Psalm 46 – When There’s Trouble, God Can Always Be Located
These days, the tune played daily on the Brandt Campanile, the bell tower between the Chapel and the Christopher Center, is A Mighty Fortress is Our God, referred to by some as the “Anthem of the Reformation.” Thursday, October 31 is the 507th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, a series of events that changed the course of history in many significant ways.
The hymn, both text and tune, was written by Martin Luther and is based on the 46th Psalm. Writing hymns that were paraphrases of one of the psalms was a regular move made by the hymn-writers of this period. They were eager to provide songs for people to sing in the vernacular during the Sunday service. Until then, the service was entirely Latin, and the people were mostly passive observers. Luther encouraged his colleagues to write hymns in plain and straightforward language, sparking a hymn-writing explosion to which he contributed. In the early days, Luther produced a new hymn every other week, most based on a psalm.
This shouldn’t surprise us; first, the Psalms are poetry. Many were intended to be sung in the liturgy of their day. Secondly, Luther had been an Augustinian monk. As a monk, he joined the communal prayer of the monastery eight times a day. In these prayer times, monks prayed the Psalms in an order that took them through all 150 every week! Luther likely had them all memorized! Finally, Luther’s earliest lectures as a university professor were on the Psalms.
He took up Psalm 46 because he knew it well and regarded it as relevant to his time. It’s pertinent to ours as well. It is a combination of lament and praise, and the praise isn’t celebration so much as it is confidence and courage.
The poem is in three sections, each concluding with the untranslatable word “Selah” which may be an indicator for a pause. The first section reads in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV);
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah
The phrase “a very present help” can be more literally translated “an always findable help.” God is not like a friend who is there with you in the good times, but then when things go sideways, they are M.I.A. God is better than that Life 360 app because God is not only locatable. God is with us in the middle of the trouble. Jesus promised, “I am with you always.”
This promise of God’s continuous presence allows the poet to go through life without fear, even if solid mountains fall into the chaotic depths of the sea in a great undoing of creation when the dry ground was formed by lifting the land of order and stability out of the primordial chaos of the depths.
The second section starts a new thought;
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar; the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice; the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
“There is a river…” reads like this is a pleasant and calming place, but the English translations have provided “There is” to make it more readable. The Hebrew construction was more like,”Hey! A river! “And canals!”
There’s just a little stream in the city of Jerusalem, but the Revelation to John picks up the image of this Psalm and describes a river of life flowing through the heavenly Jerusalem. Furthermore, Psalm 46 is collected with the rest of the Psalms for a people who have been forcibly removed from Jerusalem. They have no personal experience with the city. This can only be a future hope. But it’s not pie in the sky. Because when you’ve got hope for the future, you’ve got courage for the day.
The nations are in an uproar but when God speaks, everything melts. It’s the only appropriate response to the heat and light of God’s presence. The socio-political work of humans will be revealed as nothing before the power of God.
This leads into the summarizing refrain: “The Lord of hosts, is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold.”
The third and final section continues this theme of divine destruction:
Come, behold the works of the Lord;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations;
I am exalted in the earth.”
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
God brings desolations? How is that good news? And then the reset of the verses describe what God is destroying, namely human war-making. It’s the bows that God is breaking. It is the spears and shields that God is destroying. It’s the war-making of humanity that God is causing to be desolate.
And then comes the verse “Be still and know that I am God.”
This line is frequently used in hymns that inspire a contemplative mode, and that’s really great. But the sense in the Hebrew poem is more like, “Stop! Put down that weapon!”
By the time Luther writes his hymn based on this psalm, he’s in the middle of organizing the new church in Germany, a task that was loaded with challenge and struggle. There were all kinds of ways that things fell short of what was hoped for. Though he enjoyed the company of talented collaborators there were also people on every side who created trouble. There were continuing threats of real physical violence. So he sees Psalm 46 and all of the drama that’s in there and says, “This is a good one. This is a good psalm to sing.”
What about the drama of your life? None of us are on the run for our lives or hiding out in a castle for years at a time. None of us are fighting the fights that Luther was.
We’ve got other things going on.
Think about the nations raging and think about the anxiety that is gripping this country as we get closer and closer to election day,
There are intractable wars in Gaza and Lebanon and Ukraine. We now know that North Korea is sending troops into Russia. Nobody’s paying attention to what’s going on in Sudan, and dozens of other places of conflict around the world. The nations are raging.
But our hope does not lie with the nations.
Closer to home, we are all daily living out the struggle that is higher education and students frequently feel like they are caught in the crossfire as administration and faculty try to figure out the best way to do this thing called Valparaiso University.
The social order around us trembles.
But that’s not where our hope lies.
Let’s talk about the mountains falling into the sea. Maybe we’re not in an earthquake zone, but they thought that Asheville, North Carolina, was a climate haven. And then it wasn’t.
There’s not a day that goes by that the students on this campus aren’t aware that the Earth is getting warmer, wondering how much longer it’s going to be livable. And you know, the fact that it’s human-caused means two things at the same time. It means that we could do something about it. So the fact that we seem to not be doing anything about it adds to the anxiety.
The whole created order seems to be unraveling!
But even that is not where our hope lies.
Our hope lies in the findable presence of the one who has bound himself to us in life, death, and resurrection. Jesus Christ, the victor.
This is not an excuse to disconnect and stop paying attention and not care about the climate or peacemaking or social justice or anything like that. It is the awareness that we do that work with courage born in hope.
Hope not in ourselves, but in God’s solid promise that allows us to take stock of how bad it is and yet move through our days with a quiet confidence.
It’s a solid refrain: “The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold.”
Pr. Jim
Rev. Katherine Museus and Rev. James A. Wetzstein serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions.
October 30, 2024