THE RAIN FELL AND THE WIND BLEW

A Sermon by Rev. Kelly Wiant-Thralls

Market Square Presbyterian Church

June 1, 2008

Scripture:  Psalm 46

Matthew 7:21-28

 

God is our refuge and strength.  Or as Martin Luther put it, “a mighty fortress is our God.”  

 

For the psalmist, “to take refuge in” means to “trust in.”  It is not a hiding behind God but a confident trust in the God that rules over the world.  Even in the worse case scenario, the psalmist calls us to trust in God. 

 

“Therefore we shall not fear,

Though the earth should change,

Though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea….”

 

In the ancient near east world view, the mountains were not only the foundations that anchored dry land and held them out of the watery chaos, they were also the pillars that held up the sky.  So for the mountains to shake would have been the worst thing imaginable.  It would have resulted in a massive earthquake and hurricane and tsunami.

 

It would have resulted in something much like what our world has experienced in the last few years.  

 

The psalmist’s description of the mountains shaking at the heart of the sea is nothing less than a doomsday scenario.  It represents the sky literally falling in and the world as we know it ending.  While the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the cyclone in Myanmar, the tornados in the Midwest, and the earthquake in China may not be the ultimate doomsday scenario, its hard to convince the Chinese businessman that lost his only child in a flattened school and his wife in a collapsed apartment building that life as we know it as not somehow ended.   For hundreds of thousands of people, life has ended and for hundreds of thousands more, life as they knew crumbled or washed away in only seconds. 

 

And yet the psalmist is trying to convince us that even when the very ground on which we stand cannot be depended upon, God is still a reliable refuge. 

 

Sometimes it is hard to believe or to agree with the psalmist. 

 

________

 

In late April, I attended a conference in Denver, CO.  Andrew Harvey is a renowned translator of Rumi poetry.   Rumi was a 13^th century Persian poet.  His rapturous language for his love affair with God has captivated me and become a part of my devotional life.  I went to Denver to hear Andrew Harvey with his elegant English accent read the poetry of Rumi. 

 

What I got instead, was an Andrew Harvey passionately warning us of an impending Apocalypse.   He is convinced that unless we do something dramatic now, the earth will be destroyed by our negligent wasteful human activity.  He spent three hours one evening (with no breaks) warning us of this impending doom.  By the time he finished speaking, I was completely worn out and decided I needed to skip the next day’s session.  I couldn’t imagine listening to any more apocalyptic language.  I have no doubt we are causing harm to our lovely planet but the topic was too big and is too complicated to be reduced to his doomsday warnings. 

 

Needless to say, my hopes of hearing Rumi’s love words to God were dashed.  I was disappointed with Andrew Harvey and felt I had gained little from the conference…….

 

Until I read this passage again.  This time, when I read it, my breathe caught with the phrase, “be still and know that I am God.”  For all Andrew Harvey’s ranting and raving (he was pounding his fist and stamping his feet and spitting on everyone in the front row), he had driven one important point home. 

 

We as a human race must learn to center, to connect, to seek refuge in God.  It is his theory that it is the only thing that will get us through what is to come.  Of course, it’s not his theory alone.  He probably got it from the psalmist. 

 

“Therefore we will not fear,

Though the earth should change,

Though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea….”

 

It’s hard to imagine being still in the midst of such chaos and feels almost condescending to suggest that a person in Myanmar or China should “be still” at this moment in time. 

 

But I think the stillness is important now and in whatever may come – which I hope does not look like Andrew Harvey’s description of the future. 

 

_________

 

Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard trained neuro-anatomist who has recently written a book, “My Stroke of Genius”.  A speech she gave to the TED[1] conference was also released on YouTube.[2]  Chad stumbled upon the video over Memorial Day weekend so her story became part of our week’s conversation.

 

On the morning of December 10, 1996 Jill awoke to a throbbing headache behind her left eye.  It turned out that a blood vessel had exploded on the left side of her brain and she was experiencing a rare type of stroke.  Over the next four hours her brain slowly deteriorated and she lost the ability to process all information.  She could not read, or write, or talk, or walk, or recall any of her life.  She became, in her words, “an infant in a woman’s body.” 

