Word of Salvation – July 2024

 

A Safe Place to Hide

 

Sermon by Harry Burggraaf B.D. on Psalm 46

Scripture Reading: Psalm 46; Hebrews 11:13-16

Songs:          The Lord is my Shepherd (BoW.023)
A mighty Fortress is our God (BoW.374)
Safe in the Shadow of the Lord (BoW.091)

 

God is a safe place to hide.  That’s the message for this morning.  Simply that – God is a safe place to hide.

[If using this sermon in a worship service you may want to substitute some more recent relevant disturbing news items.]

It’s been an eventful few weeks.  The government has passed or is passing some of the most controversial legislation in Australia’s recent history with the anti-terrorism and industrial relations laws; Nguyen Tuong Van has been executed in Singapore after weeks of news hype; Year 12 students have completed their exams and anxious parents wonder fearfully how they will behave themselves in schoolies week.  In our Dandenong congregation we’ve had several deaths and people struggle with loved ones getting older.

I don’t know what your life has been like this week; what challenges you’ve faced?  But if worship is taking the everyday stuff of our lives and bringing before God in praise and prayer and listening to what God has to say about it, how do we do that this morning?

Psalm 46 is a good place to start.

After Psalm 23 (the Shepherd Song) this Refuge Song is probably the Psalm that has most spoken into people’s lives over the ages.

It’s the song that is reflected in the desert wanderings of the Israelites in their Exodus from Egypt.

It’s the song of Jehoshaphat when the vast armies of Moab and Ammon were mobilised against him (2Chronicles 20)

It’s the prayer of Hezekiah when the brutal Assyrians led by Sennacherib taunted him in 701BC (Isaiah 37).

It’s the theme song of Martin Luther at the time of the Reformation – ‘A mighty fortress is our God, a refuge never failing’.

It’s a song that appears in Negro spirituals as they laboured in the cotton-fields under white oppression.

It’s a Psalm that sings us into coping with the everyday hassles, stresses, disappointments and challenges of life and lifts our eyes to our place of security.

A troubled world

If we didn’t know it, this song of the Sons of Korah (a guild of singers; a temple jazz group; like our worship group) highlights that we live in a sometimes troubled and difficult world.  The world is a violent place.  To exclude evil and danger and disaster we put deadlocks on our doors, build fences around our yards, place policemen on the streets, develop arsenals of weapons to protect our nation, pass draconian anti-terrorist laws.  The world is a dangerous place!  The Psalm uses some incredibly graphic images:

– something like standing on the edge of a cliff and experiencing vertigo (Hell’s Gate Port Arthur; or The Nerve Test in the Grampians; or even bungy jumping);

– like being caught in the middle of an earthquake and seeing all the buildings crumble around you;

– like being tossed about in a howling storm (as in the film ‘Perfect Storm’) or tumbled in a massive wave when you think you’ll never breathe again;

–  like walking across a battlefield with both sides shooting at you.

In fact Psalm 46 uses three sets of images:

First there is violence in nature (vs.2,3) – the earth opens its jaws in an earthquake, volcanoes erupt out of the ocean, flood waters spill destruction.  Sounds like the 6.00pm news bulletin.  Flooding in New Orleans; earthquakes in Pakistan; drought in Niger Africa; we know all about those things; this is our experience.

The second set of images refer to political violence (vs.6) – angry nations, kingdoms that disintegrate, presidents that are deposed.  How current that is.  Zimbabwe terrorizes its citizens; China continues to occupy Tibet; Somalia is a totally lawless, rogue state.

The third set of images refer to military violence (vs.9) — wars, bows, spears, chariots.  There’s your newspaper for the week – remembering the Bali bombing, another suicide attack in Jerusalem, the Iraq conflict continues, North Korea rattling its nukes.

Eugene Peterson, who wrote a lovely paraphrase of this Psalm says this: “Nature is violent.  Governments are violent.  People are violent.  Reading the Psalms is a shocking experience.  Praying is a courageous act.”

Praying is a courageous act…!

