sermons

Air - Lent: A Spring Season

Be Still and Know: Stop and Do a Gut Check

Lydia Shiu

Mar 23, 2025

My daughter was on a “would you rather?” questioning mode one night. She asked,

• “Would you rather sit and read a book or hug your kiddos?”
• “Would you rather give me 5 apples or 10 candies?”
• “Would you rather hug me or kiss me?”

and went on and on the whole bath. At first I answered quickly with obvious answers, “hug my kiddo of course!” “apples of course!” But after a while the questions started getting complicated in my mind. Well I might need some alone time at some point so sitting down and reading sounds really nice. I didn’t tell her that.

I started thinking too hard about these questions and all that is parenting where every decision feels like it’ll ruin her for years of therapy, that I say,

“well if you had apples everyday for the last 5 days, I think I could offer you a candy, but if you had lots of candy already, then I’d give you an apple, so it all depends. Everything depends. There’s not always a clear answer about good or bad. Apples aren’t always good and candy isn’t always bad.”

And finally I said,

“right foot, get your right foot in the pants and stop asking me questions!” 

Wisdom. The wisdom to know the difference. Because there really isn’t always a good answer for things everytime. It depends on the person, the situation, the context. 

So how do we know if we have wisdom? It’s a hard thing to pin down. Just like air and wind. And just like the Spirit. How does the Spirit of God work? How do we know if we’re moving in the spirit of God or if we’re totally going the other way? 

We’re talking about the metaphor of Spirit as Air in this season of Lent. Today we anchor on a scripture text from one of the Pauline letters, 1 Corinthians 2:6-16. Paul talked about the spirit a lot. The work of the Holy Spirit in the early church, with charismatic experiences and entrepreneurial spirit of starting something totally new, under a new understanding, a new covenant, Paul relied on the power of the spirit to talk about their ministry and understand his own calling. Here’s a clip of his letter to the Corinthians that talks about the wisdom of God. I pray that it’ll enlighten and anchor us to discover more the love of Jesus that is present right here within us today. 

1 Corinthians 2:6-16 (Common English Bible)

Definition of wisdom

6 What we say is wisdom to people who are mature. It isn’t a wisdom that comes from the present day or from today’s leaders who are being reduced to nothing.

7 We talk about God’s wisdom, which has been hidden as a secret. God determined this wisdom in advance, before time began, for our glory.

8 It is a wisdom that none of the present-day rulers have understood, because if they did understand it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory!

9 But this is precisely what is written: God has prepared things for those who love him that no eye has seen, or ear has heard, or that haven’t crossed the mind of any human being.[a]

10 God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, including the depths of God.

11 Who knows a person’s depths except their own spirit that lives in them? In the same way, no one has known the depths of God except God’s Spirit.

12 We haven’t received the world’s spirit but God’s Spirit so that we can know the things given to us by God.

13 These are the things we are talking about—not with words taught by human wisdom but with words taught by the Spirit—we are interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people.

14 But people who are unspiritual don’t accept the things from God’s Spirit. They are foolishness to them and can’t be understood, because they can only be comprehended in a spiritual way.

15 Spiritual people comprehend everything, but they themselves aren’t understood by anyone.

16 Who has known the mind of the Lord, who will advise him?[b] But we have the mind of Christ.

We are a mystery, even hidden to ourselves, even hidden to our closest loved ones or partner. I mean, how well do you really know the person that’s sitting next to you, really? 

“In the same way, no one has known the depths of God except God’s Spirit.”

And Paul is saying that, that huge mystery of God, that abundant, expansive love and heart of God, is revealed to us through the spirit.

• But do we even have the space to see it or hear it?
• Are we listening for this burst of truth?
• How can we, when our lives are so filled with so many surfaces of half little truths that we keep ourselves so busy with?
• How can we truly feel God’s belovedness and know our beauty and worth when we’re so busy fixing ourselves up with worldly standards of beauty?

We try so hard to architect our lives, plan ahead, busying ourselves to optimize our days, save money, make life efficient, more efficient, ooooh if we can work so hard to just make it a little more efficient, then, THEN we could sit down and rest. Only THEN we think we’ll actually feel beautiful and loved. 

