Psalm 46 is what we affectionately call “a good old one.” Like “In the Garden,” or “The Old Rugged Cross” or “Blessed Assurance.” What are some of your good old ones? [Leave time.] Well, the psalms are the hymns of Israel, and for a long time they were also the hymns of the church

Time was that, especially among followers of John Calvin, folk weren’t sure you could sing anything that wasn’t in the top 150, right out of the psalm book. But then you’ve got Martin Luther, who liked the tunes he heard in the beer hall so much he brought them into the church and put some frothy words on top. His best effort came right out of Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength he translated as A mighty fortress is our God. And now you know the rest of the story.

But there’s another thing about those good old ones we like to sing. How many of you know all the verses to them? More than the first and last? Many churches these days are just stringing together first verses of hymns and making medleys out of melodies. As if the sibling verses don’t matter because only the firstborn will inherit the church. Lots of Baptists grew up singing only the first and last stanzas of hymns. Why is that? Why the slight to the middle stanzas?

Think about what is lost when we do this. If you never sang verse 2 of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” you missed out on one of the great mysteries of the church. Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by thy grace I’m come…. What in God’s name is an Ebenezer? I personally wouldn’t want to miss the chance to sing hither. By the way, an Ebenezer is … oh, never mind. Go look it up.

And then there’s the wonderfully comforting hymn “It Is Well with My Soul.” I am partial to stanza 3, which begins, My sin – oh, the bliss of this glorious tho’t:/ My sin not in part, but the whole …. Some sins are blissfully remembered. But then all the more blissful is the phrase that follows: Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more,/Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.

Or try stanza three of Fanny Crosby’s “Rescue the Perishing”: Down in the human heart, /Crushed by the tempter, /Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; /Touched by a loving heart, /Wakened by kindness, /Chords that are broken will vibrate once more. Nice. But how will you get that it you skip stanza three? I loathe admitting it, but as much or more of our theology is learned by singing hymns as by listening to preaching. Which is also why we won’t sing some hymns in our hymnbook. Aunt Fanny had an off day with the one that begins: Pass me not, O gentle Savior, /Hear my humble cry; /While on others Thou art calling, /Do not pass me by. As if?! The fear is not that Jesus picks whom to call unto salvation, but whether we answer his call or sit in the pew picking our noses.

Alrighty, then, that’s a long enough introduction; let’s get down to it. Three stanzas: we’ll sing them all, don’t you know?! Each stanza is followed by a chorus that goes: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. If you are keeping track of your text, you’ll note there is no chorus after stanza one. Which just goes to show that even biblical scribes had to go to the restroom once in a while and probably lost their places when they got back. Who knows how it dropped out. But like any refrain, you keep singing it over and over again to remind you of the main point—which, in this case, is: God is with us and God can be trusted. So say it after me, the chorus: The Lord of hosts is with us; …the God of Jacob is our refuge. All together: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Just a side note for the musicians in the group: right after the chorus, we have a Selah stuck in. That’s where the holy harpist or the royal organist gets to do some jazz improv before we crank up the next stanza.

Now stanza 1: title it no fear. They closed the rescue efforts this week at Ground Zero in New York. What once was “the pile” is now nine months later “the pit.” Some 1.8 million tons of rubble removed in more than over 3 million man-hours of work. Eleven hundred bodies recovered, nearly twice as many souls lost to all but God.

September 11, or 9/11, will never need a year attached to it the way other dates do. It has become shorthand for our vulnerability as a nation. It was the day that the earth changed under our feet, the mountains shook in the heart of the sea, and the waters roared and foamed. Everything that seemed to us impregnable turned out to be pregnable. Our tallest buildings crumbled, our strongest financial institutions plummeted with the towers, our nuclear arsenal was useless, and our national pride was deeply wounded.

We are still not sure how to rebuild. We don’t know what kind of building should go up where the twin towers once stood. We don’t know if there can be a fitting memorial. We don’t know how to trust the market again, because investment is about confidence, and the future is less hopeful now. We don’t quite know where to turn for hope. We have proven that law enforcement was ill- equipped for the kind of terrorist attack we suffered. The FBI this week announced new priorities, and the Attorney General announced new rules that allow the government to infringe on more of our liberties in the name of security. We don’t like being frisked and wanded and suspected every time we try to board a plane.