We need to notice that the focus of this Psalm is NOT all the misery in the world.  God is the subject of the Psalm.  The central thought is the repeated refrain (to be expressed ‘selah’ which means: forte, with volume and vigour; with drums)

The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge – our fortress!

The heartbeat of this Psalm is that prayer – God is our refuge, God is our fortress, God is our safe place to hide.  Repeated three times – after each section.   We only find it twice in our translations, but that’s seen by many as an omission due to a copyist error.

As I was engaging with the Psalm again this week I was reflecting on this idea of refuge – the place of shelter, the safe places of our lives, the areas of life where we feel secure.

Where is that safe place of your life?  Where do you feel secure?  Where do you feel cared for?

My brother had a frightening experience recently.  A successful, together, professional person, he had been suffering from increasing depression.  One day he turned up at work and he had to do a presentation to some clients.  He just froze.  His mind seized up.  Overwhelming anxiety just flooded his life.  For the next week all he could do was lie in a foetal position in bed.  His safe place…!

But even the womb isn’t a safe place for the 90,000 unborn children who are aborted in Australia each year.

Where is the safe place of your life?

Each Sunday afternoon some 150 to 200 Sudanese people come together for worship in our Dandenong church building.  Refugees; people who can tell you some of the most horrific experiences of fleeing economic, political, social, military violence.  For them Psalm 46 is very real.

In fact at this very time there are some 21 to 40 million people in the world (depending on who does the figures) who are displaced, who have no safe place, no home, no security; totally vulnerable to the government or group who might be willing to put up with them for a while.

I think most of us have no idea what that is like to be homeless, stateless, passport-less, identity-less, to have no connections, anywhere.

Perhaps there might be a little inkling of an idea through the migrant experience that some of us have had.

I recall very little from my childhood, but I do vividly remember my mother crying her eyes out as our ship, the Fairsea, left the Hook of Holland and my old grandad running to the end of the pier with his arms outstretched, never expecting to see each other again.

And again as we arrived in Melbourne and took the train (the old red rattler) to Albury and we arrived at Bonegilla migrant (now refugee) camp and it was pouring with rain and the bare huts and steel spring beds with the thin mattresses, and the stuff we carried in our cases was all we had, and my little sister sobbing ‘moeten we hier now wonen?’ (do we have to live here?)

And again when we settled in WA and lived in Dad’s work-shed while we were building the house and we used to make window and door frames with the buzzer and saw (all he owned) and the Jarrah sawdust just billowed into the lounge area and sleeping areas (it was before the days of dust extractors).  If you’ve never worked with Jarrah – it’s that rich red wood and the sawdust gets into everything – the sugar, the flour, into the curtains, up your nose.  At night you’d lie in your bed and wonder why the pillow was red – sawdust in your hair, and why the sheet was so uncomfortable – sawdust in your pyjamas.  And my mother sometimes quietly sobbing in the room next door.

But compared to being a refugee that is an adventure holiday.  To have absolutely no place to go, to have all your connections severed, to not be able to call anywhere home.

The Bible has a lot to say about providing refuge for the homeless, welcoming the stranger, providing for the displaced person, and I think Australia hasn’t always done it very well.  I sometimes wonder what the Old Testament prophets, a Jeremiah, or an Amos, would say if they were alive today.  It might not be that nice.  But that’s the kind of picture Psalm 46 opens up for us.

Of course Psalm 46 isn’t just about geographic refugees or physical threats.  Violence, danger, fear comes in many forms.  Many of us have placed this Psalm in the context of our own lives.  There is nothing more frightening than losing a lifelong partner and seeing only the loneliness that stretches ahead; or seeing the gradual onset of Alzheimer’s and loss of memory in a loved one.  Or early cancer.  Or the loss of your job.

Where do we go when life just seems too complicated, too big, too unmanageable, or when relationships are falling apart and we seem to be losing control?

Where do we go?

For Luther in the 1500s it must have been overwhelming to seemingly have the whole might of the institutional church of the day against him.  As he stood there in the Council of Worms defending his understanding of the scriptures with Emperor and Pope and Cardinals after his blood.  He saw his world as ‘with devils filled… and armed with cruel hate’..

