Thursday afternoon my mom was scheduled to leave Fort Wayne, Indiana and fly to Houston by way of Detroit.  When I went to check her flight status I noticed one dreadful word posted – cancelled.  To make a long story short, mom wound up flying out of Toledo, Ohio and arriving in Houston about 4 hours later than planned.  She got here as planned, just wound up going a different way.  That is how this sermon has gone this week.  I have been excited about preaching from a favorite psalm of famous preachers.  This was Martin Luther’s favorite psalm.  When things got very tense and the church was bearing down on him because of his Reformation movement, he would turn to his friend Philipp Melancthon and say, “Come, let us sing the 46^th Psalm.”  However, the more I studied this psalm the more I realized my flight was taking a different path.  John Calvin stated that in the verses that were just read, the psalmist turned his discourse to the enemies of the people of God.  Did you get that? These verses were not written to the friends of God, but the enemies of God’s people.  Bernhard Anderson stated in his book on the Psalms that these verses are often misunderstood as a summons to quiet meditation or a spiritual pause, but that it was actually addressed to the powers that oppose God’s will of shalom, peace. 

Today we conclude our six week sermon series on prayer.  We have discovered that prayer is the most ancient, widely practiced therapy on earth.  I shared that one resource that has helped me with a structure for prayer is The 2959 Prayer Plan by Peter Lord.  This loose leaf notebook identifies five components to prayer that can be labeled on a drawing of a hand – awe (which is our response to the character of God), gratitude (which is our response to the goodness of God), confession (which is our response to the holiness of God), intercession (which is our response to the love of God for all people), and petition (which is my response to the power and wisdom of God for my life).  Across the palm of the visual aid was written one word – listen – reminding us of the importance of pausing to hear God’s voice.  Today, we focus on the practice of listening. 

I have to confess that when I selected this psalm, I really was hearing an invitation to quiet meditation or spiritual pause.  I am sure that much of this expectation was influenced by one of my favorite hymns, “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. 

That stanza combined with those two verses of the Psalm that were read earlier seems to be such a wonderful invitation to silence.  However, the more I read about this psalm, the more I realized that this was not an invitation, it is an imperative – Be still and know!  The practice of listening in prayer leads us to know several things.  Through the discipline of silence and listening, we know who is God, we know who God is, and we know where God is.  This morning I invite you to, no I insist that you, be still and know.
 

Be Still and Know Who Is God.

There are several theories as to the occasion for the writing of this psalm.  Some scholars believe that it was written after the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites sought to destroy the kingdom of Judah during the reign of King Jehoshaphat in the 9^th Century B.C.  Some believe it was after the attempts of King Sennacherib of Assyria to destroy the kingdom of Judah 150 years later.  Some believe it was written during the time of Alexander the Great’s sweep of the Middle East in the 4^th Century B.C.  Others believe it was written as a New Year’s song declaring the sufficiency of God and calling the people of God to seek refuge in the presence and power of God.  I actually lean toward the Jehoshaphat story, principally because I like it.  It is a story told in 2 Chronicles 20.  The Moabites, Ammonites, and the people of Mount Seir all advancing on the tiny nation of Judah.  The king was honest in his prayer, “We are powerless…we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”  Then Jehoshaphat listened.  The Lord sent a prophet named Jahaziel to speak for the Lord.  This is what he said, “This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf.”  So Jehoshaphat led the people in some singing and as they sang, confusion set in for their opponents.  Apparently, the Moabites and Ammonites did not know that the folks from Mount Seir were planning to invade Jerusalem.  So when they stumbled upon them in their advance, they startled their warriors who began to strike.  By the end of the day there were so many casualties and so much stuff left in the abandoned camps that it took the people of Jerusalem three days to carry all the good stuff up to Jerusalem.

its land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?”  To Sennacharib the Lord shouts, “raphah, Be quiet!  Stop talking!”

I mentioned that my mom is visiting this weekend.  Even though she never studied Hebrew, I am quite sure she knew the power of this word, raphah.  She is the mother of eight children.  I am in the middle at number four.  It was not uncommon during my growing up years for her children to create a level of chaos that threatened the shalom, the peace, of Findlay, and perhaps all of Jerusalem.  However, when mom had had enough she would raise her voice to an exclamation point level and shout, “Be quiet, all of you!”  At that point, we all knew who was the parent.  Not a peep came from any of us.

Of course, it is not just rowdy kids and arrogant emperors who threaten God’s desired shalom.  We can get so busy and our lives so noisy that we forget who is God.  We begin to fool ourselves into thinking that it all depends on us and lead lives that become almost frightened of the silence.  Wayne Muller wrote in his wonderful book on Sabbath, “One of our fears of quiet is if we stop and listen, we will hear the emptiness of our own lives.”  Be still and know who is God.  I will give you a hint – it is not you.
 

