Feb. 14 Sermon: Deliver Us From Evil

“Deliver us from Evil”
Holy Covenant UMC, Sunday February 14, 2010
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd

Romans 8:18-27, 38-39

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Our culture thrives on words; we’re surrounded by words all the time: from clever tweets of 140 characters to long blog posts written by anybody with a computer and internet connection; Phones that deliver e-mails 24/7, and the ability to talk on the phone anywhere, anytime…from the train to our car; texting in the movie theater (or church!). And now, it’s not enough to watch the news, and hear the stories, but simultaneously, underneath, we read a ticker of other news stories that are happening.

But no matter how many words we surround ourselves with, put out to the world through hundreds of kinds of media,
There are times in our lives when words escape us:
When we are faced with the pain of another and don’t know what to say: a friend has lost her mother unexpectedly; a couple that we love is splitting apart and no words we seem to muster up can cut through the sharp daggers they’re throwing at one another; One sister has lost her baby to a miscarriage and another is struggling with infertility.

When there are disasters in the world that take our breath, and so our words, away: the earthquake in Haiti; the constant bombings and death happening in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and our fears that we are becoming numb to the violence; we don’t know what to say to ourselves, much less our children in the wake of so much pain.

And there are times when we desperately want words for ourselves, words that stubbornly refuse, no matter how hard we try, to rise to the tips of our tongues. We flub apologies when we’ve hurt someone deeply; we want to say the right thing when we hear a difficult diagnosis.
Words escape us.

They especially escape us when we are facing the evils of pain, injustice, and brokenness in any form. Jesus knows these pains, all too well, as one who inhabited this earth as a human being, walking and talking and living side-by-side with broken humans in an often painful world. It’s why, when Jesus is teaching us to pray, he includes the line: Deliver us from evil.

Deliver us from evil. Deliver us from the times when there are no words.

A few years ago, I faced a time when words had completely escaped me. And I found myself praying, desperately to God, deliver me, deliver me, deliver me. It was the fall of 2007, I was fresh from seminary, 25 years old, and 3 months into full time ministry.

I found myself sitting in my Honda Civic, headlights and flashers blinking, as the cop had instructed me. For the first time in my life, I was following a hearse and leading a mourning family. Cops surrounded us, on motorcycles, dashing around our procession, halting traffic, clearing the way. I was on my way to my first burial. Moving between the celebration of a life and the committal into the ground.

And I was sheer panic.

I was tense, trying to hold back tears so I could be present for the family, a family in deep grief and loss, afraid that I had nothing to offer them in this difficult time. The deceased woman’s children were looking to me for guidance, the right words, and I was the age of their children—what could I say? So I focused on at least looking composed (besides, you can’t show up to give pastoral care looking like you need it yourself); I felt lonely—sitting in my empty car, all by myself, nobody with whom to share this experience; I was scared–to be the minister, about to perform a ceremony I haven’t witnessed, much less led. And I was sad, dealing with my own grief—this was a loving, inquisitive woman, who became my friend at the end of her life. As her heart failed her, I visited her several times a week over many months. And in the midst of this panic, realizing this will be the first of many times, over decades, I will be making this drive, behind a hearse. Being doubtful: really, this is the life I chose? Spending lovely fall afternoons at gravesides? Then, as if my emotional musical chairs weren’t enough, my stomach began to move. I was too anxious all day to eat, and now my belly was starting to notice. I managed five diet cokes, yes, but I couldn’t stomach food. Now my stomach was speaking to me. Oh God, I thought, please don’t make loud rumbling noises as I bless the body.
Deliver me, deliver me, deliver me….Give me the words. I had no idea what I was going to say.

**
Think about those moments in your life when you had no words. Did you pray: Deliver me, oh God, Deliver me?
What are we really asking for when we pray this?
Truth be told, I was asking for the right words, but I also had this small, unrealistic hope, that the situation would change. I wouldn’t have to face my grief and the grief of others…that my car would stall; a rainstorm would suddenly make the burial impossible and we’d put it off for another day, a day when another pastor might be able to come with me. I was praying that I wouldn’t have to face the situation that felt so difficult. Still offering this prayer on the way to the grave.

How often do we pray, in the midst of pain, brokenness, evil, for God to remove the situation?
To take away the cancer, end hunger and civil wars, end abuse, stop our grieving? To give us the answers? To create a solution?

In our text from Romans 8, these beautiful words that the Apostle Paul is writing to the church in Rome, he tells us that in the midst of our pains, when we don’t know what to say, when we don’t pray as we ought, that the spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.

