Be still my soul ...

Be Still My Soul

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on your side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
leave to your God to order and provide;
in every change God faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: your best, your heavenly friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
Be still, my soul: your God will undertake
to guide the future, as in ages past.
Your hope, your confidence let nothing shake;
all now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
the Christ who ruled them while he dwelt below.
Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on
when we shall be forever with the Lord,
when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
sorrow for forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past,
all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Text: Katharina von Schlegel, 1752;
trans. by Jane Borthwick, 1855 (Ps. 46:10)
Music: Jean Sibelius, 1899; arr. from The Hymnal, 1933

Jason

Enthroned on the praises of Israel ...

Any day is a good day to praise God;
Any place is a good place to glorify him.
And yet we neither praise God in every place
Nor glorify him every day. Why is that?

Perhaps there are days when we just don’t feel like it.
Maybe there are places in our lives where we feel
Too sad or too burdened to lift our voices to God.
But should we let those days or places exist?

Consider the example of Jesus.
Think about the worst time in his life;
Consider the worst place he ever was.
It’s not too hard to locate that, is it?
The day of his death, pinned to the cross …
Yet what does Jesus do on that day,
From that place? He quotes a psalm.
Not just any psalm. Psalm 22.
Remember the words from its first verse?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

This appears to be, at first, Jesus asking a “why” question.
And we know that asking God a “why” question
Is asking God the wrong question, don’t we?
The Jewish people who heard Jesus would have known;
They would have understood that he was quoting the psalm,
And they would have understood that by quoting
Its first line, he was, in effect, quoting the entire psalm.
Even when he did not have the breath to speak it all.
This was a device used frequently in the synagogue,
And it still happens in our pulpits today.
A part stands for the whole. A synecdoche.
So Jesus does not merely ask why; in effect
He delivers his entire lament to his Father:

Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.
Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.

Where is God? Enthroned upon our praises!
Why do we praise this God?

In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved;
in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.

Yet both the psalmist and Jesus
might understandably struggle
With trusting at this trying moment;
Neither might feel so close to salvation
While in the hands of their enemies …

But I am a worm, and not human;
scorned by others, and despised by the people.
All who see me mock at me;
they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;
"Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver —
let him rescue the one in whom he delights!"
Yet it was you who took me from the womb;
you kept me safe on my mother's breast.
On you I was cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

And so the psalmist describes the feelings of his heart
In a way that eerily foretells the events of the cross,
So well that they easily become the words of Jesus:

Many bulls encircle me,
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
For dogs are all around me;
a company of evildoers encircles me.
My hands and feet have shriveled;
I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
they divide my clothes among themselves,
and for my clothing they cast lots.
But you, O Lord, do not be far away!
O my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
my life from the power of the dog!
Save me from the mouth of the lion!

Despite these heart-breaking events,
Both the psalmist and Jesus anticipate the shift,
The turning from the disaster, and
The returning from the grave.
And in that turning which only God can empower
Is found the ultimate reason for praising God.

From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.
I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he did not despise or abhor
the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,
but heard when I cried to him.
From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord.
May your hearts live forever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.
To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying that he has done it.

May we have the courage and faith to trust God today,
enough trust to be able say “He has done it”
even before he finishes doing it.

May we give God the glory today.

Blessings,

Ron

Quotations are from the NRSV.

Once more into the breach

Today we will work our way toward Psalm 81:

A friend of mine, Charles Siburt, has said that “Ministry is grief management.” Some people have disagreed with him, but I wonder if that is because they believe instead that ministry is preaching, and the preacher’s job is to fill the silence with the sound of his voice. Although I think that preaching has its place, I don’t think that it does any good to break the silence unless our words heal the holes in people’s hearts. Consider these words:

I’ve said before that every craftsman
searches for what’s not there
to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten hole
where the roof caved in. A water carrier
picks the empty pot. A carpenter
stops at the house with no door.

Workers rush toward some hint
of emptiness, which they then
start to fill. Their hope, though,
is for emptiness, so don’t think
you must avoid it. It contains
what you need!
- Jellaludin Rumin, 13th century Persian mystic

God has made a habit of rushing to the emptiness; God knew that Adam and Eve would experience the emptiness of hunger, so he filled a garden with fruit.

God foresaw that a world covered with water would become a perverse kind of emptiness, a weird lifeless desert, so he had a man build an ark of life, a floating bridge, a place of providence for a world starved of hope, drowned with death, and covered with chaos.

God understood that a people fleeing from oppression would need safety. When this people came to a sea of trouble, a hole that threatened to swallow them whole, God build a bridge down through the water. He bridged the emptiness, and then he allowed the enemies of his beloved to be swallowed by that same emptiness.

Isn't this is what the psalmist celebrates in the 81st Psalm?

Sing aloud to God our strength;
shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
Raise a song, sound the tambourine,
the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon,
at the full moon, on our festal day.
For it is a statute for Israel,
an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
He made it a decree in Joseph,
when he went out over the land of Egypt.

I hear a voice I had not known:
"I relieved your shoulder of the burden;
your hands were freed from the basket.
In distress you called, and I rescued you;
I answered you in the secret place of thunder;
I tested you at the waters of Meribah.
Selah
Hear, O my people, while I admonish you;
O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
There shall be no strange god among you;
you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

Oh, if Israel will only hear, then they will open their empty mouths and God will fill them with what they need: manna and quail and water. Again and again, God jumps into the breach until finally, he sends his Son to show us how to do this for each other.

Jesus steps up to the biggest abyss of them all. Death. Time after time he walks to the edge and calls people up out of the life-swallowing chasm, the trap that has never before yielded anything. Death is disoriented. There are no toe-holds in its pit. There is no rope to reach the bottom of it. Rattled but reassured, death designs its revenge. And it seems all too easy, because Jesus literally seems to run at death. Darkness comes. The grave gapes and swallows. Death celebrates its ultimate banquet; the death of the one who made the tree of life. Too late, Death discovers that God in the flesh has build a bridge down through death to life that need never fear emptiness again. Death will have to swallow itself, and so be done.

He [Jesus] who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things. The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. (Eph 4:10-14)

He fills us with gifts, not so we can hear the sound of our voice in the silence, but so that we can throw ourselves in the breach, so that we can use the gifts that he has given us to heal the holes in the spiritual hearts of the wounded. He would have them brought to wholeness again. He would have us minister by daring to work with the grief of those who surround us. God grant us the courage to do this.

Grace and peace,

Ron