Where could he go?

“A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.”  God was his safe place.

A refuge-providing God

It’s so easy just to recite prayers and let liturgy roll off our lips.

“The Lord Almighty is with us
the God of Jacob is our fortress.”  And then 3 times.

Have you ever considered those words closely.

In Hebrew it actually says ‘Yahweh Sabbaoth imanu’

‘Yahweh’ – that’s the covenant God, the highest name for God (the Jews wouldn’t even pronounce it, lest they desecrate the name).

‘Sabbaoth’ – that’s hosts, angel armies, the vast angelic troops.

When I reflect on the word I think of that battle in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ where King Aragorn leads the forces of good against the Orcs.  That great God of angel armies is ‘Imanu’ – that means ‘with us’; he’s the one that protects us and walks with us.

The God (and here is ’Elohim’ – a different word) the God of Jacob is our shelter… our fortress… our refuge.

Why the God of Jacob?  Why not Adam, Abraham, David?

Eugene Peterson translates this as the ‘Jacob-wrestling God’.

This is the God who struggled with Jacob at the river Jabbok when he was in mortal fear for his life; the God who engaged him personally; who embraced him in such a firm blessing of intimacy that it left Jacob crippled.  Sometimes seeing God’s blessing is a struggle.  We can argue and doubt and question and say with Jacob ‘I will not let you go until you bless me.’

A powerful God – ‘the Lord of hosts’, and a personal God – the ‘God of Jacob’.

But look at the surprising reversal of the way these names are connected, from what we might expect.

We would expect Lord of hosts (the military metaphor) to be connected with defence, and God of Jacob (the personal metaphor) to be connected with intimacy.  But it’s the other way around.

A powerful God (Lord of hosts) befriends us (is with us); a personal God (God of Jacob) protects us (is our refuge).

We get intimacy with the warrior God, and defence from the family friend.

The Reformation has always held to the unity of the Bible.  The two Testaments or covenants are two parts of a whole which can’t be separated or contrasted.  The New Testament is in the Old contained (in seed form), the Old Testament is in the New explained.

In Psalm 46 you have a wonderful example of that.  It isn’t recognised, I don’t think, as a Messianic Psalm and yet the Messiah is there.

Yahweh Sabbaoth immanu – God is with us, God is with us, God is with us; – three times.

The liturgical refrain constructs the reality for us.

Walter Brueggeman, in his imaginative book ‘Israel’s Praise’, suggests that in the Psalms the people of God sing their way into the reality of God’s protective presence.  The evidence may seem against it.  But it is so.  Sing it.

‘Immanu’; does that ring a bell?

‘You will call him Immanuel’ – the with-us God, Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.  The angel tells Joseph.

So in this Psalm you get the picture of God standing with us – the incarnation; not just some absent, distant God out there, but God standing with us – in the storm, in the political turmoil, while the arrows fly, with the refugees, at the deathbed, when friendships fail, when I can’t make sense of things any longer.

Believe it; believe it; believe it.

Psalm 46 is explained, I think, in that glorious hymn to Jesus the King in Colossians 1:

“Look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen.  We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created… everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him… from beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone… not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe – people and things, animals and atoms – get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.”

Psalm 46 says the same thing:
Roaring oceans, volcanic explosions (vs.3)
– there’s a city where God dwells and all is calm (vs.4)
Nations in uproar, politicians at each other’s throats (vs.6)
– one word from God and all is under control (v6)
The exorcet missiles and the nukes fly (vs.9)
– he breaks them over his knee (vs.9)

He’s in the business of putting back together all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe.

If only we have the eyes of faith to see it… to take it all in.

The Psalm finishes with this remarkable challenge to faith (vs.10) “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

It seems like an invitation to a quiet prayer meeting or silent contemplation.  It’s not.  It’s a bold challenge:

Literally it is like God saying: whoa. be quiet, stop it, slow down, shut up.  Peterson translates it as: ‘get out of the traffic’.  ‘Quit rushing, or worrying, or self-helping, long enough to look and see that I am in charge’, that I really am your safe place to hide’.

Immanuel; God really is with us!