A sermon by Rev. Dr. Hugh Smith III
 

     Not long ago my wife and I went out to dinner at a quaint, old restaurant along the northern banks of the Delaware. We arrived earlier than the time of our reservation and we were asked to wait in a side room.  Along the inside wall of the room were two cages of finches. They hopped from perch to perch and one of them let out an occasional chirp.  It was fascinating being  so close to these little birds and I found myself making silly bird sounds to them. They hopped about with barely a flutter of their wings. Their tiny eyes darted back and forth as they peered between the wires of the cage into the room. 

     There were open windows on the far side of the room and I soon realized why the cages were on the inside wall.  It was so the birds couldn’t see the wide expanse of the heavens and the wild birds that were flying freely through evening sky.  As I watched the birds confined in their little cages, a great impulse came over me to pick up the two cages and carry them out through the large colonial front door of the restaurant and open the doors of the cages and set the finches free.  Of course, I didn’t.  No one does something like that. The proprietors would have called the police and they would have locked me up. Worse yet a reporter may have come to cover the story.  And then too, there was the chance that after all my trouble in taking the cages outside and opening the doors, the finches may just have hopped around and not flown out. 

     The truth is that we all know what it feels like to be trapped. From the sound of Paul in his letter to the Romans, Paul felt like a caged bird.  There was within him, he claimed, an inmost self. It is like a bird in a cage.  In the inmost self, he wrote, he knew what he was to do.  In that inmost self he did truly want to do what he knew was best and right and what God would want.  But his life experience was that there was another power at work that stopped him, prevented him, stood in his way, and he ended up being in a place he did not want to be and doing and saying what he hated.  “I’m captive to sin!” he exclaimed.  “How can I get free?” he asked, and then he answered with the only answer there is. “Thanks be to Christ Jesus who gives me the victory!”  It is Christ who opened the door of Paul’s cage and released the power of the Spirit of Christ that was locked within.  It is Christ Jesus who will open the cage for each one of us.  The joy of faith is realizing that the door has been opened.  Only the ones who are able to believe that truth allow themselves to leave the cage. 

     Paul shared that the experience of his life was one in which he had discovered that there was a great limitation to human knowledge and human will power.  You and I may know exactly what is the right behavior that is called for in a given life situation, but when we get into that situation we too often do exactly what we know is the wrong thing.  You may know exactly how you should respond to your children when something happens, but knowing what to do doesn’t mean you are able to do it. What you know about how to parent does not make you a good parent.  What you know inside about what God wants for your life does not make you able to do it. 

     How many times have you tried to settle a difference with someone by carefully planning what you know you should say and how you should handle yourself, then as you try to do it, someone “pushes your buttons” and you end up talking and acting not at all like you know you should?  When it is all over you say to yourself, “I don’t know why I said that.  I can’t believe that I acted that way.”  We all have been there haven’t we?  It is as if something gets in your way, as if there is another power at work preventing you from being and doing what God would want.

     Paul does not say that good and evil are at war in us and we don’t know which way to go.  He claims that we do know the right way, but something keeps us from doing it.  Something keeps the good in us caged in.  There is a limit to what our knowledge of the right thing can do.  We may know how to behave and what attitude we should have, but there is a force against us. 

    Knowing they were meant to fly was of no help to the hopping finches.  The cage door was closed and they couldn’t open it.  In fact, they had gotten so used to living without their wings they seemed content.  But the owners took no chances.  They kept them from being too near to the open windows.  Something may have been awakened within them.

     Jesus Christ came not only to awaken something within each of us, but he came to be with us and open the cage door for us, to give us wings within, to give us power to do what we ourselves could not do.  It is a conscious willingness to believe, to trust that the cage door is open that allows our spirits to find their wings.  It is a willingness to accept that we no longer have to live as if we cannot, but rather by God’s grace we have been given freedom from the cage that holds us.  We actually do have power over sin.  We are free. The cage door is open in every situation of our lives. “Follow me from where you are,” a voice calls to us, “Come forth!”

     Of course, there are some that would say that we are not free of our cages because we are not committed enough to doing what God wants.  They claim it is our will power that is lacking, not our faith. “Just put your mind to it.  You can do it!”  Non-smokers will tell that to smokers, non-alcoholics will say it to those in recovery.  It will be told to those with eating disorders.  You just have to make up your mind and stick to it.  We all know about resolutions, but if we are honest we all know about the weakness in the human will.  We may want to be as we know God wants and really fly, but when we try to fly on our own we fly into the wires of the cage.  We flutter, we fall, we fail.  There is a power that is against us.  Everyone’s cage is different, but sooner or later we will all discover that there is a force that defeats us when we try on our own.  We are caged by a power that seems to work against us. 

     The inner self of which Paul speaks, that of God in each of us, is like a caged bird that only Christ can release. If that were not so then we would not have regrets, we could bring all things we wanted to pass, and we would not in the silent place of our hearts cry out to God, “Lord have mercy.”  We would not have to confess each week.  We would not feel that we need to be set free so we can start again.

     How many times have you said, “I do not want to get angry, I want to forgive, I want to be joyful, I want to get rid of my pride, sarcasm, envy, bad habits, ugly thoughts, I want to stop worrying”, only to realize again and again that you cannot do it.  Our confessions to God, to each other, and to ourselves is witness to the truth that as hard as we try, it is not ever enough to get out of the cage.  Our confessions are cries for help to a power higher than you and I. 

     There is also a limit to the power and ability we have to diagnose what ails us.  You may understand completely why you behave wrongly or not as you would like in certain circumstances.  You may have it all figured out, but that still won’t give any of us the ability to change.  Knowing why the car isn’t running won’t make it run.  Knowing that there is a power against us won’t release us.  What does release us is trusting the present power of God.  What does save us is believing that Christ has given himself for us.  What releases us is realizing that God has entered into all our cages in Jesus Christ and by his own love broke open the door of our cages forever.  Christ gave himself for us.  “Was crucified, dead, and buried” the creed says.  “But he rose again.”  Christ came back through the open window between earth and heaven and declared good news, “The door to the cage has been broken open.  Come out! Follow me.” 

     There was a picture in the paper yesterday of a great horned owl that was being released from captivity to go back into the wild.  It is a wonderful sight to see a wild bird set free.  Hundreds of people had gathered for the occasion just to watch.  To see the wings of an injured bird that had  been restored begin to move again and lift the bird  upward to fly as  it was meant  to touches  something  deep  within  all  of  us.   I truly believe  that within each of us there is an inner self, a higher self, a true self, that of God within, that Christ has set free from sin, from the power that would cage and limit all the love within you that God intends to release with the wings of the Spirit.  The power of sin and the limits life places on us need not control us. 

     We no longer need to remain in the cages that hold us from God’s intention for our lives.  We have been given the wings of the Spirit to live as God would have us.  We are asked simply to trust, to receive the power and freedom offered to us through Christ.  It means to let your self come forth into life without being held captive by your fears.  It means knowing you are free to be your truest self with others, free to love them, accept them, and forgive them.  It means to know your self as forgiven, and to live each moment as a sacrament of freedom and grace.  Christ invites us to follow where he leads, and we are each able to come forth and live as God intends because Christ himself has opened the door.