By The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
September 16, 2012
Text: Psalm 116:1-9
I find it uncanny that so often I associate an event with a phrase or, alternately, a phrase with an event. I thought about that just recently when we were remembering the landing on the moon: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. “ Who could say that and not have the image of Armstrong on the moon? It stays with you. Any kind of a phrase like that can resonate with you and take you back in one simple line to something that had happened or you'd heard or experienced many years ago.
The same thing is true with theological statements. Something is said, a phrase and you think, “Ah, I remember when I first heard that and this is what it meant to me. “I heard one such phrase recently, but it was what I remember about the event conjured up that really made it so real. Let me tell you about the memory first and then about the phrase.
The memory I had was of my very good friend, when I was growing up as a boy, called Stephen. I've mentioned Stephen to you before in another context. We were great friends in our 13th and our 14th years in County Durham in North East England. Steve was a boy, though unfortunately, who had suffered from polio and he had suffered physically as a result of the illness. He was crippled in leg, his heart was weak and he wore, to try and keep himself upright, callipers on his legs, made of steel.
Stephen was a lovely chap, always joyful, always fun to be around, a great friend, but he was someone who experienced immense humiliation. For example, at our school on days when we had athletics, it was often the case that we would pick a captain and a captain would then pick the soccer team from amongst the class. Almost every time, without exception, the captain would pick Stephen last. He was humiliated. He'd just sort of fit in and a lot of the time he spent on the bench.
The only respite he got was from his stubborn friend, Stirling, who when I was captain, chose him first and was smart enough to put him in goal where he didn't have to run around a lot and Stephen could stop a ball. He had great anticipation. But most of the time, he was humiliated.
What made matters worse is that we had a physical education teacher at school, who frankly, was pathological. There was something about weak people that he just couldn't stand and he would humiliate them. He clearly had what we call today, issues. And Steve was one of his issues. He really wanted excellence and poor old Steve, he was always forced to go on the wind sprints and the runs and to run around with everybody else and Steve always came last, often gasping because his heart was weak. It was humiliating.
Then the teacher said something. He said, “Basto - that was Steve's surname - God helps those who helps themselves. It says so in the Bible.” My heart sank when I heard that because I wondered if that's exactly what I had been hearing when I had attended Sunday school over all those years. Is it true that God helps those who help themselves?
So I did what I always did. I went home and asked my father. I said, “Dad, where in the Bible does it say, ”˜God helps those who help themselves.'”
My father said it doesn't. I was relieved, only to find out over the years since that a great many people really believe in the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.”
The Barna Institute, which is an institute that studies religious trends in the United States, came up with some amazing statistics about the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.” One of the statistics is that 53% of Americans believe that that sentiment is right and 22% believe it is wrong and the rest haven't made up their minds. But what is staggering is the number of Christians who believe, not only that it is right, but that it is in the Bible.
For example, 68% of evangelicals believed that God helps those who help themselves and 81% of mainline, non-evangelicals believe that God helps those who help themselves. The statistics get even worse; 75% of university students, when asked, “What is the meaning of ”˜God helps those who help themselves?'” say that is the central message of the Bible. Americans, and I'm not picking on Americans here, it is they who were used in this particular sample, but the vast majority of Americans, when listing the top 10 texts from the Bible, made “God helps those who help themselves number three.” Isn't it staggering?
What is the origin of this? The origin is found in Greek philosophy. It is there in Sophocles and in Euripides. It is stated in Aesop's fable on Hercules and the Waggoner. It finds its way into a lot of Greek philosophy and thinking. It's repeated in different ways and somewhat different language, but the sentiment is the same, God or the deity will only help those who first help themselves.
It got picked up in the political philosophy in the United States in the 18th and the 19th century. Benjamin Franklin quoted it as a foundation for his philosophy of life and work. Algernon Sidney and his very influential book, Discourses on Government, use the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves,” as a central policy for all governments and all life and because it came from the Bible. It doesn't.
I would like to suggest to you, in fact, something entirely different to ponder that the central message of the Bible is: God helps those who cannot help themselves. You see that so clearly in today's the passage from Psalm 116. It's so clear. This is part of what is known as the Hallel Psalms and the Hallel Psalms were three groups of psalms that were songs of thanksgiving.