In my early 30’s I had a panic mode season.  I was just going through a big breakup. I wasn’t ordained yet, living in a small basement like in-law unit that I entered through the small side door next to the garage of my upstairs landlord that took me down a long dark corridor to where the trash cans were stored, next to it my place. Apparently my biological clock was ticking, living in the city as a single woman didn’t feel as cool as Sex in the City made it out to be. I was often lonely and just down on myself. So I kept myself busy. That year, I picked up running, biking, and skiing all in one year. I was obsessed with tracking on my Strava app and determined. I was hell bent on getting clipped onto the bike, because I had signed up for a mere 40 mile bike ride, I know that’s cute to some of you but I was never athletic growing up. I did choir, piano, and theater. I didn’t play sports growing up. I used that long corridor to clip my shoes into the bike and fall, and clip and fall and clip and fall again and again, it was very dramatic. 

I was also on another app, called Coffee Meet Bagel, it’s a dating app. Yes, when you don’t know what to do with your life and who you are, just download a bunch of apps. I was hell bent on finding someone, as if you could orchestrate that sort of thing, they sure make you feel like you can by giving you a Bagel, a match, at noon every day. I would set up dates for the weekend. One Saturday, because I had nothing else better to do between my run and bike ride, I set up a morning coffee date, a lunch date, and a dinner date, yes all three meals with Bagels. By the 3rd date, I was sharing stories about myself that I wasn’t sure if I’d already told that person or another person. 

The story does go that, that Lent, I decided to fast from dating (and yes I did end up meet my husband “when I wasn’t looking”) when I joined an Enneagram group for self discovery and growth that April, but the moral of the story isn’t that when you stop trying God will bring you the one, okay? That is NOT my point! Though it doesn’t hurt my point of the need to slow down and make space to hear God…

We’re going through this Lenten season centered on the words, “Be Still and Know that I Am God.” from Psalm 46. Because Lent is an invitation to just stop. The fasting during lent tradition is for that reason, to just stop busying ourselves so much with our own wit and knowledge and knowhow and apps and all, but just stop. 

And last week Steve mentioned that the Jewish translation doesn’t just say, “be still” but it’s more like “desist.” I was curious about it because I always found the words “Be still and know” SO DREADFUL. Like, just, relax, and be still, sit, and be calm, and all wisdom and power will just come to you out of thin air. It makes me feel woozy. Like I’m supposed to be this super elevated spiritual person who talks real slow. I’m sorry I don’t get that kind of luxury. 

Cole Arthur Riley, the author of Black Liturgies said,

“To suggest a form of faith that tells me to sit down alone and be quiet? It does not rest easy on the bones. It is a shadow of true contemplative life, and it would do violence to my black-woman soul.”

I followed up with Steve about that word, “Desist.” The verse right before “Be Still and Know That I AM God” says,

“To the ends of the earth he makes wars cease– he breaks the bow, snaps the spear, burns the shield in the fire.” God is putting a stop to wars by breaking, and snapping, and burning the bow, the spear, and the shield so that we can stop our violence, injustice, and sin. And then, instead of “Be Still and Know” it says, “Desist, and learn that I am God, supreme over the nations, supreme over the earth.””

 Do you see the slight difference in attitude and posture? It’s not, I think “therefore I am” kind of confidence and entitlement. It’s

“stop what you are doing and get humbled to LEARN that I am God.”

It’s less a gentle anointing to the man but in your face standing against all that you are doing to ruin and sabotage yourself, you human, realize that I know you, I know the nation, I know the earth. God is sending a Cease and Desist letter. It isn’t an invitation to sit down and sing Kumbaya, it’s showing God’s power to end it all. God is saying, Back down. Full stop. 

Be still and know I am God wasn’t what I had always imagined at all, of sitting in peace and tranquility, no shade to meditation cause I love meditation practices for real though, but AND, it’s more abrupt and powerful INTERRUPTION and a CALLING OUT to CEASE and DESIST of all the busying and worrying and scheming and cheating and lying and hiding and covering up. STOP!!!!! FOCUS!!!! LISTEN!!!  It’s more like the HipHop artist Grammy winner West coast rapper Kendrick Lemar’s song Humble, Sit down. Be Humble. Sit down. Be Humble. Sit down. Be Humble. 

Stop and Learn.

