April 15, 2007--Second Sunday of Easter

Lectionary Texts:
Psalm 118:14-29 or Psalm 150;
Acts 5:27-32;
John 20:19-31;
Revelation 1:4-8

Sermon Text: Psalm 116:1-4, 8-14

Songs of Deliverance:
Out of the Snare

What a gorgeous time of the year! It is the time for new life to be forming in the world. The maple tree that we planted last year has budded and we are looking forward to the next few weeks. Last year, during later April or early May right after we planted our tree, we found a robin’s nest in it at about seven feet off the ground. For the next few weeks we enjoyed getting a ladder and peeking in to see, first the eggs and then the chicks, as they grew and developed. With the help of some neighbor kids our family also located a large toad as well. It is that time of year where we see wildlife coming out almost daily.

Last week, as I was thinking about this time of year, I was remembering a story that I read last spring. The author is Annie Dillard, a Christian. Several years ago, she took a year and lived near a creek and watched what she saw. Her essays on creation are in her book called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

One of the first stories she tells is of the joy of walking along the edge of a pond and watching and listening with great interest to the elegant freedom of the frogs as they jumped out of the hidden places along the bank, each one yelling a froggy “yikes!” and splashing into the water1. Dillard found a frog that simple sat at the edge of the water and appeared to drain out of its skin2.

I’ve seen that happen before, but not on the bank of a pond. When I walk, all the frogs just seem to jump into the water, and I’m too dense to notice the ones that don’t jump. No, it has been in other places out in the world of men and women. Walking through life watching people dart here and there, sounding off, taking care of business and doing what they need to do in order to make a big splash. I am learning to look a little more closely and see what makes people jump, but every once in a while, I see a person who has no jump left.

You’ve seen it before. The vigor in their life just seems to deflate right before your very eyes. A lot of times you can tell by their eyes. At first their eyes may become wider and brighter. They are compensating for what is going on; but before too long, the light that used to be there is gone. Things begin to go dull. The changes are subtle. The people around them may be jumping around and making all kinds of noise, but they are still, silent, just slowly dying and no one really knows what is going on below the surface. Annie Dillard knew. She explained it. A giant bug was just behind the frog. This bug bits its victim, makes a puncture and then uses “poisons that dissolve the victim’s muscles and bones and organs--all but the skin--and through it the water bug sucks out the victim’s very life leaving nothing but a shell” 3. Isn’t nature lovely?

The psalmist describes his plight by saying, “The snares of death encompassed me, the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me” (116: 3, NRSV). If your Bible says “sorrows,” that is one of the translations of the word, but the word more often is translated in scripture as the word “snares.” In the Old Testament, the idea of death meant what we mean by death and the place of the dead was Sheol. But it also included the concept that death invaded this life and made relationship impossible. The psalmist was caught in a snare, a trap of death, but was technically still alive.

Paul was a college sophomore. He was a pretty good student, but his grades began slipping. He was well liked in high school and made friends quickly in the dorm, but he was spending more and more time alone and people were less and less attracted to him. Where interaction was concerned he just started staying on the bank of the river. It was very subtle, most of us didn’t even notice it. We were too busy trying to jump in and make big splashes ourselves.

He had been caught in the living trap of pornography. Once he was bitten, he couldn’t tear himself away from it. The poison entered his brain and body and dissolved any backbone he had to stand up to the addiction. When he was around people, he was sure that somehow they knew, or would find out. It had trapped him and was slowly separating him from his friends, and was already working destruction on the family that he would later start. Isolating him, separating him, slowly but surely bringing death into his life. He had spent almost three years silently hoping someone would find out and help set him free. No one who knew him could see it. He was just another frog on the bank, another guy in the dorm. But the magazines and the pictures were a shadow under the surface that was literally sucking the life out of him while he sat silent.

Sabrina’s husband was a successful small business owner who worked long hours. While trying to raise a couple of teenagers, keeping up with the financial books of the business and spending a lot of time alone, she was ready to try something that would help her to shake the blues. She learned that she could order prescription drugs on the internet. At first, she perked up. Her eyes brightened. Before long, she was hooked, trapped. As the days and weeks wore on, it paralyzed her life. She could do nothing without trying to work an angle to get more. She hid money from her husband and diverted money from the business. He was so busy he never noticed the changes in her. He didn’t look into her eyes often enough to notice when they went dull. The guilt became so intense. All she wanted was freedom from the snare that had caught her and separation from the parasite that was literally sucking the life out of her. Silently she suffered distress and anguish, fearing (but also hoping) for the day when her husband would find out and help her get free. She just couldn’t tell him. So she sat silent, caught in a hideous snare that was just under the surface, destroying her from the inside.

Jack was snared as a very young boy. The family used to leave him in the care of his uncle. He knew what his uncle was doing to him was wrong, but he had no idea how to bring up the abuse to his family. It went on for years. His uncle must have realized that Jack was getting old enough to tell someone because he quit, but the damage had been done. Jack’s body and brain had been poisoned and was being devoured by memories that were killing him from the inside out. Those memories proved to be a snare that prevented him from jumping in anywhere. Relationships were impossible for him. From what you could see, he looked normal enough; just another frog on the bank, if a little distracted or dull. But under the surface, he was trapped, slowly being killed by something that happened 20 years ago. He endured it in silence.

Pornography, addiction, abuse, I could go on forever telling stories of people who are caught in some kind of snare. The truth is, there are so many potential snares in the world, the list is endless. In other places the psalmist says a lying tongue is a snare, idols are a snare, and fear of others is a snare.