Be Still and Know Who God Is.

This may sound like I am saying the same thing, but I assure you the statement is considerably different.  The first statement assures us of who is God – the Lord who revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; who spoke through Moses and Miriam, prophets and priests.  Here we come to know who God is – one who is exalted among the nations; exalted in the earth.  Jean Calvin pointed out, “God’s power is not enclosed within the narrow limits of Judea.”  God has dominion over all the nations and has sovereignty over all the earth.  God is not geographically limited.

Mother Teresa taught that it is only when we are still that we can begin to know who God is.  She often said, “Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen.  For God speaks in the silence of your heart.”  Edwin Keith declared, “Prayer is exhaling the spirit of man and inhaling the spirit of God.”  John Bunyan wrote, “When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words be without heart.”  There is value in silence and listening in prayer that I fear we are losing in a fast paced life.  The end result of this is that we will never know who God is until we listen for God’s still small voice that often refuses to compete with the busyness of our schedules and the noise of our lives.

I have had the chance to get to know our confirmands some during this year.  I have spoken to them a couple of times, served them communion, and visited with some of them to discuss the meaning of the questions that they answered in the affirmative today.  However, I got to know them best when I was able to listen to them around the table on their Spring retreat.  We were playing a game that Katy, one of their counselors taught us.  She called it The Nelson Game.  The idea of the game is to sit around the table, the more the merrier, and to alternate between a word and a drawing of the word.  After the first round I discovered that it is more fun if you choose a word that is not all that easy to draw.  I chose the word, “omelet”.  The first person drew an omelet pretty well.  However, the next person saw the picture and wrote the words, “scrambled eggs”.  The next person drew what looked like a t-bone steak and was thus identified.  The next steak was colored in and one of our confirmands thought it might be a shofar that he had read about in his Bible.  But he misspelled shofar and his “f” was mistaken for an “l” so the person next to him thought it was a scholar.  Here it took a rather odd turn and the person holding a briefcase was identified as Kip, who later became identified as Pastor Kip.  So that is how we go from an omelet to Pastor Kip around the confirmation table.  The kids laughed about that and came up to me the next day wondering what I did with my papers from The Nelson Game.  I told them I took them home with me and kept them.  The game was fun, but the thing that I will never forget was listening to these young people interact with one another and joke around with the preacher.  There was no lesson plan, no sermon outline, just some people spending time with each other.

If that is how we get to know who others are, why do we expect to get to know who God is any differently.  Make sure you include listening in your prayer life.  Be still and know who God is.
 

Be Still and Know Where God Is.

The last verse gives off such great comfort.  The Lord of hosts is with us.  The hosts are the powers of heavens.  This verse assures the singer of this psalm that God’s power is capable of handling all that life may be throwing at them.  The God of Jacob is our refuge.  God is our hiding place and our stronghold.  We discover that God is wherever life becomes overwhelming.  God is our refuge.

Last month, Chelsea and I had the chance to see the musical, “In the Heights,” which made a swing through Houston.  We had seen it a couple of years ago in New York, and fell in love with it.  At one point in the second act, the mother, Camilla, is confronting her husband who made a decision without consulting the family and their daughter who had dropped out of college without telling her parents.  The daughter and her father were arguing about the situation when the mother shouts, “Raphah!”  Actually she shouted, “Enough!” and since it is a musical she started singing.  She sang words that I have cherished since first I heard them, “If you have a problem you come home. You don’t run off and hide from your family all alone!  You hear me?  When you have a problem you come home.  As long as we’re alive you’re never on your own.”  This is the message that I want my family to always know.  It is a message that I always knew when I was growing up.  I got into trouble once or twice when I was growing up.  Sometimes it may have even been my fault.  None of that mattered at the time.  If I needed a refuge, I went home.  Mom was able to meet whoever came to the door seeking her sweet, innocent child.

Sometimes we find ourselves in difficult situations.  At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what prompted the writing of this psalm – Sennacherib, Moabites, Greeks, all of them – because everyone of us will have times when God’s shalom, God’s will for peace, is threatened.  Sometimes it will happen from those outside of us, and sometimes the chaos comes from inside.  In those times when you need a refuge, when you need someone to stand up for you – God is there.  God is right there.  Be still and know where God is.

Flight plans changed on Thursday.  Mom thought she was flying out of Fort Wayne and I thought I was writing a sermon of serene invitation.  The weather got a little rough and God shouted to all who would oppose shalom, “Raphah! Be still and know that I am God!” In this imperative we discover who is God, who God is, and where God is.  Be still and know. 

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 and know.  Amen.