Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
As the year 1971 began, Walter Ulbricht had directed life in the German Democratic Republic, under the tutelage of his Soviet mentors in Moscow and their military might, for a quarter of a century, as head of the ruling Marxist party and for a few years also as head of state. In the middle of 1971, I attended a pastoral conference in East Berlin. The massive presence of propaganda slogans—“the head, the brain, the soul of the People is the State,” for example—and the East German pastors’ stories of governmental pressure on Christians from Kindergarteners to the elderly quickly made an impression on me. I asked one of the pastors, “Humanly speaking, how can the church survive in this situation?” Ignoring my “humanly speaking,” he replied, “Walter Ulbricht is not the Lord of the church.” Ironically, by the end of 1971, Walter Ulbricht was not even lord of the DDR. His comrades had forced him from power, replaced by a new generation.
Eighteen years later, an East German pastor told me in his parsonage newly liberated from its Marxist masters, “We have survived theoretical materialism; it remains to be seen whether we can survive practical materialism.” As it turns out, the individualistic consumerism of the West is a more virulent foe of faith than was the communistic striving for a workers’ paradise. It has brought us a different kind of tyranny, a different kind of storm, another set of winds that toss us to and fro and blow us about. The principles arising from our egoistic “go it alone” and “everyman for himself” way of thinking focus on the toys we purchase and the bragging rights given by “doing it my way.” But these attitudes cannot help but lead to inner turmoil because this view of life appeals to us as we try to master our own life in ways that oppression and tyranny never could. Storms of envy, ambition, disappointment, and discontent disrupt the dreams we have of more and more, and still more.
We need our weapons no longer, for we can count on the powerful love of our Lord Jesus to sustain us against quakes and floods of every kind.
Thirty-plus years after the “fall of the Wall” the mountains of the world around us that seemed so firm are shaking. The peaceful waters of my youth have turned to turbulent torrents. In both church and secular society many of us clutch for “heads of the church” and “heads of the state” in personal or institutional forms, in ritual practice or policies and polities that promise order and prosperity for daily life. In none of them will we find the Lord of the church, the Lord of life itself.
The psalmists recognized that both nature and society can shake our lives to the quick. Jesus came literally to his disciples when nature threatened them with drowning in a tempestuous sea and when lack of planning threatened them with hunger because they had not brought along any food. To Jesus they found they could turn in any storm and every dire need.
Psalm 46 identifies a fortress as a safe place in this midst of such turbulence. Martin Luther found the castles of his time a fitting metaphor for God in the midst of the reformer’s most precarious situation. In the Wartburg castle he found protection and refuge as both pope and emperor threatened him with death. He found comfort and support by trusting in Christ. For Luther, God had repeatedly shown himself in every case and every time to be a “safe place,” in whom his people could find a secure refuge, a shield against every enemy. In our God we find the strength to carry one even though our surroundings roar and tremble, shake and totter.
The authors of Psalm 46, the sons of Korah, served in David’s court. They had experienced the fluctuating fortunes of King David, the troubles and tragedies of his reign and the earlier years of instability during Saul’s rule. They had also experienced the flood of God’s grace in the faith of which they sang in several psalms. In Psalm 88, for example, they cried out in the night, pleading that he hear their troubled souls under the threat of death. In the face of death and a consciousness of God’s anger, they prayed in faith and wrestled with God for his presence. In Psalm 42 the Korach brothers anchored their hope in God despite their downcast spirits. For even though God seemed to have forgotten them, they knew he was a rock on whom they could count for help. Psalm 48 expresses their confidence that God will certainly defend them and send their enemies into retreat. In Psalm 49 they confessed their faith that God will ransom them from death and hell itself.
Today, as war rages in several corners of the world and fellow citizens turn against each other with a viciousness not acceptable in North American civil society until the last decade, believers in Christ ask themselves why this flood of God-displeasing dispositions and the quakes of afflictions of body and spirit are arising to plague us. We must examine ourselves with the question to what degree we, too, have succumbed to the individualism and materialism that cause misery of spirit to overflow and the foundations of God’s way of life quiver under the weight of our expectations and demands for temporal toys and self-based security.
The psalm answers with the reminder that we belong to God’s city, where the river of his boundless grace and unconditional mercy flows from the wounds of Christ through an empty tomb, enriching the soil beneath our feet with the greater flood of his love. We know that we can lay down the weapons of material success and bitter pleas for vengeance as we are carried along by the flood of Christ’s mercy. We need such weapons no longer, for we can count on the powerful love of our Lord Jesus to sustain us against quakes and floods of every kind. This flood of the Savior’s love has washed away our worries and fears. The downpour of life and hope given us by our risen Lord has drowned our discontent and despair. We enjoy going with the flow of his gift of trusting that our Creator provides in the midst of all dangers and sustains in the face of all threats. And so, our cries of fear and anguish turn into a stillness of heart before the Lord. Out of that stillness we sing of his goodness in letting the flow of his grace serve as our fortress, the city in which we feel at home, forever.