"Deliverance"
Sermon Presented January 20, 2008
Psalm 40:1-11
When I was a child, I took the bus every Saturday afternoon to the St. Joseph Museum, where I could tour the museum, do craft projects and watch a movie - usually an old black and white western, starring Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, or Hopalong Cassidy. One reoccurring event in these westerns was a cowboy - or cowboy plus his horse - getting caught in quicksand. Sometimes the victim was swallowed up, but most of the time he was delivered when someone threw him a rope and pulled him to safety. I understood that being caught in quicksand was a devastating fate, and I developed a fear of quicksand!
When I read the 40th Psalm, this is the image I see. While sinking in quicksand, God rescues the psalmist and places him on a solid rock base. No wonder he is thankful and sings praises. The psalms are prayers, and this prayer begins with thanksgiving for God's past faithfulness, and then moves to the psalmist telling God that he, the psalmist, remains faithful and needs help again! Psalm 40:1-12. (Read text.)
The lectionary text ends with verse 11. However, I chose to include verse 12 because it is part of the paragraph and an indication that the psalmist hasn't begun his exit from the pit in his current situation. His hope is in God who delivered him in the past and because of his past experience, believes God will deliver him again. The psalmist has hope, where others may have given up.
Yesterday I read in the Journal Sentinel that a woman - who had delivered twins two weeks ago - attempted to drown them. One is dead and as far as I know, the other is clinging to life. Why would a young mother try to kill her babies? Why was she so desperate that she chose this way to get relief from her despair? It may have been post-partum depression - a mental illness that sometimes engulfs new mothers - and she may have seen no solution to her problems other than to get rid of the babies. Whatever the reason, she didn't have the hope that the psalmist had to deliver her from despair.
Quicksand pictures the psalmist's predicament from which he has once been delivered, and it also pictures the despair into which he is currently sinking. This prayer is a most fitting text for this season of Epiphany - because Epiphany is a time for renewal. It's a time to open our eyes to new understandings and new opportunities. It is a time to gain hope for rescue from darkness when it encompasses us.
When I was in seminary, a friend recommended the book Gift of the Dark Angel by Ann Keiffer as a book all pastors should read. Keiffer was an over-achieving, highly successful 38-year-old woman who without warning, suddenly plunged into the abyss of depression. She describes it as desolate and final as a grave. Alone at the bottom, she struggled for many years with the dark angel of depression. When she finally emerged from the pit, she was most grateful, and like the psalmist, spoke her thanksgiving. But her emergence was a long time coming, and it was beset with a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs!
Most of us won't find ourselves in quicksand or the deep depression affecting Ann Keiffer, but sometime in our lives, many of us will be in a pit that seems as deep and debilitating as a quicksand grave. An estimated 25% of all women and 12% of men will be treated for clinical depression some time during their life, and the difference in those statistics may be that men don't seek help as readily as women. Depression is no respecter of gender or of age - affecting adolescents, teens, and the elderly - as well as those in between. But whether it's depression or some other serious problem that engulfs us, all of us will have times in our lives when we have no place to turn except to God.
Woody Allen once made the comment that "80% of life is just showing up." Most of life isn't dependent on what we do, but what is done to us. That is the 80%. Our bodies, parents, government, education, disease and the environment happen to us. This is our passive existence.
Some of our shaping influences are positive - things for which we are thankful. Some are negative - events that can break us or movement through which can strengthen us.
There are different ways to handle this passive side of our existence - this majority of life over which we have no control. We can do nothing - kind of like a slug, or we can be attentively passive by listening to God - by allowing God to open our ears so we can hear and respond to God in obedience and worship. Remember that God usually speaks through others, so discernment is needed.
Friday I attended a conference sponsored by the Interfaith Conference of Milwaukee at UWM on the topic of Racism and White Privilege. One of the workshops I attended was led by a European Jewish woman who had married a Black man. It was titled: "Healing the Hurts of Racism." During this time, people shared their descent into the pit because of racism, but the leader didn't leave it there. She offered these steps to emerge from the abyss: First: Make a friend and do it by going places you have never gone before. She suggested a church or synagogue as one such place. Second, she suggested that the person cry a lot with a safe person as they face their hurts and fears. Third, she suggested that the person get involved with others who want to make a difference. Victims of racial injustice, domestic violence and sexual abuse need others to join them in their pain, in their healing and in their advocacy.
