Psalm 46
God is a safe place to hide,
ready to help when we need him.
We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,
courageous in seastorm and earthquake,
Before the rush and roar of oceans,
the tremors that shift mountains.
Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.
River fountains splash joy, cooling God’s city,
this sacred haunt of the Most High.
God lives here, the streets are safe,
God at your service from crack of dawn.
Godless nations rant and rave, kings and kingdoms threaten,
but Earth does anything he says.
Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.
Attention, all! See the marvels of God!
He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
breaks all the weapons across his knee.
“Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
loving look at me, your High God,
above politics, above everything.”
Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.
We all have different gifts. Some people have the gift of having their stuff together. That’s not my gift. My spiritual gift is knowing earlier than many, when things are going wonky with people. But these days, you don’t need any special gift to know that people all over the place feel like the world is unraveling and being strewn all over the place.
We’re living in such an anxious, upsetting, stormy and violent time. I can’t remember a time where I’ve seen more people so tossed and battered by the world. The storms these days seem deadly and unending. The earth changes, the mountains in the seas shake, the chaos of the sea rages and the solid earth that you thought you could always count on is shaking.
Wars and terror, our national elections filled with the hate, fear, rage and violence and then here in church… the place that is SUPPOSED to be the solid, never changing earth… two congregations see their solid pasts falling, uncontrollably away. But there is a promise from God in the midst of all this… it doesn’t change how bad the storm is or how horrible it feels… but it is a rock, solid promise: The God of Jacob (that’s the God that wrestled with Jacob in the river and gave Jacob the new name of Israel) THAT God, is with us.
I wrote last week on Facebook about Julian of Norwich. She was a nun back in the 1300’s. She was tormented by the question of why there was sin, brokenness, tumult, storms and all the rest of the stuff that unravels us, present in this world. In a vision, Jesus spoke to her saying: "It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". This was Jesus reminding Julian of the truth of today’s Psalm, that there is no storm, brokenness or even death that doesn't end us up right where God wants us to end up, which is in joy and peace, light and life.
The hard part is remembering to keep your eye, not on the chaos of the waves of the storms of life, but on Christ. Even the disciples had trouble with that. Do you remember the story of Peter walking on water? He wanted to walk on water to Jesus, so Jesus told him to come on, step out of the boat and do it. The chaos of the sea was kept firmly under Peter’s feet when he kept his eye on Jesus. But when he got distracted by the chaos of the ocean… by all that wet stuff between him and Jesus, he was sunk.
We’re living in a time where it’s SO easy to get distracted like Peter by the chaos of the ocean of STUFF all around us. We easily get sucked into the worry, hate, vitriol and pain swirling all around us and so we inevitably, like Peter, end up all wet. But remember, shaking mountains, raging seas and getting all wet is NOT the end of the story! Even after Peter got distracted, was all wet and sunk in the chaos of that ocean of stuff, he still got pulled out in the end. The Lord of Hosts was with him. The truth is that Jesus ALWAYS pulls us out, no matter how deep into the world’s STUFF we might have sunk. So, as Julian was reminded by Jesus, all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
All WILL be well… But… there’s always a but, isn't there? Even though all WILL be well… and it will… it doesn’t mean the raging seas and the shaking mountains will magically disappear. Jesus didn’t dry up the ocean to rescue Peter. He reached INTO it, and pulled him out THROUGH it! The chaos of this election will end but it won’t magically make the emotions, fears and anger that it brought so clearly to the surface go away. All WILL be well. That is true. The God of Jacob IS with us. That is true. But it is also true that the noise of the chaos of our world and the uncertainty of our church will still be with us on November 9th just as surely as the mountains are still with us after an earthquake and the seas are still with us after a storm.
Julian of Norwich, after her vision of Jesus reminding her that all will be well, had another vision. It was a vision where the devil attacked her, trying to take away the hope she saw in Christ. Too often a personified devil… a red guy with horns and a pitchfork, has been used to scare people and that’s not helpful. BUT, taking nebulous ideas that have the ungrabable consistency of smoke… things like, chaos, fear, doubt and insecurity and giving them a name and a solid form is a way to remind ourselves that everything that brings darkness, chaos and storms into our lives is finite… it all has a limit… it all has an end… and that no matter how the chaos and darkness rage, the God of Jacob IS our refuge and all will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.
One of my favorite icons is the icon of the Resurrection that shows the devil chained up in hell and the doors of hell blown off their hinges by the resurrected Christ. I think in the past, I foolishly dismissed the power of actually showing the devil chained up and defeated… still alive, still raging and flailing… still loud and obnoxious, for sure, but powerless and forever stuck in that hole under Jesus’ feet. That, to me, seems to be a good image for us to hold onto in our world today.
Because the raging and the flailing and the obnoxious noise of the devil will continue to rise into our world out of that hole in the form of hate, fear, sexism, racism, anger, violence and the other horrors of our world. And all of that obnoxious and horrible noise SOUNDS terrible, BUT… no matter how bad it SOUNDS, the truth is already known! The devil has no real power anymore. By the Grace of God, we’ve all been pulled out of the chaos through the waters of Baptism, fed at God’s Table and the Devil, even though still loud and obnoxious, is chained securely under the feet of the Resurrected Christ. The truth is that no matter how much the world rages, God’s got me. God's got you. God's got us and all will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well! The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob IS our refuge. Amen.
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