Be Still and Know That I Am God: Sermon for the Funeral of Janet Hailey
Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Janet selected a Bible
verse for this day: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). She found
great comfort in this verse and wanted to share that comfort with you. Let’s
look at this verse in the context of the whole psalm, which was the basis for Luther’s
hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Nothing in the text specifies the
occasion when it was written. It could have provided comfort for God’s people
at many specific crises in Israel’s history. The reformers indeed recognized its
value. But its scope extends far beyond any one fulfillment in history. The
peace established by Christ’s return completes the fulfillment of this psalm,
allowing us to be still, no matter what is happening around us.
Psalm 46 expresses the
belief that God actively controls everything and that no one can escape
His reach. It is God who delivers disaster and deliverance. He decides our
fate. Now, a little reflection tells us this belief in God’s omnipotence is
either good news or bad news, depending on how God feels about someone at any
given moment. However, the obvious questions this line of thinking raises do
not bother someone who, like Janet, has no doubts about where she stands with
God.
The psalmist
confidently assumes that God is on his side and on the side of those he is
addressing. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble”
(Psalm 46:1). But I wonder, “How can he be so sure that God is on his side?” “Where
is God ‘a very present help’ in times of trouble?” I need to answer these
questions if I am going to make this psalm my own prayer.
The truth is that
troubles affect us all. Trouble can strike at any time and destroy any sense of
stability that we may have had. A day like today, when we gather for the
funeral of a loved one, indeed reminds us of this.
Psalm 46 seeks to quell
the doubts that are common to us all. Like a military commander seeking to
bolster the courage of his troops on the eve of a battle, he declares: “God is
our refuge and strength … Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives
way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters
roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.”
This is a statement
that can be understood in two ways. If understood literally, the words
refer to the undoing of the created world, perhaps the end of this age—a terrifying
future. If they are understood figuratively, the words refer to present
troubles, much as we say, “His world is falling apart.” But the literal and
figurative understandings are not unconnected. Present troubles are hints of
the final judgment, as a shadow hints at the reality that casts it. Either way,
“God is for us, a very present help in trouble.” We will not fear, no matter
what happens.
Yet
behind the confident cries and the expressions of certainty, those other
questions continue to gnaw: “Where is God so readily found?” “How is He a
refuge and strength?” “What does His help look like?” The questions call for
thoughtful contemplation beyond the brash rhetoric. And that is what the
speaker gives us in Psalm 46:4-5 as he calms things down. A sense of quiet
pervades the lines: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,”
an allusion to the garden of Eden, a tranquil place where everything was “very
good” (Genesis 1:31). This vision of
Eden, an idyllic place, brings peace to our anxious souls. The mood contrasts
with the turmoil of raging seas and falling mountains.
Psalm
46:5 brings us to another place and time: “the city of God, the holy habitation
of the Most High.” Jerusalem, the city of God, and Eden were two places where
God lived with His people. In the garden, God walked and talked with Adam and
Eve. God dwelled above the mercy seat in the sanctuary, and Israel worshiped in
the shade of His wings. In both places, God was “a very present help” (Psalm
46:1). In fact, Israel’s sanctuary itself had a back-to-Eden theme built into
it to remind the people of Israel of the paradise where they came from and
where they were headed. In the sanctuary, the place of God’s presence, past, present,
and future came together.
The
psalmist summarizes the course of human history up to its end in one sweeping
description: “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; He utters His voice, the
earth melts.” The language used to describe the course of earthly kingdoms is
similar to that used to describe the undoing of creation in Psalm 46:2-3. The
parallel is hard to miss. As goes the created world, so goes human power. The
instability of both is in sharp contrast to the stability found in Jerusalem.
Inside the city, God is present as an immediate help. Outside, chaos and
destruction reign.
The
perspective the psalmist gives us is unsettling because, in contrast to the God
for us (Psalm 46:1, 4-5), we see what God is like when He is against someone.
With the same ease that He spoke the creation into being, so He will speak, and
it will come to an end (2 Peter 3:5-7).
If we find the thought of the destructive
power of God outside the city troubling, the speaker is quick with the
consolation, which is always close at hand: “The Lord of hosts is with us; the
God of Jacob is our fortress” (Psalm 46:8). At every turning point in the psalm,
the speaker brings us back to the one thing he wants us to remember, no matter
how bad things may look. To the uneasy, the voice of God breaks in: “Be still,
and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted
in the earth!” (Psalm 46: 10). To the present age, this word is a warning and
also a prediction. Against humankind’s idolatry and arrogance, God has the
final say. No other god controls creation and history.
But
the psalmist does not leave us with that judgment. (He never does.) “The Lord
of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (Psalm 46:11). With this
refrain, we come full circle. The psalm leaves us where it started and where we
need to be, with the God who controls all things and who is our refuge.