The psalmist proclaims that the pit experience brings us closer to God. Most people just hope to survive the pit with no thought that it may be valuable. It seems too much to ask or to expect that good can come from a devastating experience. But that is what Keiffer conveys in her book. That is what the psalmist conveys as he patiently waits for God's deliverance, and then praises God's faithfulness to others.
Most people believe that their worth is determined by what they accomplish, and therefore we constantly strive to be worthy. However, when we are unable to produce, when we are caught in the throes of depression - we lose the ability to move forward and maintain our productivity.
Not long ago, I received a call from a friend who asked how I was. I told her I wasn't accomplishing anything, so I thought I would eat lunch and then try again. She asked: "Do you have to accomplish something?" My first thought was: "Of course I do! I have a sermon to deliver on Sunday; I have other obligations to meet elsewhere; I must accomplish something!"
But then I thought of my need for self-care. The last three Fridays - my day off - have been at least partially taken up with church-related activities. The "oughts" and "shoulds" get in the way of Sabbath rest.
I read of a Catholic sister who has this saying in cross-stitch on her wall: "I will not should on myself." I believe that many of us need that kind of reminder, because what we produce - or meeting another's expectations - does not determine our value.
When the psalmist was in the pit, he cried out to God over and over again until he finally experienced God's presence and response to his need. As we remember God's past interventions and tell others of God's help, we can begin to live healthier lives. Sometimes we need therapy and/or medication - truly wonderful aids in an assent from the pit. But at the time of the psalmist, there was no mental health practice. God was the only source of help. Those who are in the pit today need God's help - just as they need the help of mental health professionals - great gifts from God.
When the psalmist experienced healing, he spoke of God's deliverance to anyone who would listen. In the 9th verse of our text he says: "I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord." He was reminding God of his faithfulness! When Ann Keiffer was lifted from her depression, she expressed her deliverance in this way: "I felt as if I'd just delivered a ten-pound baby cactus covered with sharp, poisonous spines." Pain and relief are the sensations she describes. She was grateful that she could now see life as a gift, and she was at peace. Nothing had changed. She was still tired, in pain, and without answers, but now she was committed to embrace whatever life brought her and more than that, she was committed to allow herself to be transformed by it. And God did just that!
Keiffer's depression awakened her and called forth hope and joy where she least expected it. Her suffering took her down to bedrock, and there she found new meaning for her life. She wrote that if she could make her years of depression and pain magically disappear, she wouldn't because of the harvest that came from the thorny ground. (I doubt if I could say that!)
Her concluding paragraph reads: For eight years I have wrestled my Dark Angel, in the depths of depression and in the glass-shard fields of pain. I have fought the Angel with all my mind, all my soul, and all my strength. I have never, never let go. And this one thing I know: My Dark Angel has blessed me" (p. 168.)
Life is cyclical. Many times when we feel certain we have passed a particular phase of life, it reappears. The psalmist begins this prayer with praise that God lifted him from depression and ends it with another cry for deliverance. He again speaks of evils encompassing him and sins overtaking him.
Sometimes pain reoccurs because we have just touched the tip of the iceberg in our journey into self-awareness and healing. We find there is more work to do, and this work can be even more painful than the first. But God is with us in these trials and will help us move through the darkness. When we experience God's healing and presence, and then speak our testimony to those with ears to hear, others will be helped to trust God because of our trust! God is faithful!
The 40th Psalm is our psalm! We are the ones who are drawn from the pit and placed on a rock. We are the ones who will need rescuing over and over again. We are the ones who need to trust God enough to wait for God's word and God's deliverance. We are the ones who are given a new song and a new lease on life. So let's allow God to open our ears so we can hear, and then, let's give God our obedience and praise.
