Deliverance
Sermon by Sandra M. Thomas
June 10 , 2007, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

Ezra 9:5-9
Romans 7:14-25

"For we are slaves; yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love."

It was an amazing street revival service! Ezra, having waited a lifetime to return home, dreaming of his homeland, the place God had given his people, where the temple once stood, where they could live and worship in freedom, Ezra finally arrives - once an exile and a slave, now free, now home. But shouts of joy are quickly replaced by cries of agony as Ezra's eyes discover, with great horror, the blatant sinfulness of earlier waves of returnees from the exile. He reacts - tearing his clothes, pulling his hair, throwing himself on the ground, crying out to God - a little dramatic but his prayer is the same stuff our Sunday prayers of confession are made of. Ezra however has their attention and as his prayer ends - the people begin to stand and say "You know.he's right! We have really screwed up, we have done wrong, we have broken God's law, we're out of line, we need to put our heads together and find a solution to the mess we're in."

Only once has anyone stood and responded to a prayer when I was leading worship - my first student church - it was after we had prayed the confession together - one of the men stood and said he was "tired of me making them read the prayers out loud - they paid me to do the praying." Others have more gently and gingerly suggested that we really didn't need a prayer of confession every Sunday - like they really didn't have time to do anything wrong between most Sunday's - so confession less frequently would suit their lifestyle just find. No one has ever said - we need more of this! And no one has ever stood to say - let's work on a solution to our common depravity.

Ezra and his folks were a little short-sighted on the nature of their sin - focusing on mixed marriages rather than the bolder and broader problem of out and out disobedience to God. And their solution was a little strange as well - just get rid of the women and children. The truth is that our waywardness is more complex than that - and our deliverance is more difficult. The solutions are as easy as "of course" - "do we want freedom from obesity - of course" "do we want to be free of addiction to drugs - or course" "do we want to live in a world at peace - of course" "do we want the lies, deceit and subterfuge to end - of course" "do we want the killing on our streets to stop - of course" "do we want a cure for cancer, RSD, arthritis, Alzheimer's - of course". We don't lack the vision or the desire - what's lacking is our ability to change.

Psychologist and author Scott Peck tells the story about one of his clients who was always running out of gas. Their time together was spent discussing how he was almost late to work because he ran out of gas - but God rescued him by allowing him to just barely coast into the parking lot at work and deal with filling that gas tank later - or the time he ran out of gas at the top of a hill - and God again arranged things so there was a gas station at the bottom of the hill - or the time he was stuck by the side of the road and a construction guy stopped and gave him a gallon of gasoline from a container in the back of his truck. Thanks be to God! And there was the time he stopped at a gas station to ask for directions, but didn't bother to buy gas because the gas gauge said he had ¼ tank. However the gas gauge was broken..and yes! He knew it! Then, after years of psychotherapy the conversations about gasoline ended. And Peck was curious, wondering what happened. Had God let him down? No, the client responded - God had not let him down. He had experienced an epiphany. He realized that perhaps God had better things to do than deliver him from the side of the road. So he got his gas gauge fixed.

You and I are like that guy! We know that things are not right in our lives - something broken that needs to be fixed - but we don't fix it - we get by - and we limp along - and we forget and downplay and procrastinate - we wish that someone would come along and magically rescue us -- because deliverance is difficult. We don't want to do what is required.

For Ezra's people deliverance had involved generations waiting, yearning, facing the hopelessness with undying hope, far from home, yearning, enslaved, endless tears, sad prayers, broken hearts, - waiting

We have not been captured and carried off into exile, have we. The truth is we've volunteered to go on our own! We are slaves, each one of us, slaves to those things which destroy life - experiencing the same type of struggle Paul describes in Romans 7:

"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...I can will what is right, but I cannot do it..wretched person that I am! Who will deliver me?

A page from our own diary. The student, who at 2 am on the night before exams is still cramming - while remembering how he had resolved early in September to do his homework every night and not get behind. The tired young mother who resolves each night that she will be more patient with her four-year old..the father who determines to spend more time with his teenage son ..the woman who resolves to stop complaining..the husband and wife who are confident that if they just try a little harder they can patch up their marriage..the one who decides that tomorrow, for the fourth time, he will quit smoking. The internet addict who will try - tomorrow - to go one day without surfing the web.

