October 22, 2006
Psalm 91

In the first year of Cyrus of Persia, it was his royal will that 49,000 of the exiled Israelites should depart from Babylon to Jerusalem, to re-inhabit the land of their birth and re- rebuild the Temple of Yahweh destroyed by the mighty Nebuchadnezzar. It was Zerubbabel that led the exiles home and the Temple he built stood longer than those of Solomon and Herod together. And in that long season of return and restoration, the faith of Israel was renewed, it’s worship revived and refined.

Then it was that the musicians of the Temple gathered together the old Israelite songs and from them brought forth new hymns or psalms for the congregation to sing in worship. There were psalms for every purpose, hymns of celebration, Laments for mourning, hymns of Thanksgiving for deliverance, and psalms for teaching the ways of God. And the people sang Songs of Trust, to assure themselves of God’s ready help in times of trouble.

Imagine that you are a royal musician of the Temple, writing the new hymns of your people. To you has been entrusted the formation of a holy congregation. What do they need to sing, that they might understand and grow in wisdom and in love with God? What song will help them withstand the next Conquest, the next Exile, and hope for the next Return?

You reflect on your own life as an alien in bondage and that other song you have made; “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How could we sing the LORD’S song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137).

You remember your grandmother’s stories of the utter destruction; the deaths of thousands, the uprooting, driven from home at the point of the sword. And you remember other stories, told by priests and prophets, of another kind of desolation; a people divided into haves and have-nots, justice forgotten, a sacred covenant broken, the One True God betrayed to cheap idols of wealth and pleasure, the religion of Yahweh prideful and corrupted, the Sanctuary long emptied out of all Holiness, of any Presence, long before the Temple was reduced to rubble.

As you take up your pen to write, you cannot escape it; The story of this people is one of suffering…the suffering of the people in captivity, the suffering of Yahweh in his loneliness. But it is also the story of deliverance from suffering; The captivity ended, the priesthood purified, the people restored to their homes. And here you are; you’ve taken down your harp from the willows, you are free to sing a new song of Zion in your own land. In this rebuilt Temple, it is now your task to rebuild the faith of your people. And the Shekinah, the Spirit of God dwells once more in its Holy place.

And from out of the memory of suffering, out of the bewilderment of rescue, out pours this new song of hope, of trust, a song of a God whose love always overcomes his wrath, whose desire to be with his people reversed his own desertion. It is a song for a people never doomed to destruction, but always bound for trouble. As you write, do you imagine that your song will be sung long after you are gone, from one trouble-bound generation to the next? That there will be others beset by their own terrors, their own wars of flesh and of spirit, that will receive your ancient words and make them their own, just as you have received them from your ancestors and remade them for your own day? To a people newly restored to their homes, you sing of another, deeper kind of homecoming; “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, abides under the shadow of the Almighty. He shall say to the LORD, ‘You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust.’ He shall deliver you from the snare of the hunter and from the deadly pestilence. He shall cover you with his pinions, and you shall find refuge under his wings; his faithfulness shall be a shield and buckler.” (Psalm 91:1-4)

A song of shelter and refuge, of stronghold and of shielding, of deliverance and safety.

Then comes the voice of the LORD in answer: “I will protect him, because he knows my Name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; I am with him in trouble; I will rescue him and bring him to honor. With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.”

A song of steadfast strength, of someone having your back, of survival and sanctification.

This is the song to sound deeply in their ears; a song to be sung and to sing again, until singing spins it into faith. For there may be no greater, no more needed song than this: “You shall not be afraid…”

“You shall not be afraid, my people…of any terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day; Of the plague that stalks in the darkness, nor of the sickness that lays waste at mid-day.”

You know the terrors of the outer world; sword and pestilence, accident and injury, the things that imperil the flesh. And you know also the great inner struggle in the realm of spirit, the holy war of right and wrong, of selfishness and service, of fear and trust. So close are they that one can scarcely tell them apart, and one plays upon the other. And in all these things, God says, “You shall not be afraid.”

In times of strife, without and within, people have always had their songs; Martin Luther, beset by his own inner demons, by the corruption of his Church and the belligerence of the nation states all around him, sang “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Martin Luther King, fighting his own inner battles and those of his people for freedom, sang “We Shall Overcome”.

Now, in our own day, in our own time of terror, it has never been more important to sing the comforting command of the Holy One; “You shall not be afraid”. Sing it again, out of the terrible void of divine absence from our Temples of Commerce and of Culture and of State and of our own frightened hearts. Sing it that much louder and stronger when you hear that other refrain, again and again, the one that insists “be afraid, be always afraid”. That is no hymn, but a faithless jingle, whose singers have forgotten the shelter of God’s wings, who have forsaken God’s shield and buckler to rely on our own arms. Keep singing “You shall not be afraid and the singing will one day make it so; “You shall not be afraid”. In time you will come to know it by heart. It will come to you unbidden, your song of trust in the Holy One who stand with you in fearful times.

For if we cannot sing a song of trust, how can we ever expect to draw others within earshot into the shelter of God’s wings? AMEN