They were thanksgiving in this particular case to be sung at the Passover to celebrate God's salvation and redemption of the people and yet, this particular psalm, as you will notice, is very personal. It speaks about someone who was going to face the death of Sheol, who had the bands of death around them as if they're being strangled by death, who cry out and they say, “Lord, save me. Save me from my affliction. “
This particular psalmist has experienced something extraordinary. Clearly they were ill. Clearly, for some reason, they were facing death, but they called on the name of the Lord and they were healed. God helps those who cannot help themselves. The psalms are a testimony of the inability of people to save themselves at times. God is not dependent on our ability to first try and save ourselves, God acts with compassion.
One of the great errors of the myth that God helps those who help themselves is the belief that this God is distant and remote from the world. God will step in only when we need him to step in, only when our own work and our hands have failed us. It sort of makes God the god of the gaps. God is called to fill in when we are not able to do things on our own as if somehow doing things on our own and helping ourselves is the most important thing in life. It is one of the great errors and cause of sadness to me, that many people conceive of God this way.
They conceive of God in this way because, for many people, God is a dispassionate god, a god who says, “Look, just get on with it., when you've got on with it and you've succeeded or even if you failed then I will help you,” the god of the deists, not of the Christians and the Jews; a god of philosophy, not a god of the Bible. The god of the Bible is God helps those who cannot help themselves.
What is the implication for us? Well it clearly means that we have a god who is with us in our struggles. I love the last verse that we find here. He said, “I walk with the Lord in the land of the living. “ For the psalmist, he knew that he had been in the land of death. He knew he was dying. God had come and saved him. God was with him to help him and to nurture him when everything else was broken. It's an incredible passage. In this life, the psalmist had been saved.
There's also something missing in this psalm. Was the psalmist what we call a proto-Christian? Did he, in other words, anticipate the coming of Christ or was the psalmist just simply saying that, in this life from the sickness that he had, he was saved? God helped him when he could not save himself.
Well, do not think the two are exclusive. I think that he knew that he was saved in this life, but nevertheless, there is a sense in which the door is always open for God to save in the next life, the life to come, that God recognizes that we cannot save ourselves and God does something to help us and to change us.
Sooner or later in this fall session, I just had to get something in about Manchester United. It just had to appear in one sermon and I'll only do it once, but it is fascinating that my home team has just appointed a new player. He's from Japan and his name is Shinji Kagawa. He's brilliant. Trust me, you can bet on him. He's going to be a big name. You might not have heard of him now, but you will hear about him in the years to come.
Why is he interesting to me? It is interesting to me because one of the theologians, who has had the greatest impact on my life, is named Kagawa, Toyohiko Kagawa. He was a Japanese theologian, who wrote in the early part of the 20th century. He had been born in the late 19th century to a wealthy family in Kobe in Japan. He had all the benefits of going to Kobe University, all the benefits of going to Princeton University to becoming a great scholar and, finally, he received the calling to the ministry and became a Christian.
He was converted and wanted to serve the Lord so he went back to Japan. When he went back to Japan as a new Christian, as an academic, who had all this great standing, he decided to commit himself to the poorest and poorest of people in the slums of Kobe.
When he got into the slums of Kobe, he realized that they needed to rebuild the place, that they needed to renew it and to give hope, but he did so believing in the power of the cross of Christ. He did it because he saw that in those very slums, Christ and the cross were active in the midst of the suffering of the world.
In one of the greatest statements about the cross that I have ever read, the great Kagawa, wrote these words, “Christ did not die upon the cross because of some theory. He poured out his love in response to the groans of the souls of men and women and when one accepts this work of Christ with sincerity and simple gratitude and with a meek, submissive spirit, one can be saved. Where is there in history any other man who has thus sincerely grieved over the sins of men and women and yearned to save them? By having a complete consciousness of sin, such a consciousness as God has, he brought salvation to perfect. One who does not consciously share this redemptive purpose of God cannot imagine one's responsibly towards God. We're always running away. Our consciences give us no rest when we realize that we ought to shoulder our responsibility to the uttermost. It is Christ and Christ alone who, in all the world of men and women, thought the thing through and then said, “I will take it all upon myself. I will take all of the responsibility for all of the sin and the grief on my shoulders.” He wrote that in meditations on a cross from a slum in Kobe in 1938.
Kagawa had the central belief that Christ came into the world to save those who cannot save themselves. How many of us, if we're absolutely honest, never mind all the pretense of our own greatness and ability, don't realize deep down that we cannot save ourselves either in this life or the next? For those who are broken and who suffer from diseases, from cancer, from polio, from illnesses, those who live in the slums throughout the world, who live in poverty, those who live in the guilt of their own sin or their inability to handle their own addictions, those who find themselves in despair and weakness in their souls, what comfort is it to them to say God helps those who help themselves?