    Deliver us from a lifestyle that destroys us and God's creation and threatens the lives of our grandchildren
    Deliver our neighborhoods from killing, fear, isolation, alienation
    Deliver our children from abuse, loneliness, from
    Deliver our older adults from isolation and degradation
    Deliver us from the things we do that enslave us and cut us off from life
    Deliverance requires more than a prayer..and most of the time deliverance requires more than our good intentions, our resolutions, our futile attempts and our cries in the night.

If newborns could talk they would tell us that deliverance is not easy. Mothers and fathers who participate know that delivery is not easy. Given the choice each one of us would have chosen to turn off the crushing waves of labor and leave that baby inside where it could live warm and cuddling, safe from life's dangers. But that can never be.

Even when deliverance has been accomplished, babies are not happy; rejoicing in their new found freedom. They're cold and crying with foreheads pressed flat and legs curled in tight, wondering what has happened. Deliverance, as wonderful and inviting as it sounds, is never easy.

Ask the cancer patient who is in the middle of month of chemotherapy if deliverance is easy...ask the alcoholic in the midst of painful withdrawal and agonizing struggle, to tell you about deliverance. Ask the person on a low cholesterol diet, at the dinner party where chocolate chip cheesecake is being served, if deliverance is easy. Did Paul know what he was asking when he cried out "Who will deliver me?" The long painful process that begins immediately after our prayers of confession is not something we undertake for the fun of it.

So where do we turn for deliverance? I can tell you from my own experience what doesn't work. Knowledge does not deliver us. All of my life I've struggled with shyness - my "thorn in the flesh" like Paul's. And many, many hours I've devoted to trying to understand what this is all about. I can explain the family patterns, the genetic propensity, the neuro-patterning, the social systems that reward or inhibit...books, studies, lectures, internet searches. It's interesting, but it is not deliverance.

Knowledge does not deliver and neither does diagnosis or good advice. Like a dieter who says "I am overweight and must stop eating between meals" or the chain smoker who resolves to quit forever with the help of a pill or patch or the workaholic who decides to leave work at 5:00 each day (with a briefcase full of papers) .I too wake up every morning and resolve that today I'm not going to be shy anymore. I decide that the fix for my problem is to speak eagerly to everyone...but by 9:00 in the morning I'm back to being shy. Why? Knowledge is not enough, diagnosis is not enough, resolution is not enough, confession is not enough.

Are we really that helpless? I seem to be. The Apostle Paul was. He says that after exerting every ounce of will power, he still found himself enslaved.

Frederick Buechner, commenting on Romans 7 wrote "We are so enslaved by all the old patterns, shackled by old habits, that we don't know how to get the hell out, which is much of what hell means in the first place: hell is the place you can't get out of."

Every honest person here this morning knows what it means to be enslaved by old patterns, shackled by old habits. Paul speaks for us all - We need deliverance! And deliverance comes not by our own efforts - deliverance comes from the outside..it comes as a gift and as a surprise in the midst of pain and struggle.

No baby can deliver itself. No slave can grant his own emancipation. No alcoholic, workaholic, food-aholic, drug addict, sports addict, sex addict, abuser, gossipers, procrastinator, no shy person can deliver them self. We need to surrender and receive the help of others and the help of God. The prayer of confession ends with our acknowledgement that we can't do it on our own. We open our eyes still searching for help in formulating a plan and working the plan.

This is where the gospel reaches us - for we too are slaves, yet God has not forsaken us in our slavery but extends to us his steadfast love. It is our very weakness that drive us to struggle and our struggles that lead us to understand that we cannot win and know that we cannot do it alone..and forced us to turn at last to God

If you have been there - been delivered by God's amazing grace - then you know that it was not your brains, your wit, your good looks, your charm...it was not your determination, your striving or your understanding that changed you. It was God's love - the love of one who knows the truth about us. It is God, who calls us irresistible, irreplaceable, infinitely worthwhile, accepted..the one who knows what is wrong with us and who knows why and has the power and compassion to change us...the patience to work with us ..the one who is eager to walk the road to true deliverance with us.

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