In the Shelter and Shadow of God

The Rev. Dr. Karin J. Ekholm, September 28, 2025

In the wake of World War II, a German prisoner of war filled with the shame of his nation, found that the Psalms, "voiced the cry of his own heart." Jürgen Moltmann had grown up in a secular family with no religious background. He had surrendered to British forces in ‘45, and during his captivity a chaplain gave him a small army-issued New Testament and Psalter. It was through the Psalms that he found his eyes opening, “to the God who is with those ‘that are of a broken heart.’” 

At the age of sixteen, he and his whole school class had been drafted into the German Army and put in anti-aircraft batteries in nearby Hamburg. That summer, the Allies firebombed the city in a campaign code-named Operation Gomorrah. Over the course of ten days 40,000 people, mostly civilians were killed. One of these nights, a bomb claimed the life of a close friend who had been standing at his shoulder. In the midst of the terror and carnage, Moltmann, for first time in his life, found himself calling out to God.

Following the war, he spent three years in POW camps in Belgium, England, and Scotland, where he and fellow soldiers first heard of their country’s crimes and atrocities. As he learned the truth about the Nazis, he experienced an inconsolable grief and burden of guilt, and he saw how other prisoners collapsed inwardly and often fell sick from loss of hope.

In the evenings, as he walked the perimeter of barbed wire for exercise, Moltmann circled a small hill topped with a hut that served as camp chapel. Over time, this site became for him a symbol of God’s presence in the midst of suffering. Later he observed that he found God “even behind the barbed wire—no!” he corrected himself, he found God present, “most of all behind the barbed wire.” (Experiences of God, 6f.)

The portion of Psalm 91 appointed for today presents three voices in conversation about God’s abiding presence in times of trouble. The Psalmist opens with a poetic depiction of the person who lingers in the shelter and shadow of God. In a land that consists mostly of open, dry and rocky wilderness a resting place shielded from sun and foes was a matter of survival. 

Following this brief introduction, there is a shift in narrator. The person dwelling in safety, now speaks, and we listen in as they address the Lord. This second speaker recognizes the source of their security, affirms their trust, and offers eight evocative metaphors for how God is present and active in the midst of human anguish and anxiety.  

The graphic catalogue of dangers—hidden traps, arrows, terrors, pestilences, plagues, and sickness—calls to mind memories of pain, peril, and loss, and names many of our deepest fears. While series such as these are usually punctuated by petitions to form a litany, this Psalm is entirely devoid of requests. There is no pleading “Lord, hear our prayer” or “Lord, deliver us”. Instead, the speaker conveys absolute assurance that none of these hazards can cause harm. 

The effect is to instill confidence and courage in their trust that 

• God liberates those who are hunted, ensnared, and infirm.  

• God embraces and encloses like a mother bird sheltering her young beneath her wing.

• And, God’s faithfulness, like a shield and buckler, serves as a buffer between us and assailants of all kinds.

And yet, our lives and the news daily seem to belie that God intervenes to ward off dangers. Good people suffer violence, injuries, and diseases. People who trust in God experience poverty and hunger. People who call on God are broken in body, mind, and spirit. What are we to make of the Psalmist’s trust?

In the final three verses, the speaker changes again, and we hear directly from God who offers assurance that he will respond when called upon. As the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann observes, the Psalter rarely exhibits extended one-way speech. More often, Psalms are characterized by dialogue and shifts in perspective. God’s reply assumes that people will experience suffering and hardship, and he might even be offering a gentle corrective to the second speaker. 

God does not offer immunity from danger, but he promises to be present in times of trouble. No one is exempt from suffering and shame, but in our struggles, we remain bound to him in love. As Moltmann observes, this sense of God’s presence in the face of pain and humiliation found its fulfillment in Christ crucified. 

Moltmann died last year, at the age of 98, one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the past century. The central question that motivated his work was how to respond in the aftermath of such evil committed by one’s own people. For him this meant wrestling with the question how to find a life and hope ‘after Auschwitz’. What is the equivalent question we might ask on this side of the Atlantic?

The year as Moltmann was born, a black man named Raymond Byrd was taken from a jail and lynched by a white mob in Wytheville, Virginia. One of the black men guarding the county jail that night had a child twelve years later, John, who grew up to ask questions about what happened, why it happened, and who was involved. Over decades, John Johnson interviewed locals, including one of Byrd’s daughters, who shared stories, photographs, documents, and artifacts, and he also researched the stories of other Virginians who had faced the same fate.

A few years ago, Johnson was befriended by Saint George’s Men’s Group, and he came to preach from this pulpit. He too, died last year, and next Sunday at Choral Evensong, we as a community will honor Johnson, the stories he told, and the victims of racial violence. Come. Come to recognize what took place, to remember, and to consider in the context of worship, how to find life and hope after Wytheville. 

Hope, Moltmann observed, “does not make people serene and placid; it makes them restless. It does not make them patient; it makes them impatient. Instead of being reconciled to existing reality they begin to suffer from it and to resist it” (EG, 12)

If there is one thing I have learned from walking alongside those in the valley of the shadow of death, from the stories of saints, from those on wrong side of history, and from dark nights of wrestling with Angels, it is that God is present, especially behind the barbed wire, in firestorms, prisons, hospitals, and at the lynching tree. And with Moltmann, “I am convinced that God is with those who suffer violence and injustice and he is on their side. He is not the general director of the theater, he is in the play.”