Psalm 46 and the 24-Hour News Cycle

Read Psalm 46

The news headlines this week have focused on the Taliban’s take-over of Afghanistan and the attempts to remove U.S. troops and allies safely as well as the requisite opinions of who is to blame, what is to be done, and where Afghan refugees should go, an earthquake that killed over 2000 people in Haiti, the rising number of COVID19 cases across the country and continued wildfires out west. Closer to home other headlines were all about the Iowa State Fair, where just a couple of days ago we had the pleasure of seeing a full-sized cow sculpted out of butter.

I don’t fault the news for covering the chaos in Afghanistan or the earthquake in Haiti or the rise of COVID cases. They are newsworthy stories. And for entirely different reasons so is the butter cow, I guess. But, my question is how do we live in the world in which we do as followers of Jesus? How do we respond faithfully to the 24-hour news cycle? Some of the headlines will be the same next week but another round of chaos will hit us. I’m currently reading the first installment of The Mysterious Benedict Society, a kid’s book but highly entertaining, and the book refers to all the news and noise and talking heads and opinions on mass media as The Emergency. The Emergency is always happening - the headlines are different from week to week, the corruption affects different people, different politicians or parties are to blame but The Emergency never ends.

It is Friday. My kids are at the public pool for the last time before school starts next week. We have Fall sports practices, back to school shopping, summer events (like eating more sweet corn) still to enjoy, and a deck staining project to finish. And while my kids are floating down the lazy river there are kids in Kabul who might not make it to tomorrow. What do we do with the everyday realities of a suburban household of six and the chaos we see around the world?

I have to confess that my initial reaction to the news is to simply turn it off. We recently spent five days in Glacier National Park and had little to no contact with the outside world - no television, no phone service, no email or podcasts or social media. When we returned to civilization I found out, among other things, that the entire Cubs team was traded away while we were camping. All the noise and all the news all still happened during those five days while we were radio silent but we were blissfully ignorant. We continued to live our lives unaffected. I didn’t feel compelled at all to go back and read the headlines of days I missed.

But while regularly unplugging is probably healthy for our souls (see Andy Crouch’s The Tech Wise Family) and certainly using discernment in the quality and the integrity of the information, news and opinions we consume is necessary, I can’t believe that simply ignoring The Emergency is the most faithful response - as much as I wish it was.

My sermon text this week is Psalm 46. The earth gives way. The mountains fall into the seas. The nations rage. The kingdoms totter. The staying power of the relevance of Scripture is uncanny. There really is nothing new under the sun. What can we learn from this prayer of living faithfully amidst the tumult?

Psalm 46 invites us to ask three questions that I think help reorient us so that we can respond well to the barrage of news that hits us every day.

Where do we seek refuge?

The Psalm begins with confidence. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

This is repeated two more times as a refrain. “The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress” (vs. 7, 11). The word “fortress” here in the ESV is a different word than refuge in verse one (KJV keeps “refuge,” NASB “stronghold”, NIV “fortress”) but has a similar meaning - a high wall, or tower. God is the place of safety and strength. This begs the question: where do we go for refuge?

The Psalms assume we are all refugees. Even Jesus himself had to flee Judea to Egypt for safety from the infanticide of the tyrant Herod (Matthew 2:13-18). A fact that we can’t take lightly as we consider the complexities of modern day refugees.

But here the question is where do we go in times of trouble? Our initial tendency is to flee to places of comfort. Comfort food and drink and diversions like social media, nine hours of football on a Sunday or watching the whole Friday Night Lights series for the third time are the most common. We also find refuge in the familiar, where we feel at home among our own. Our favorite talking heads confirm our assumptions about The Emergency - its causes, effects and solutions. We feel vindicated as we watch, or participate semi-anonymously in, the battles raging on-line and in the news. Seeking out comfort and the familiar in times of trouble happens almost subconsciously - we just go there. But, if we seek refuge from CNBC or FoxNews we will never find it. They are dependent on The Emergency continuing next week.

For God to be our refuge we must actively go after him. This may not be comfortable at first - He is not safe after all, nor familiar, as his ways are not our ways and he will challenge our assumptions. But, what does it look like practically to find refuge in God? Partly, I think, is learning to see how our other places of refuge are not really safe places at all.

Where do we find peace?

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God” (verse 4). The image is of a stream flowing through the city of God - streams provide water, food, transportation but are also simply an image of tranquility. In contrast to the roaring seas, the crashing mountains, the raging nations and the tottering kingdoms is peace like a river.

“God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved” (verse 5).

The presence of God is our peace. The city of God is marked by God’s presence. The repeated refrain of the Psalm reminds us of this: “The God of Jacob is with us” (vs.7, 11). One of the hardest truths to grapple with is that the promise of peace is not tied to the promise of changing circumstances. We want circumstances to change; we want peace in Kabul; we want humanitarian aid and shelter and care for those in Haiti; we want the pandemic to end; we want the cancer diagnosis in our loved one to be replaced by a remission diagnosis. But, the promise is for God to be with us not for those things to change. We certainly are to pray for those changes and to strive as we can toward that end. But, our peace is not dependent on that change.

My dad was flipping through the channels the other day while I was making lunch and he landed on an automobile auction. We are not a family of car enthusiasts, we typically buy boring, practical, reliable cars and run them til they can’t go anymore. The car up for auction was a Lamborghini from the early 2000’s. The host of the show described the specs, most of which I didn’t understand, and then she said, “The thing about getting a Lamborghini is, if you have a Lamborghini, you know you’ve made it.” And then she just kept on going with her description of the car.

That line, “You know you’ve made it” jumped out at me. Oh, that is what it means to “make it.” A Lamborghini. Now, I know what we have all been looking for all this time.

