trip to Washington last week; the Vietnam Memorial, the World War II Memorial, Arlington Cemetery. Maybe not huge numbers, but in trickles, five, twelve, twenty-eight. It ought to be like water torture tormenting the world’s soul, causing this nation to stop right in our tracks, especially on Memorial Day. Theorists and pundits and politicians talk of “exit strategies.” But prophets sing about ending war, and smashing weapons. Psalm 46 as the prophet’s plea. Like Isaiah the first, “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Is. 2). Like Isaiah the third, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent– it’s food is like dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord” (Is. 65). Like Amos, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5). Like Jesus, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Matthew 5). The Psalmist’s words burn when the nations are in an uproar. A prayer, a plea carved into the landscape of war. “The Lord makes wars to cease the end of the earth; the Lord breaks the bow and shatters the spear; the Lord burns the shield with fire.”

Psalm 46. The context has everything to do with how you hear it. Especially these familiar words near the end of the song. “Be still and know that I am God!” If you and I were sitting this morning in the outdoor chapel at Camp Johnsonburg, if we were joining those on the family retreat for morning worship? The amphitheater faces the lake. So imagine the morning mist lifting off the water. The towering trees reflected upon the water, as smooth as glass. There in creation’s worship setting, one of the kids stands to read Psalm 46. Suddenly you remember this line even before she gets there, even though you’re not one for chapter and verse. But sitting there on a sabbath morn, sitting there in the stillness, you know where that ten year old liturgist is going with this reading. “Be still and know that I am God!” A centering prayer. A breath prayer with a few extra words. Words of the psalmist that feed the soul there in the stillness!

Context is everything when you listen to a song. The problem is that there’s not much stillness here in Psalm 46. Mountains shaking in the heart of the sea. Threats to the holy city of God. Nations in an uproar. Earth melting. Desolations to behold. The psalmist doesn’t seem to be on retreat when God’s voice comes, when the role of the speaker changes, when the song shifts to the imperative. “Be still, and know that I am God.!” With the creation in turmoil, and the very dwelling place of God threatened by forces of chaos, and the kingdoms of the world tottering well beyond the edge of violence, God speaks. God speaks far from the stillness. “Be still, and know that I am God!” To those who stand as a threat to life in the peaceable kingdom, to the enemies of God’s intent for creation, to all the world’s leaders who fail over and over again to embrace that which works of peace, to those who repeatedly mistake their power for the power of God, to all who live within earshot of the prophet’s voice, to you who have long ago hooked your wagon to the world’s definitions of power and authority and success and meaning and money and life and achievement, to all who have bought into the world’s chaos, when any stillness is the last thing to be found.....to you and to me, the voice of God. The psalmist’s song number 46. In the imperative. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Be still. Drop it. Calm down. Stop the fighting. Abandon the chaos. Turn away. Be still and know that I am God.”

It’s more than an invitation to a retreat. Psalm 46. It’s a plea for surrender. For you and I cannot be still, nor can we know God, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not us, but God at work in us. John Calvin’s the “mavin” here when it comes to knowledge of God and the work of the Spirit; faith as established and illumined by the Holy Spirit. “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves” Calvin writes in the first sentence of his Institutes. Professor Ed Dowey would remind his students over at the seminary that using the word “knowledge” implies the work of the human mind is not left out of the process for Calvin. It’s just that the sinful, human mind gets no credit when it comes to the knowledge of God. For when it comes to knowing God and the things of salvation, Dowey would quote Calvin in reminding us, “the wisest of human beings are blinder than moles.”

Knowing God. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit. Cease and desist and allow God’s Spirit to work within and among you. Stop it. Stop the madness. Attend to what God is already doing within you. Psalm 46. When you are tossed right back into the deep waters of chaos come Tuesday morning, far from the stillness. There, even there. Be still and know that the God who one day will bring a new heaven and new earth, that same God is present in and for you. “Be still and know that I am God.” The endless persistent, imperative grace of God. Surrender. Some days that song from the psalmist sounds like one step in a twelve step path of faith. In the uproars of life and nations and world, God is in our midst. God will help when the morning dawns!

Just three or four years ago on a weekend like this full of graduations and reunions, Peter Gomes was preaching in Memorial Church at Harvard. “On these occasions I worry that we are selling you...a bill of goods,” he says. “Instead of preparing you for ‘success’, we should be preparing you to cope with failure when things don’t turn out right–whether it is your marriage, your job, your children, or your nation. We should all along have been inculcating in you not ‘modalities of thought’, but capacities for endurance. Instead of breading eagles we should have been breeding camels who will make it across the desert because they have what they require on the inside and will not quit....Put your confidence in something that works.” Gomes proclaims. “It is God who will keep you when all else has failed you; and it is God to whom you will turn when you have exhausted all of the alternatives. It is God on whom you will call when you get that fateful diagnosis. It is God on whom you will call when the bottom drops out; and it is God on whom you will call when you pass through those seasons of doubt and despair, when life itself seems not worth the living and you cannot remember the last victory; and it is God on whom you will call with your very last breath.” Put your confidence in something that works, says that university preacher.

“Be still and know that I am God” says that psalmist preacher.

Every time we sing Psalm 46, someone here has been rocked by the world’s shake, overwhelmed by life’s uproar, or hanging on until the morning darns. So together, we shall tap our feet, and move our lips, and count our rests. One generation after another. Singing faith in a new way.

Because God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

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