Reflection

The most famous scene in the The Hunchback of Notre Dame is when Quasimodo saves Esmeralda from execution, rushes her to the cathedral and cries, "Sanctuary!" Though the act is pretty dramatic (he swings in and out on a rope), it's based on a real religious custom. In medieval Europe, fugitives really could escape the death penalty by claiming sanctuary in a church. The catch was that afterwards, they usually had to go into permanent exile.

The concept of sanctuary predates Christianity, going back at least as far as Greek and Roman temples that offered protection to fugitives. Early Christian churches competed with these pagan temples by offering their own protections, and by the end of the 4th century, sanctuary was a part of Roman imperial law.

Even after the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, churches maintained their authority to protect people who had broken major secular laws, they held that a consecrated church was "protected space and it would be inappropriate in the extreme to carry weapons into the church or to arrest someone or to exercise force within the church."

Are our churches today places of sanctuary?

Hopefully, our community still sees our church as a place of sanctuary and refuge. When someone enters our church I believe they feel safe, they feel protected. But in the end it isn't the church itself that should be the refuge we seek, either. Rather it is God that gives all people refuge; it is the God that is worshipped in this church that offers all people salvation. So this morning we are going to look at the God of sanctuary and remember that he is the one to turn to in all things, he is the one who gives us rest.

I. Waiting in Silence

The NRSV translation of the Bible begins this Psalm a bit differently to the NIV. It begins by saying that for God alone my soul waits in silence. I really like that imagery of waiting for God in silence. I think it has something to say to us. The NIV takes a different approach, saying that my soul finds rest in God alone. So finding rest and waiting in silence are tied to each other, and they are tied to each other in a powerful way. But what does it mean to wait for God in silence? In today's scripture we see God described as a rock, a fortress, a refuge. We are told that we can trust in God, we are told that we will find deliverance and honor through him. And the writer of this psalm waits on these things, waits for God in silence.

This is an odd way to wait for God.

Now a child who waits for something, doesn't always do so in silence. "Are we there yet?" "Are we there yet?" The child waits quite vocally, letting their impatience be known, thinking that by vocalizing their waiting, things might go faster. And by being vocal in their waiting, they become quite annoying. It is not much different for us. I think that one of the joys of childhood is that you can often get away with doing and saying things that you might not be able to get away with as an adult, but which adults also feel. We all tend to be impatient in our own ways; we all tend to want things to happen sooner rather than later. We have a hard time waiting in general, let alone waiting in silence. We want things now! We have fast food, we have overnight mail, we have instant email. I have sent someone an email in the past and been somewhat upset because it took them over an hour to get back to me. How silly. We could all learn from the psalmist what it means to wait in silence.

Waiting in silence does have something to do with rest, so the NIV translation isn't wrong, it is just lacking something. You see, when you learn to wait for God in silence, you will find rest. But it isn't easy to wait for God in silence. Sometimes it seems that he may have forgotten us. Other times we just want to speak up so that we can hear ourselves. We sometimes think that if we make more noise about what it is that we want, God will hear us better and answer us sooner.

But the psalmist has a different idea. The psalmist knew that he could trust God and therefore he was willing to wait in silence. He was willing to allow God to work in God's own way and in God's own time. He would ask God to be with him, he would ask God to guide and care for him, and then he would wait upon the Lord, and then he would rest.

II. Worrying / Trusting the Wrong Things

This is a bit different than what we expect our relationship with God to be. This is a bit different than worrying about the things that we have to deal with. We often tie our prayers together with our worries. We often pray and ask God to work, and then we continue to worry about the things that trouble us. And because of this we find no rest. No, we can learn from the psalmist. We can learn from how he trusts. We can learn from what he believes. He puts his requests before God and finds rest in the fact that he knows God will work. Finding rest in God isn't about the fact that God will take your troubles away from you. Finding rest in God is not about life being perfect. Finding rest in God is about allowing God to deal with the things that trouble you and therefore learning not to worry about them.

Now I have mentioned one of the problems we have... we like to put requests before God and then continue to worry about them. I like to define worry as spending time and energy focusing on things that you cannot do anything about. And unfortunately, we tend to spend way too much time doing this very thing. It is made very clear throughout scripture that worrying is not the Christian thing to do; it isn't the Godly thing to do. Now I wouldn't necessarily call worry a sin. It isn't the same as killing or committing adultery or lying. But it is a lack of trust. It is a relationship with God that is not what it is supposed to be. We are told that we are able to cast our cares and our worries on God and trust that he is strong enough to hold them.

In Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about tomorrow, for it will take care of itself. This seems almost cavalier in its simplicity. It seems like it is too simplistic for the real world. Jesus may not have had to worry, he lived two thousand years ago, but we know better today. But when you look at the world Jesus faced, you realize that they had much to worry about, maybe more than we do. They didn't have the illusion of control that we have. And when Jesus told them not to worry, he was telling them to do something foreign to the way they lived. He was telling them to trust a God that they could not see. And Jesus modeled this trust in his own life. He travelled around from town to town without having a place to stay. He counted on others and God to provide his food and a place to lay his head each night. He did not gather up riches, he didn't save for a rainy day. Instead he lived in the present and put all his energy into his mission.

But there is another problem that we can have as well. The first problem is to worry about things instead of trusting in God, the second is to trust in something or someone other than God. Psalm 62:10 tells us that even if our riches increase, we are not to set our hearts on them. In verse 9 it tells us that people are not worth putting trust in, for they will fail you. We spend a lot of time putting our trust in the things of this world. We spend a lot of energy making sure that we are able to take care of ourselves and those we love. Again, this makes sense to a certain degree. If nothing else, we want to be sure that we can count on ourselves. And yet, we discover that we cannot count on the things of this world at all, and we definitely cannot count on ourselves. We have seen people who put their trust in the things of this world have everything taken away from them.

I think of the people who worked for Enron or some of these other companies who trusted that their company would take care of them, who trusted that their pensions would be valid, and the company lied and then folded and they were left with nothing. Trusting in this world is trusting in something arbitrary and unreal. It is trusting in something without substance. It is trusting in something that does not have control. The same is true when we trust in ourselves. We think we are in control. We think we can handle everything that is sent our way... but there is so much in this world that is out of our control, there is so much that we do not have the power to affect. Why trust in someone or something without power when you can trust in God who has all power?

III. Power and Love

The psalmist says it in verses 11 and 12: "Power belongs to you, God, and with you, Lord, is unfailing love." This is why though we cannot trust in the things of this world, we can trust in God. Power belongs to him. God created this world. It is through him that the sun rises each morning, it is through him that the stars shine, it is through him that the rain comes in the spring and the crops grow and even the snow falls. This in itself is somewhat scary, for these things seem somewhat arbitrary.

There are times of drought, there are natural disasters, and there is pain, illness and even death in this world. Where is God in that? Sometimes it is hard to see him. Sometimes it is hard to believe that a good God is truly in control. It is important to realize that though God is in control, we also live in a world of sin. And when sin entered the world so did these things that trouble us. Now this doesn't mean that we can look at someone who is sick and figure that their sickness comes from some secret sin in their lives. There are some Christians who believe this. There are others who take this to an extreme.

But this belief is just not biblical. Jesus was taken to a blind man and his disciples asked him, "Why is this man blind? Is it because of his sin or is it because of his parents' sin?"

The disciples believed that the man's blindness must be a result of sin. They were doing him a favor by not just automatically assuming that the sin that caused his blindness was his own. Jesus responded to their question with a resounding, "Neither!" The blindness that this man faced was not his own fault, it wasn't the fault of his parents. Rather, it was the fact that he lived in a world full of sin. And Jesus went on to say that this man was blind so that God could be glorified. And Jesus then healed this man.

We also live in a world of pain and suffering, we have things that torment us, and we realize that living through them will just allow our understanding of God and his mercy to be greater when we reach heaven and live in a world without sin, without pain, without loss.

God is a God of power, God is the source of all power. And yet, he allows us to live in a world where we are not always able to see his power clearly. And we hear the good news that the psalmist shares, that God is also a God of love.

So don't trust in the things of this world. Don't trust in money. Don't trust in the rich and powerful. Don't trust in the low and weak. Don't trust in yourself. Instead, trust in the sure refuge that we have. Trust in the Rock and Salvation that is available for all people.

This is where we find our hope. This is where we find peace. Our God is a God of power and love and therefore we can trust in him. Therefore we can rest in him, therefore we can stand with the psalmist and call God our refuge, our strength, our fortress. Therefore we can wait silently on God.