 

What is phenomenal about her experience is first that she serviced and second that she stayed lucid during the entire experience. 

 

She explains that there are two sides to our brain, the right and left, and each has a very different function.  The right brain is all about this present moment.  It thinks in pictures and takes in the energy around us through our senses.  It knows what the present moment feels like, and looks like, and smells like, and sounds like. 

 

The left side of the brain is the linear and methodical.  It thinks in language and is what she calls the constant “brain chatter” or conversation going on inside our heads.  The left brain is about the past and the future.  It picks out details from the information the right brain is collecting and associates it to what we have already learned.  It is what holds our language, our numbers, our memories, and our ability to walk.  It is also our ego or the part of us that sees ourselves as distinct; as separate from all others. 

 

What happened to Jill Bolte Taylor as the hemorrhage grew was that she moved in and out of her left brain functions.  As her left brain began to shut down, she began to see the world differently.  On one occasion she leaned up against a wall and could not longer tell where her arm ended and the wall began.  Instead she perceived the energy and the molecules that made up both the wall and her arm.  She saw herself as connected to everything.  She describes it as a feeling of euphoria or nirvana.  She felt huge and expansive as if her energy were melding with the energy of everything around her. 

 

As her left brain came back online momentarily, she would realize something was wrong and over the course of the next few hours was able to seek help by calling a colleague.  Of course, she was losing the ability to recognize numbers so called by matching up the squiggly lines on the phone pad to the squiggly lines on a business card.  And by the time, her colleague answered the phone she had lost both the ability to recognize language and to use it.  Fortunately her colleague recognized something was wrong and called for help.  It then took Jill eight years to fully recover and return to her job as a neuro-anatomist. 

 

What I find fascinating and helpful about Jill Bolte Taylor’s story is her experience of the right brain, is her experience of connectedness.  She wrote her book and is speaking to groups because she believes we have the ability to tap into our right brain.  She believes that both ways of thinking and experiencing our world have value.  We need to learn to balance these points of view. 

 

There is no doubt that we need the left brain’s organization and viewpoint to function.  But we also need the right brains understanding of connectedness, of the energy that is all around. 

 

What I think Jill experienced is something most of us only glimpse for a fleeting second – that sense of the enormity of both our own existence and the existence of all that is, our connectedness to all that is living, our connectedness to something greater than ourselves. 

 

I believe that one of the reasons we must be still and be silent, as Jim talked about last week, is that we must learn to quiet the brain chatter.  We must learn to be more aware of this present moment.  We must at least for a time, let go of the failures of the past and the worries of the future. 

 

I am struck by the thought that my brain may already know this reality.  And that somehow through silence, through stillness, through meditation, I might make the space necessary to pay attention to my right brain’s knowledge.  

 

For it is there, in the silence, the present moment, that I believe we are transformed and filled with compassion.  If we recognize as Jill Bolte Taylor has that we as simply 50 trillion molecules interacting with trillions and trillions of other molecules, we recognize that we are all interconnected.  All of a sudden, what happens to you affects me.  What happens to the people of Myanmar affects me.  After all, they share the same molecules, the same energy, and most importantly the same God. 

 

Which brings us back to God, our refuge and our strength.  To trust in God is to trust all that we are to God’s care.  It is to trust that our past, our present, and our future belong to God – whatever that future may be, even if it’s a future in which the mountains shake at the heart of the sea.  It is to learn to live in this present moment with compassion and love towards all that we are connected to.  It is to learn to center in God, as Andrew Harvey suggests.

 

For as we seek refuge in God, we find the courage, the strength, the peace, and the transforming love that will and does sustain us no matter what may come. 

 

For God is our refuge and strength. 

 

Therefore we will not fear,

Though the earth shall change,

Though the mountains shake at the heart of the sea,

Thought its waters roar and foam,

Though the mountains tremble with its tumult….. 

 

Be still and know that I am God….. 

The Lord of hosts is with us.  

The God of Jacob is our refuge. 

 

Praise be to God.  Amen. 

 

MARKET SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

The Rain Fell and the Wind Blew