It also says, “Let their table be a snare” (69:22). I was thinking about that one. Let their table be a snare. I think that is partly because of what is said around a table. But you know your table can also be a snare if you are still trying to shed the extra 10 pounds you gained over the holidays. Your doctor may have told you, that your table may be a snare, and threatens your health or even your life.

What is really amazing is what we will do in order to get ourselves out of those things. I grew up in farm country. The farm kids around my home town would trap small animals for fur or for sport, sometimes to keep them away from livestock. The psalmist would have known about a rope snare. A more modern version of a snare is a steel trap. The way a snare or a trap works is that when the victim steps on it, it springs up from the ground and latches hold of the victim by the foot or whatever other part is in the trap. It causes the victim to be immobilized and stumbling. It’s common knowledge that a trapped animal, like a raccoon, will, under the distress and anguish of being trapped, go to drastic measure in order to get away. Some animals will actually chew off their own paw in order to gain freedom.

I’ve known more than one person who has turned to abusing himself because of the anguish and distress that have become a part of life. It isn’t something that is talked about all that much, but it isn’t anything new. The first time I saw it was about 25 years ago. When I was around 10 years old, I remember seeing scars on the back of a girl’s hand at the bus stop. They were deep and uniform, like they were intentionally put there. I asked her where they came from. I remember her eyes were very cold when she said, “I did that, because I wanted to.” I can’t imagine the anguish she felt that would push her to abuse her body like that in order to find some kind of freedom. As I look back on that, I wonder what was going on under the surface there.

As we gather this morning in the beautiful spring weather, I wonder what is going on below the surface, and I think the Old Testament writers had it right. Death and hell seem able to sneak into the mainstream of this world and snare us, poison us and suck the life right out of us, leaving nothing but an empty shell. Where is hope for someone who is caught in a snare and being poisoned by anguish and distress because death and hell have invaded the land of the living?

Something happens this time of year for Christians who have known great distress and anguish; thoughts begin to form at the back of our minds. We talked about it during Lent. Jesus spent a night in a Garden in great distress and anguish, so much so He sweat great drops of blood. Speaking of poison, His prayer was, “Let this cup pass from me.” It is a metaphor for the poison of execution from which He drank deeply. Ironically while He was trapped on the cross and after He gave up His spirit, they pierced His side, and blood and water, His life, flowed right out of Him. There was nothing left but a shell of a body there. No question about it. Death and hell invaded the land of the living that day.

But that’s not the only invading that happened that day. The thought at the back of my mind today is from the Apostles’ Creed. It is taken from Ephesians 4. It says, “Christ descended into death/hell and rose on the third day.” We celebrated it last week. Death may have invaded your life, but He invaded death. A long time ago He defeated death and hell so we can say with Paul the Apostle in the right here and right now, “Where O death is your victory, where O grave is your sting?”4 We can say with the Psalmist. “You have delivered my soul from death and my eyes from tears and my feet from stumbling.” “I will love the Lord because he has heard my voice.” We don’t have to keep devouring the glass or the cup or the syringe of poison. You don’t have to lift up the memory that destroys you from the inside out. You can be delivered from the snare!

That seems all well and good for others, but you don’t have to walk along the shore to see frogs locked in the snare of death, or other people in the dorm, or across the aisle at church or around the corner in your neighborhood. All you have to do is look into the water; into a mirror at your own reflection. Your eyes are clouding over, and the face you see is a shell of who you used to be. Inside, you are emptier every day; still caught in some snare, some addiction, some memory of abuse, some habit of sin, something that we don’t see but is just below the surface and is absolutely sucking the life out of you. Death and hell have invaded the land of the living, and they have a hold of you. You’ve tried absolutely everything and mostly just made it worse. You’d chew off your right hand if you thought it would help, but the fact is, you know it won’t. A long time ago, you decided to bare it in silence. What else is there to do?

A strange thing happens around our house. It usually happens at about suppertime. We have a few of those wooden chairs with the slats in the back of them. The gaps between the slats are wider at the top than at the bottom. It has happened with both of our girls now. When they have gotten old enough to start exploring, they’ve stood up on the seat of those chairs, put their hands in between those slats up high, and then sat down and tried to pull their hands out of the narrowed slot. They both tried but not for very long. In fact neither one of them tried long enough to even leave a mark on their hands. When they found out they were stuck, they just sat there in silence patiently waiting for us to discover them. (Yeah, right!) Within a few seconds they yelled out two of the first words they knew, “Stuck, help! Mommy, Daddy!” I’ll bet it happens the same way in every house. Mom or dad is there before they can even get the words out, picking them up and rescuing them from the trap.

You see, when we are caught in a snare we make it so complicated. Oh, there may be several other steps involved. We may need counseling. We may need a 12 step program, but what we need to do first and foremost is not sit in silence paralyzed by some snare while we are trying to figure it all out. We need to call on the name of the Lord. It’s really a simple prayer, but the passage says, “God protects the simple.” “O Lord, save my life!” You know what I think is the best word in this passage? “His ear is inclined to you.” His hand is cupped listening for your cry for help. You start right now calling on Him as long as you live, and I guarantee you one day very soon, you will be able to say, “I love the Lord because He has heard my voice . . . You have delivered my soul from the snare of death and my eyes from tears and me feet from stumbling. You set me free from the trap.”

Those of us, who have simply made that cry and now know that freedom, are going to come in gratitude and love and lift up the cup of salvation. If you suffer distress and anguish today and find yourself in the grip of some snare that has you stumbling around; if something is sucking the life out of you, I’d invite you to come too. And as you do, pray that simple prayer, “O Lord, I pray, save my life!” I promise you will find rescue.

1. Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998), 7.

2. For a more complete description, refer to the passage in Dillard’s book.

3. ibid.