Kirkepiscatoid

^{Psalm 124}

¹If it had not been the Lord who was on our side—let Israel now say—

²if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us,

³then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us;

⁴then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us;

⁵then over us would have gone the raging waters.

⁶Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.

⁷We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.

⁸Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

I have been working backwards through the Psalms as a spiritual exercise, starting with 150 and doing one every day till I get back to Psalm 1.

It is a story of the deliverance of the Jews, but it is a story of my deliverance, also. Maybe it is a story of your deliverance! I like it in its entirety, but I especially like v.7: “We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.”

Ok, I want you to imagine this bird, with a string still hanging from his leg and the noose around his ankle, with a broken end dangling.

I remember this moment in my life. The exact moment. I was 23 years old. Without going into a great deal of detail, I grew up in a sea of alcohol-fueled physical abuse. I was taught to think absolutely bizarre ways of "making children mind" was ok. There was a moment, when I was 23, that I no longer agreed to be an abused child, psychologically. My parents and I were supposed to go out for their anniversary. Dad was drunk. Very drunk. And behind the wheel. I refused to get in the car. At first, I tried cajoling and wheedling to talk him out. It just made him madder. Finally, I said, "No, I'm not going, then."

He then proceeded to launch into a tirade of what he was going to do to me if I didn't get in the car. I still remember my mom crying, begging me to get in the car, berating me for "causing trouble with your dad." I kept walking. He got out of the car and told me if I didn't get in, he would kill me--that he could chase me down and break my neck. I stopped and said, "Yes you can. But I still will not have gotten in the car." I kept walking, shaking, fearing he’d chase after me, but did it anyway. He did not follow. It was the moment I escaped the snare, the string still on my ankle. He never physically threatened me again from that moment on. My mom endured his abuse about five more years, but eventually they divorced. He remarried, I'm sure he still abuses his second wife, but he is a burned out shell of the threat he used to be, an old man who is much more mellow than in those days and far less explosive.

Then you know, years go by and, one day, I looked down, and the string was gone. It rotted off, or the noose loosened enough that I had stepped out of it and didn't even know it. The only thing left was it left a mark around my ankle. A scar.

Can you think back and remember “the moments of your deliverance?” The exact moments? Maybe they are not as dramatic as mine; maybe they are more dramatic, but I bet you can. In that moment, you can still feel the string on your ankle although it long rotted off.

I think about that in the Eucharistic Prayer when we say, “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption” b/c I can still remember those moments. I think about that when we say about Christ in the EP, “to live and die as one of us.” Wow, that means to feel our pain, our tragedy, and also our joy, our comedy.

The other problem with having had that snare on our legs, figuratively speaking, is that sometimes we feel the pain of that snare even when it no longer is real--sort of like how amputees feel "phantom limb pain."

Over the weekend, I had to go through a situation at our church where I did not speak up about something I should have spoken up about. I found myself incredibly angry at myself for not being able to articulate my dissent sooner. I was angry that this person who I considered an integral friend in my life was putting me in a situation where I had to fight that old feeling of "not speaking up to not make trouble." Even though I was in no danger of physical abuse anymore, I realized the old thread of physical abuse checkered my reality and made me cowardly to tell the truth.

But you know, that psalm is not just about our past. It’s about “deliverances yet to come.” Nothing earth-shattering perhaps, just the "cares of the world". They weigh us down. There are deliverances from some of these yet to come. They will feel wonderful. Things just don’t always feel great right this moment.

The bulk of this situation in my life has defused as of this morning, but I know there are some hard realities of it. I will have to deal with the tension it caused. I will have to reconcile some issues with this friend. I am not looking forward to it. But it will be ok. I'm sure of that. Maybe not ok like "everyone lives happily ever after" but it will level out somehow. I just don't like the work of doing it.