October 1, 2001
From Congress to church, people
are looking to Psalm 46 for comfort
___By Jeffrey MacDonald
___Religion News Service
___WASHINGTON (RNS)--Ever since jaws dropped and tears fell after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Americans from coast to coast have searched their Bibles for words to address the unspeakable.
___They've had choices galore among passages promising comfort in times of trouble. Yet one selection has surfaced continually in worship services and discussion venues from sanctuaries and church basements to the halls of Congress--Psalm 46.
___On America's ever-more-diverse religious landscape, few occasions in recent years have led believers of varied stripes to invoke a common text as relevant and authoritative. In the aftermath of strikes on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, however, no one disputed the appropriateness of these ancient Hebrew lyrics.
___"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble," reads verse 1. "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way."
___Reading those opening lines within hours of the attack, Nancy Taylor sent the full psalm via e-mail to all 432 congregations who seek her counsel as Massachusetts Conference Minister for the United Church of Christ.
___"The images in the psalm were all true" on the day of the strikes, Taylor said. "We all woke up (Sept. 12) to a changed earth and a changed world."
___Across the grieving land, Psalm 46 seemed to demand a hearing. In Los Angeles, United Methodist Bishop Jonathan Keaton of Ohio quoted it to a gathering of church leaders, saying it "came to me as a source of strength as I woke this morning in my hotel room." At a Santa Fe meeting, directors at Church World Service chose the first three verses to accompany a public notice of disaster relief. In Washington, D.C., just a few miles from the burning Pentagon, Chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie read the psalm aloud on the floor of the Senate.
___Although Psalm 23 probably is better known, pastors and professors say three factors made Psalm 46 the text of choice in America's darkest hour--familiarity, applicability and inclusiveness.
___Earl Alger of Union Congregational Church in Braintree, Mass., uses Psalm 46 regularly at funerals and preached from it in 1996 after a bomb went off at the Atlanta Olympics. But in the aftermath of this month's terrorist attacks, he took the psalm on the road, reading it aloud in several nursing homes. Many hearers had memorized it in their youth.
___"I would read the first few words, and they would finish the line," Alger said. Nearly everyone knew the first verse, he said, as well as the tenth, which begins: "Be still, and know that I am God."
___Psalm 23 might have struck as many chords with its classic line for sorrowful occasions, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me." But Psalm 46 had the distinctive advantage on this occasion of allowing its speakers to use the "we" voice as gatherings cried out to God together.
___"It's plural as opposed to the singular in Psalm 23," said Randall O'Brien, professor of Old Testament at Baylor University. "Psalm 46 calls us to corporate reflection--'We will not fear though the earth should change.'"
___Psalm 46 perplexes biblical scholars; they don't know when it was written or who wrote it, O'Brien said. It might date back to 500 B.C.--or 700 B.C.--and could have had its birth during any number of disasters. Yet its lack of particularity is precisely what makes it adaptable to circumstances as modern as hijacked airplanes, O'Brien said,
___Christian purists, according to O'Brien, say Psalm 46 isn't really everyone's prayer because it promises refuge only for the new Israel--the spiritual body of Christian believers.
___"Technically speaking, the entire nation is not qualified to pray this," O'Brien said. But even purists tend to grant exceptions in times of crisis.
___"What we really wanted to know was that God was with us," O'Brien said. "This psalm assures us that in times of catastrophic tragedy, God will preserve his people."
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