The Cross of Christ cries and says, “Put away those foolish thoughts. I have come. “ God helps those who cannot help themselves. The psalmist would agree. The question is do you have that kind of healing faith? Deep down in your heart, do you really believe that to be true because, if you do, then the testimony of this psalmist is an elixir to your soul and the light for your path.
If you believe this then you do not despair because despair is the only outcome of the belief that God helps those who help themselves. More than that, it is that very belief that often treads down the weak, that humiliates the poor, that denigrates the oppressed and looks upon them as somehow fallible human beings because they cannot and do not help themselves, just what my phys-ed teacher did to my friend, Steve.
It is that very idea that is the antithesis of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ in the sin and the brokenness of the world. God has done something and sent us someone to help us do what we cannot do on our own.
You know, every time you pray, every time you ask God for something, if you have that healing faith that believes that God helps you when you cannot help yourself, then your prayers become powerful; then they become meaningful. Then the testimony of the psalmist reaches into your heart.
We've all just gone through this last week, the remembrance of 9/11, 11 years later, a distant memory for some, very real for others. It still, I'm sad to say, triggers hatred on the part of many throughout the world and it is a great source of sorrow. What is amazing for me is to read a prayer that was given on the Friday after the Tuesday of 9/11. It was a prayer that was offered by one of my favourite ministers and theologians, Max Lucado.
Max's prayer tells humanity, if we will only listen to it, that God helps those who cannot help themselves. Lucado's prayer in front of thousands of people went as follows. In the middle of it, he had these words:
So now, Lord, we come to you. We don't ask you for help, we beg you for it. We don't request it, we implore it. We know what you can do. We've read the accounts, we've pondered the stories in scripture and now we plead, do it again, Lord, do it again.
Remember Joseph? You rescued him from the pit. Remember Daniel? You moved him for a captain to a king's counsellor. Most of all, you do it again on Calvary. What we saw here last Tuesday, you saw there on that Friday, innocents slaughtered, goodness murdered, mothers weeping, evil dancing. Just as the smoke eclipsed our morning, so the darkness fell on your son. Just as our towers were shattered, the very tower of eternity was pierced. By dusk, heaven's sweetest song was silent, buried behind a rock, but you did not waiver, oh, Lord. You did not waiver.
After three days in a dark hole you rolled the rock and rumbled the earth and turned the darkest Friday into the brightest Sunday. Do it again, Lord. Do it again, Lord. Grant us a September Easter Day.
What a prayer!
Just like Kagawa in Kobe, Max Lucado brings the cross into the midst of the suffering of the world. Just at the point of brokenness, when we cannot help ourselves, he reminds us of the healing and saving power of God. Do you have that faith? Is that what is in your heart? Is that how you live your life?
God helps those who cannot help themselves is by no means a faith that is passive. It doesn't mean that one does not help oneself or help others. It just means that God's help is not dependent upon it. Indeed, in fact, the greater the passion for the world arises from the fact that one has been redeemed and saved by Jesus Christ.
This morning at our 9.15 service, we were ministered to and led in prayer by those who had been part of the El Hogar Ministry in Honduras to help children and a school in a poor part of God's world. In many ways by going there they helped bring healing. They also in some way are healed because, when you go to any of the dark places, they are actually much brighter than you realize because Christ is already there ahead of you.
So, in fact, you are not doing it under your own power. You are not doing it under your own steam, not with your own help, but through the cross, through Christ. Do you live your life in trust like that? No matter what decision you have to make in your life, no matter what direction you might have to go in, no matter who you are, no matter how strong or weak you are, it's who you are that matters and your Christ and the cross claims you.
A wonderful phrase by Nelson Mink that I read some time ago, the writer asked the following, and this is really important. “Lord,” he wrote, ”I am willing to receive what you give, to lack with what you withhold, to relinquish what you take, to suffer for what you inflict, to be what you require. And, Lord, if others are to be your messengers to me, I am willing to hear and heed what they have to say.”
Nelson Mink understood that we need to hear the testimony of those who, having risen from the ashes of despair and pain say that the Lord heard my cries and saved me. For those who are imprisoned in the Sheol of their own lives, they hear the words of the cross, I will take your burden upon me and your burden will be light. He will hear the words of the psalmist, I love the Lord. I delight in walking in the way of the Lord, walking in the way of life. Why? Because their faith is in a god and the God of the Bible says God helps those who cannot help themselves. What joy that faith brings. Amen.