Of course we know that this isn’t the case. But, we all have our own ways of ending the sentence, “If I only had…then…” If I only had that relationship, job, vacation, waistline, house, etc. then I would find peace. But, peace never comes, no matter the circumstances. It comes from elsewhere.

Where does true power lie?

The third question this Psalm asks is where does true power lie?

God speaks. The earth melts. God breaks the bow, the spear, and the chariot. He makes wars cease. God brings desolations on the earth. This is not the picture of the clockmaker god who got the world started and then left us to our own devices. God is the God who speaks and acts and the tumult of the raging nations and the tottering kingdoms pale in comparison.

The famous line from this Psalm, “Be still and know that I am God” (vs. 10) is less a call to meditation and contemplation to experience God’s presence and more of a shaking of the shoulders - “Remember, who has the ultimate power.” It is more of a scolding than an invitation. The bombs and bulldozers of this world are nothing in comparison to the maker of the galaxies.

Darrell Johnson often encourages preachers of the power of preaching with this simple reminder.

God said, “Let there be light.” And there was, lots of it.

Jesus said, “Be still.” And the waves and winds ceased.

Jesus said, “Lazarus, come out.” And the previously dead man walked out of the tomb.

When the living God speaks, something happens, always.

In Matthew 8 a Centurion comes to Jesus to intercede on behalf of his ailing servant. Jesus is willing to heal the man and asks where to go. The Centurion says to Jesus that it is unnecessary for them to go to his home because Jesus only needs to say the words and the servant will be healed. He knows what authority looks like. As a Centurion he was in command of soldiers and if he commanded them to go somewhere they must go. If he wants them to stop and rest they must stop and rest. And the Centurion knows that Jesus has that kind of authority over everything, even the disease affecting his servant. Jesus says the word and it is so.

But there is another reality here as well. The Centurion’s servant was not the only person sick that day in Capernaum. Nor was Lazarus the only recently deceased person in Bethany. And as far as we know Jesus didn’t heal all those who were sick or raise others from the dead that day. Not because he couldn’t (12 Legions of angels are at his disposal) and not because he didn’t care (he grieves for Jerusalem (Mt. 23:37ff.) and every other city) but for reasons we don’t know.

The 24-hour news cycle is so deflating because in almost every situation we have no control over what is happening and God, who does have control, does not seem to be acting in the way that we want him to.

Psalm 46 doesn’t solve that. At least not immediately. What it does is reorient our focus. The cascading mountains, roaring seas and raging nations are present in the Psalm. But, the Psalm’s focus is on the Lord of Hosts who is our refuge and the God of Jacob who is with us.

This reorientation does not relieve us from our obligation to respond to The Emergency. It gives us the proper foundation on which we can now respond with wisdom, humility and perspective.

Do what we can today.

We pray Psalm 46 in order to remember where we are to go for refuge, in whom we find true peace and where true power lies. And now we are ready to pray for Afghanistan and Haiti and our hospitals and neighbors and schools and public officials. We pray for circumstances to change and we pray for God’s presence to carry us and them when for whatever reason those circumstances don’t change, or when they worsen. We pray for justice - for the oppressors to be humbled and for the humble to be lifted up. We pray for God’s mercy on those in our communities and around the world who will never receive such justice in their lifetime.

We respond locally when we can’t act globally. A friend of mine posted a picture of Afghan friends of his who have family members in the airport waiting to be transported home. This gave me a face and a name for whom to pray. But, it also reminded me that my friend has Afghan friends in his community because he and his church have intentionally built relationships with refugees over the past decade. Those relationships have taken time and awkward misunderstandings and effort.

While we were hiking in Glacier we happened upon some long-time family friends of ours (3 miles in on the Highline Trail hundreds of miles from both of our homes). He was a professor with my dad in Chicago 25 years ago, my brother’s debate coach, and he taught at Westmont when I was there. I hadn’t seen him in twenty years. I asked him and his wife what they were up to these days. He said that he is still coaching college soccer and he said his wife is working to end child trafficking. She added that she works for an organization that works to end child trafficking. As far as I know she doesn’t travel widely to do this work. But, it has global ramifications.

I’m guessing most of you reading this today already have jobs. And that getting kids ready for school, working, keeping house, volunteering at your local church, making and cleaning up meals, trying to lose a year of extra quarantine pounds, finding twenty minutes to read a good book, get to and from soccer practice (and volleyball and football at the same time in three different places) and get the lawn mowed before your neighbors start complaining is enough on your plate for the day.

Psalm 46 removes the weight of The Emergency off of your shoulders and puts it the one who can carry it. This does not absolve us from taking action. It does invite us to find an element of The Emergency that we are particularly drawn to, gifted for, and to take baby steps today to get more involved to do our part in the millennia long process of God restoring all things. Restoring your living room and kitchen to rights might be all you’re called to do tonight, it’s my list too, but I also plan to ask my kids to find Kabul on a map so at least I, and they, know where it is. And then I will ask them to pray with me for the children there who must be unspeakably scared. That God would speak over their city and bring peace to their hearts. And I will learn greater compassion from hearing my kids pray with me.

Psalm 46 was the inspiration for Martin Luther’s hymn, A Mighty Fortress is our God. The hymn acknowledges The Emergency - a flood, mortal ills prevailing, and our ancient foe armed with cruel hate. But, it is God the Mighty Fortress, “a bulwark never failing” that is the theme of the song.

Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing;

Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing.

Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He,

Lord Sabaoth His name, From age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

The Emergency raged on in 1529 when Luther wrote those words as it does still today. But, the right Man is still on our side. Which means our striving is not losing even though it feels like loss day after day. For He must win the battle.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.