Be Still, and Know That I Am God!
AM: Psalm 46, 48
Isa. 26:1-9 • 2 Cor. 5:16-6:2 • John 8:12-19
Eve of Holy Name
PM: Psalm 90
Isa. 65:15b-25 • Rev. 21:1-6
New Year’s Eve. Big, noisy parties with balloon drops and small, intimate get-togethers. Tenderhearted marriage proposals and flocks of lively children allowed to stay up late. Warm recollections of shared time with friends or family.
Usually.
To bid farewell to the year 2020 feels laden with a dense heaviness few of us have experienced before. Most of the usual celebrations won’t be shared tonight out of an uneasiness with what gathering together would set in motion. Most of us are anxious to be rid of this year; a year filled with great suffering, toxic politics, sanctioned racism, social injustice, uncharted disease, and massive death. To bid farewell to 2020 is to pray that the new year will be an improvement, a guarded hope that we indeed have hit bottom and are heading up and over the wave of disequilibrium into calmer waters.
Our faith is challenged in times of struggle and pain, and this year has brought us to our knees more often. Today’s readings each speak to the God-shaped hole in us that longs to be close to God: my soul yearns for you in the night. [1] Isaiah longed for that closeness, too, just as we yearn for God’s hand to steady us. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter. [2] Amidst so much suffering, at times we have succumbed to anger and clamored for the reckoning Isaiah describes:
For he has brought low
the inhabitants of the height;
the lofty city he lays low.
He lays it low to the ground,
casts it to the dust.
The foot tramples it,
the feet of the poor,
the steps of the needy. [3]
Our year has made us heartsick and mind-weary, our threshold for uncertainty overwhelmed. And though it may stumble, at our lowest moment comes our greatest faith. It is a much bigger leap of faith that springs from our weakest, most battered selves. In those dire, bitter moments when evil seems to prevail, still we catch a God-moment fluttering down before our eyes, as gentle and untroubled as a leaf sailing on a wisp of autumn air.
We have seen God in a random kindness, in quiet sacrifice from one who serves others, in nature, in ourselves. Faith is that step of courage, accepting that our hearts know things our minds cannot begin to understand. [4] We remember God’s promise to us:
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more. [5]
[He] is our refuge and our strength. [6]
He hears our prayers before we even kneel:
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear [7]
And Jesus promises without condition:
I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness
but will have the light of life. [8]
We do not know what tomorrow will bring or how to ease our uncertainty. We do not know how long the pandemic will prevent us from gathering together in community. But what we do know, what Paul taught us, is:
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. [9]
The ministry of reconciliation: that each of us put forth energy toward healing, perhaps in a random act of kindness, in sacrificing personal resources in service to others, in helping heal our natural world, in forgiving and honoring ourselves as vessels of God’s love.
God of the present moment,
God who in Jesus stills the storm
and soothes the frantic heart.
Bring hope that you will make us
the equal of whatever lies ahead.
Let the design of your great love
shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows,
and give peace to your church,
peace among nations,
peace in our homes,
and peace in our hearts. [10]
Peace be with you!
Written by Bernadette Reda
Bernadette is cherishing her home in the woods. Continuing her life-long passion for fixing things, she is now attempting to repair her stove. She is grateful for St. Paul’s church since walking through the doors in 2004.
1 Isaiah 26: 9
2 Psalm 46: 6
3 Isaiah 26: 5-6
4 Blaise Pascal’s quote “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”
5 Revelation 21: 4
6 Psalm 46: 1
7 Isaiah 65: 24
8 John 8: 12
9 2 Corinthians 5: 18
10 a merger of parts of two prayers from the New Zealand Prayer Book