That’s why Paul is saying, spiritual people will get this but unspiritual people won’t get it. They won’t get it because they’re busy buying into the lie. To the trend of the day, whether it’s “everyone’s on Instagram. You have to be on it if you’re going to have any social connection”, or “you have to be skinny to be beautiful. Oh and by the way, you should hide your aging at all costs if you want to be beautiful.” or “you have to go to an elite college or college at all if you want to have any success in life.” or whatever the latest “common” knowledge is, eat more protein, work out, but don’t do high intensity training cause your cortisol will spike up, or whatever hashtag is in. Or we’re too busy listening to our shadow selves, our ego. Instead of the spirit that is in communion with God, the one that hides in the dark, ashamed and covered in lies. 

To stop listening to the trends of the world or the ego can feel at first disruptive. Like a car going a million miles an hour to just come to a complete stop, you have to face gravity and velocity or whatever physics that happens, which can feel abrupt. That’s why the work of the Spirit is described as Wind, which sometimes, oftentimes, isn’t just a nice breeze but can SNAP branches, BREAK roofs, BEND you car, and TAKE down your internet, and you are forced to stop everything without internet. The spirit work is unpredictable like the wind and it might upend things first before it settles anything down to something that resembles peace. When you STOP suddenly, you might feel vertigo. You might feel the detox in your body. You might find it very frustrating. 

I find Lent very frustrating. I don’t like all the grief. It’s too messy. Oh the snot and tears of grief, I hate it. I don’t like crying out of nowhere in my car in my driveway, you? I mean, you know this too. That to learn, there is discomfort. First there is confusion and misunderstanding. 

And so we’re left here again. Okay, wisdom, spirit, wind. Unpredictable and elusive. So how do we do this thing, this awkward unwieldy thing we’re supposed to work with? 

To level the playing field is to turn it upside down. Paul brings down the modern-day rulers to nothing. Paul nullifies powers and authorities. How? How does he do that?

He points to the lowest thing to the highest thing.

He points to the cross.

He points to the tool of its day for execution and humiliation–the crucifixion. 

The Message, a kind of a causal translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson, a biblical scholar, has verse 16 from our text today,

“16 Who has known the mind of the Lord, who will advise him?[b] But we have the mind of Christ.”

To this:

Isaiah’s question,

“Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?”

has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.

And I think this is the brilliance of Christianity at its core. What we didn’t know. God, the divine, the mystery, the hidden secret has been revealed to us as a person. Jesus Christ. What is God like? How does the Spirit guide us? We have the answer. It’s Jesus.  Follow the spirit of Jesus that has been gifted to reside in you and with you. The one who the world rejected, misunderstood, one who was weak and killed. For God lifts up the lowly and despised, and places them at the center. 

The Spirit is at work when a person’s spirit defies the world’s gravitational force of hierarchy. When the high becomes low, and the low becomes high. That is beautiful and spiritual. When valleys are filled and the mountains are brought down low and we can all sit together and see each other, soul to soul, spirit to spirit as equals. 

I love seeing that in our church. I see the spirit at work when I witness the worldly status and power of a tall grown man’s lap being stomped on recklessly by a 5 year old in Kids Church. I see the spirit at work when we put the young queer person front and center to lead us in worship and song, teaching us how to sing,

“I love you, Lord.”

I see the spirit at work when I see Faith Into Action bring together young white folks and old black grandmas to lock arms together to fight for justice. I see the spirit at work when immigrants in our church rise to have power and influence on the board. That’s the kind of the spirit power Paul saw in his early church and admonished the church in Corinth to desperately hang onto the guiding of Christ’s spirit because that’s the only thing that could make sense. 

Whenever we uplift the lowly, we are doing the spirit’s work. Whenever we center the de-centered, we are doing Christ’s work, who put toddlers in the middle of the crowd and said, be like them. As one Pauline scholar says, we are to

“embrace the logic of the cross, as a community to accept weakness and humility as marks of God’s favor.” (Bassler) 

• Where can you do that in your lives today, this week?
• How can you apply the logic of the cross to yourself?
• Where can you accept weakness and humility as marks of God’s favor?

I just warn you, when you begin to do this, it might not feel good. Look what happened to Jesus. That’s the invitation of Lent. You see why I don’t like Lent? New life and Easter comes later. It’s promised, but first, death, grief, and discomfort. 

And that’s the end of my sermon, because it’s Lent. Let me pray for us.