Be Still!

Text: Psalm 46

If this were some decades ago, we would be celebrating not Christ the King Sunday but rather Judgment Sunday. Or, as this church’s Swedish ancestors would have called it, Doom Sunday. In 1925, this jolly label was replaced pretty much everywhere by Christ the King Sunday. That, in turn, has sometimes been modified to the Realm of Christ Sunday, presumably for the sake of people who have problems with monarchs.

Regardless of its name, this feast Sunday was a reflection on the happy day when the powers of the world will be displaced finally by the power of God, whether that be the end of time or the restoration on earth of God’s rule as intended in creation. One of the readings for this day, but in another year, is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, where the sheep are separated from the goats. This is a judgment-at-the-end-of-time scene, but it is also about living according to God’s hopes in the present world, reminding us that caring for the hungry, the sick, and people in prison is caring for Christ. Right now, right here.

This double-meaning of the day—both heaven and earth—plays out in the readings. On the one hand, the Gospel today from Luke is usually read during Holy Week, but put here to make us think about what kind of king might die on the cross and what might be in store for him, and for us, after death. Remember me, says the criminal, when you come into your kingdom. That will be today, says, Jesus, but clearly not here on earth.

The psalm, on the other hand, is about present hope in the midst of chaotic danger. The God of Jacob—one name of God, our God—is our refuge and strength. Very present, the psalm says. In times of trouble—very now. The sentence both characterizes God (God is a person who provides refuge) and identifies God (where someone should turn to when they need refuge).

This psalm, Psalm 46, was the inspiration for the Lutheran theme song, A Mighty Fortress. Refuge, the word we sang today, is sometimes translated as stronghold—thus, fortress. Looking at things this way, God provides refuge from dangers around us. Refuge from natural destruction—of which we have seen too much these past few weeks, but which is always with us no matter how we behave or what we think. Though the earth will move (meaning perhaps earthquakes), the mountains shake and tremble, the seas (helped by the winds) roar and foam.

And refuge also from human destruction, political dangers, and violence. Kingdoms totter, it says. Nations get into an uproar. Wars rage. We do more harm to ourselves than nature ever has. Even when we know that wars do not make glad the people of God.

This psalm is not a treatise on the existence of evil and God’s role in it. It is not an essay on theodicy. It is about our relationship with God. It presupposes evil, or at least acknowledges it. Human and natural. The psalm characterizes and identifies us—as a kind of people who turn to God in times of inevitable trouble. Rather than turning to some other source of power. The power of violence or money, for example, or the power of ourselves alone. Who is our refuge among the many we might choose? God is.

This psalm is partly a song of hope and partly a song of confidence, but mostly it is a song of reliance. It is a paradigm (which is a more like a rule of thumb than a formula) for understanding and living in a difficult world.

A refuge is a stronghold, but it is also a place of quiet peace. A communal refuge from external threat, but also an individual refuge from the chaos of our lives. And from the cacophony of our internal conversations: worries, second thoughts, guilty thoughts, dark anger, regrets, fearful timidity. What St. Augustine, writing about this psalm, called “the contentious uproar in the human mind.” We can be as easily distracted and kept apart from God (and from each other) by the noisy crowd inside our heads as by the scary events outside us.

We are not very fond of kings, officially. Nonetheless, kings at their best represent an embodiment of refuge. Kings ideally sit on the throne in the service of humans and under the guidance of God. They provide a stronghold against external threats. They lead us and keep our minds on what matters. A monarch in the abstract cares for his or her people and provides for them. A coronation, like an inauguration, or an ordination, is a statement of hope and a statement of trust given.

We give to kings the power to settle disputes and to reconcile discord. We hope that God will do that. In our often heartbreaking attempts to organize the world, to keep the peace, to ensure prosperity, we natter away, doing as best we can. But we know that all this talk is often grandstanding or whistling in the dark and posturing. When God in the psalm shouts “be still!” God is not trying to calm us down but to shut us up. Stop it! Enough with the wars and the uproars. This is good news. Kings take charge for the good of all, and like children who get wound up too tightly, we desire and welcome the voice of authority. We know from all of human existence that we have not done very well untangling our own troubles and we pray for God’s intervention.

In spite of our suspicion of real-life monarchs, we persist in calling Christ a king because we want a king.

God is in the midst of the city. This is a psalm about expectations of God’s presence among us here. The God of Jacob is our refuge. The psalm is a celebration. Our refuge is not some other thing besides God, and our refuge is not some other God. Our refuge is not only at some other time, and it is not in some other place. The king of the universe is with us in our midst. The God of Jacob is our refuge.