When we don’t know what to pray, when we pray for the wrong things, when we are so far in the midst of grief, depression, anxiety, and despair…the spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.

The Spirit takes over and does the talking for us.

This is what happened to me when I finally arrived at the graveside, unsure what to say or how to speak. The Spirit spoke for me.

Because I managed. I didn’t cry. I greeted the family as we poured out of our cars, giving her son permission to cry, hugging the grandchildren, gathering people to sit near the grave. I greeted in the name of a resurrecting God, read scripture, prayed, blessed. Saying the ancient words: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, earth to earth. Proclaiming new and eternal life. There was more hugging at the end, words of comfort, sharing memories and stories. Somehow, I was able to be. Be present for the family, be present to the scripture, be present for the one who died.

As soon as I got in my car and drove around the block, I fell apart. My body releasing what I had been holding inside. Deliver me, deliver me, deliver me. Only this time, words said in gratitude, not panic. A prayer not for words, but a prayer in thanksgiving that the spirit was sighing with and for me when I was completely spent. When I had no more words, the spirit was there.

And I realized that even though God had not delivered me from facing that moment—sparing the fear of loss or fumbled words or inappropriate counseling—God had, indeed, given me words.

My mistake was in thinking that those words had to be uniquely mine. For the words I was able to say at the graveside were anything but my own. For I didn’t know at 25, and I don’t know at 28, what the answers are to questions about grief, violence, disease, pain, and loss. And while I’ll have more life experience, I suspect I won’t have the answers at 88 either.

But what I do know, what we all know, as Christians, is that we have the gift of God’s eternal word, even and especially when we don’t have words ourselves. And the Spirit is always, always there breathing those words when we can’t manage them ourselves.

**
When we pray, deliver us from evil, should we be praying for evil to end? Absolutely. It’s appropriate to pray for someone to be healed from a disease, for the strength to overcome our addictions, for sex trafficking to cease. But we also know, when we pray for deliverance, that the world won’t suddenly become unbroken.

But when we pray, we do so knowing that, in the words of Romans, nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Nothing.

Evil, evil, comes when we believe we are separated from God. When we believe we are the ones in control. Evil comes when we think we are the ones with answers, instead of trusting in the love of God who never, ever lets us go.

We’ve been taking the Lord’s Prayer apart, over the last month, and dividing it up into phrases. But we never pray a single part of this prayer in isolation. So on our last Sunday to really explore it, it’s important that we remember the totality of what we are praying. Jesus’ words, words that can never be separated from one another.

We pray all at once, to a God who is holy other and intimately beside us; whose kingdom in heaven of perfect peace, justice, and love is a hope before us, knowing our call is to help bring this beloved community to earth; We pray for our daily bread, that our spiritual and material needs be met, as we are called to feed others with God’s hope and breaking bread; We hear God’s words of unconditional forgiveness as we turn outward and forgive those in our lives so that we can move forward into a better future.

And we pray, deliver us, deliver us from evil. Deliver us from believing that we are ever separated from you: deliver us from thinking that we know the right ways, that we can bring peace without the hope of your kingdom; that we ourselves or others are beyond forgiveness; deliver us from believing in scarcity rather than your provisions of abundance; deliver us from believing that we have to have the right answers and words all the time, instead of trusting in your eternal word.

Will God always deliver us from being sad or lonely or heartbroken? Deliver us from pain and injustice and violence? Eternally, yes, we live with the hope of a future, both in this life and the next, where pain is no more. But immediately, we may not see the world’s pain, our own pain, cease.

But God is delivering us from evil….God is delivering us from being separated from love. For the good news is, in the midst of pain and brokenness, we are never, ever alone. Love is always present. Resurrection is always our hope. Redemption always has the final word.

We don’t need to rely on our own words, our own knowing, our own solutions to the world’s problems. That’s what I realized at the graveside—God’s eternal goodness and love, that is with us in this life and the next life, is not mine alone to proclaim. But fortunately, we know that we always have the eternal Word, Jesus, the living word, of Scripture, the one who intercedes for us—the Holy Spirit. For God’s word is living, breathing, with us, before us and after us. And God’s eternal word is more than enough. For it’s God’s word that provides the answers and the assurance and the deliverance:

For Neither death nor life (nor cancer nor war)
Nor rulers nor angels (nor oppressive governments nor unjust laws)
Nor things present nor things to come (nor job loss nor infertility nor grief)
Nor powers, nor height, nor depth, (nor addiction nor mental illness nor heartache)
Nor anything in all creation
Can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

So when our own words escape, we can always say with confidence: Deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Forever. The living breathing loving word forever. Amen.

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