Fear leads to precaution and precaution to security, we think. But in the face of that, we want to join Israel and do something else. In the wake of 9/11, every memorial service I attended or witnessed included this psalm. God is our refuge and strength; a present help in times of trouble. … We will not fear. Every time we sing it, we believe it more. In our praying and our praising and our singing, we language our hopes into being. And God rides in on the wings of our praise.

So all together once more: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Stanza 2, call it glad river, begins with an odd image. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. Now this is a Song of Zion, a celebration of Jerusalem as the home of God. But strangely, there is no river that runs through it. Jerusalem is a high hill and rivers don’t flow uphill. But rivers are a source of life and well-being. We are made mostly of water, and we don’t live long without it. It’s no accident that most civilizations grow up ‘round bodies of water. Not Israel. Israel lacks the one thing every great power possessed: access to streams of life-giving water.

Even now in Israel, one of the major issues of security for Israelis is water. The main reason Israel captured and does not want to give back the Golan Heights in the north next to Syria is because that’s where the water comes from. It flows from Mount Hermon down into the valley and all the way through the heart of the country.

What the psalm celebrates is not a literal river but a figurative one; not a Jerusalem on the map but one in our hearts. In the midst of our dried-up existence, when we feel cut off and lifeless, when it seems that God is nowhere to be found, God’s life-giving spirit reaches us. Like streams that break off in every direction from a river, God will find a way to your heart and mine. Nothing going on in the world can dam up the glad river of God that reaches God’s people. For – say the chorus again: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

At last, then, stanza 3: call it lasting peace. Come, behold the works of the Lord, the psalmist says as a wry smile appears on his lips. See what desolations he has brought on the earth. We think nuclear winter when we think desolations; we imagine God breathing fire over the face of the earth and turning it to ash. But the psalmist surprises us: He makes wars cease … he breaks the bow, shatters the spear and burns the shields with fire. In other words, the way God brings peace is by dismantling the weapons of war. God isn’t the great superpower in the sky who every now and then has to jump into the fray and show the world who’s in charge here. If you want to know how God rules the world, you have to get counter-intuitive. You have “be still” enough to sense it, be quiet enough to hear it, be alert enough to see it.

The word for ceasing, as in he makes wars to cease, is shabbat in Hebrew. That is, in the midst of conflict, God calls for a Sabbath peace. In Jerusalem, even today in the midst of war and terror, when sundown comes on the Sabbath, everything stops. People drop what they are doing and begin to attend to the matters of spirit. They wash their hands and light candles and share a meal in the name of the God who delivers us from evil.

The word we translate “be still” does not mean be quiet, start meditating, go to yoga class and learn to breathe. It means Stop! Drop your weapons! Give God some space to show you another way to live.

The gorillas in Rwanda made famous by Jane Goodall, are a precious species. Scary too. My friend Wayne Martin grew up as a missionary kid in Rwanda. He tells me that when you go near the gorillas, the most important thing is to be still. If you are the least bit aggressive, they can smell it and charge you right off.

The psalmist goes first person in v. 10 to speak for God as if to get our attention. Stop your warring ways! Drop your aggression! Relax and let me work. You don’t need to fix everything. Trust me. I rule the world. And to that the people say: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

One late night after golf in Ireland a few weeks ago, we had enjoyed a good meal at the Smuggler’s Inn and were getting ready to snuggle into bed. But after calling home, we were having our glasses of warm milk in the pub, and we were joined by the owners who were having a birthday celebration. The party of ten was singing Irish songs and having a great time. They asked us to join in, and well, you know how I am about singing. They sang “Danny Boy” and lots of stuff we didn’t know, but then they wanted us to sing American songs. Longhorn Mike Furney let loose with “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.” My buddy Barry gave them some Broadway. And I proffered up a gospel song. Funny thing, we none of us knew more than about six lines of any song, except when we cut loose with Amazing Grace—we sang them all.

What do you make of that? Some songs matter enough to sing all the stanzas. Wonder what would become of us if we knew the psalms that well? We could start with good old 46!