But
still … a question remains: “How can I be sure that the psalmist’s vision
includes me?” In the comfort of a church pew, relatively trouble-free,
it is easy to join my friends in reciting: “God is our refuge and strength, a
very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives
way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea” (Psalm 46:1-2). I
can boldly shout, as long as it is only theoretical: “Let the waters roar and
foam. Let the mountains tremble at its swelling.” With our lips, we can profess:
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).
But what happens when our hearts are grieving? What happens when we are broken?
Do these words offer any comfort, then? The fact is that, in times of deepest
need, God seems not to be present, not at all easily found. Where is He when
you need Him most?
The psalm answers the
question by naming a place: “a river whose streams make glad the city of
God … God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her
when morning dawns” (Psalm 46:4-5). But how is this any answer for us? What do
these words have to do with us? Well, the apostle John tells us a story (John
2:13-25). When the leaders demanded a sign of Jesus’ authority to do such an outrageous
thing as cleansing the temple, Jesus said: “Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will raise it up again” (John 2:19). John says the temple Jesus spoke of
was His body (John 2:21).
John has something else
to say on this: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His
glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John
1:14). The voice of Psalm 46 speaks to us when we see that temple it talks about,
no longer names only a place but also a person. In Jesus, God is a
very present help for His people. By healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and raising
the dead, Jesus began to restore His broken creation to what God intended in
Eden. To be around Him was to experience God’s merciful presence. No wonder Jesus
is the source of “living water” (John 4:10-11; 7:38; Revelation 7:17), “the
water of life” (Revelation 21:6; 22:1, 17). He tells the Samaritan woman: “Whoever
drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that
I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life”
(John 4:14).
“A river whose streams
make glad the city of God” (Psalm 46:4). This clause also describes Jesus, the
Word of grace God has spoken to us. This is the Gospel through which the Holy Spirit
gladdens our hearts. “The city of God” no longer names a geographical place but
a people (John 4:21-24). As the sanctuary was in the midst of Jerusalem,
so the Church, the people of God, gathers around the Word that God offers us in
the preaching of the Gospel and the Sacraments. We come together around these
means of grace because it is here that God is “very present” as a “help” in
times of “trouble” (Psalm 46:1).
Jesus’ Supper, where we
hear God’s grace in the Words of Institution and receive His body and blood in
our mouths; the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sends to live within us
and to strengthen us; and the fellowship of Christ’s body, the Church—all these
give foretastes of a future reality. It is no accident that when Isaiah talks
about our hope, he links Zion and Eden, the city and the garden: “For the Lord
comforts Zion; He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like
Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in
her, thanksgiving and the voice of song” (Isaiah 51:3).
The apostle John
describes his vision of the Last Day similarly: “Then I saw a new heaven and a
new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the
sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from
heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation
21:1–2). “And I saw no temple in the city,” he says, for its temple is the Lord
God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22). And then John sees “the
river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God
and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either
side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding
its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the
nations” (Revelation 22:1–2)
In the end, we return
to the city of God and to the garden, two places where God was easily found. This
psalm takes us back to creation and the peace of Eden and to the sanctuary,
where God’s glory dwelled about the mercy seat of the ark and where David
longed to stay (Psalm 23:6), and then to Jesus, the greater temple, the Lamb. It
is from Him that springs of life-giving water flow (John 4:10-11; 7:38). He was
raised from the dead “when morning dawn[ed]” (Psalm 46:5; Matthew 28:1; Mark
16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1), and He will raise us also at the dawn of the new
and eternal day (2 Peter 1:19; Revelation 21:25). And these words bring us to
the Church, where we gather around His life-giving Word and Sacraments and
receive His Spirit to helps as we wait for the city and the garden at the end
of time, where God Himself dwells in the midst of a people who walk by His light
and see Him face-to-face (1 Corinthians 13:12; Revelation 21:3; 22:4).
Gary tells this story
of the last days before Janet died:
On the night of March 2nd, Mom was up all night with
nausea and pain. I was with her all night. She would be awake for about 10
minutes, then asleep for 10 minutes, then awake for 10 minutes, and it repeated
all night until she fell asleep at 11:00 am. Days before, she was hoping to get
better, but in the last couple of days, she just wanted to go to heaven. Three times
during her awake time that night, she said aloud, “Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord
my soul to take.” One time, after saying that prayer, she fell asleep, and when
she woke up, she said, “It’s so hard for me to get into heaven.”
At 11:55 on March 3rd, Janet’s fervent prayers and
fondest hopes were answered. She went to be with the Lord until the Day of
Resurrection when Christ will raise Janet, you and me, and all who have died in
the Lord to be with Him in His eternal kingdom. Until then, be still and know that
He is God, our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Amen
Unless otherwise
indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard
Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good
News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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