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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
12 June 2005Mt.9.35-10.8“Harassed and Helpless”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
Advice columns are a venerable American tradition. These days, they're everywhere.
In newspapers and magazines, we can find counsel on relationships, and real estate, and technology, and health, and automobiles, and even sex.
Why are all these "experts" offering advice in so many areas of life? Well, obviously, a lot of people must feel they need help!
And while some of these columns address trivial matters, still, they all suggest an important fact about human beings. Advice sells because men and women can't solve all their problems.
One of the most poignant descriptions of this human condition is found in today's Second Lesson. In this passage, St. Matthew tells of the many journeys Jesus took to teach and preach and heal. Jesus "went about all the cities and villages," the Gospel says, and people came in great numbers to hear him.
And when Christ saw the crowds, Matthew reports, "he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
Harassed and helpless. Like sheep without a shepherd.
Surely advice is offered about relationships because people feel "harassed" — by their partners or their parents or their children. Or they feel harassed by their bosses — so they read advice about the workplace.
Or they feel helpless in the grip of the health care system — hence the advice columns on medicine.
Or — on a more mundane level — they feel harassed by all the things in their lives that they depend on and that don't always work, like appliances — hence all the columns for consumers.
Now when Jesus was talking about the harassed and helpless, he was talking about religion. But do we connect our need for advice with religion? When we feel run down by life, aren't we are, in fact, more likely to look for expert help of a non-spiritual kind? (Very few advice columns say anything about religion.)
One reason may be that many of the problems we struggle to solve are pretty secular. For example, I'm an avid reader of advice columns on computers. I need my computer for writing and research and email, and the heavy use of the machine combined with my ignorance of technical matters often lead me to have problems. Very often! So I look for advice on how to get good software and avoid computer viruses.
Of course, there's no advice in the Bible about using your computer! In fact, my sentiments when my computer crashes are distinctly not religious!
Yet that perhaps is the spiritual point. The fallibility of my tech knowledge is symptomatic of the more basic fact that there are a lot of things I don't know.
So I'm powerless to guarantee that my computer will work the way I want it to — any more than I'm able to structure the future the way I want it. More generally, even if I believe I can solve my problems by myself, some time, I'm going to feel "harassed and helpless."
And on these occasions, I don't need advice: I need spiritual help!
No wonder Jesus drew crowds wherever he went. He had the gift of being able to speak to people when they felt weighed down. And he could convince them that God cared for all his creatures.
As the Scripture lesson said, Christ taught them in their ignorance. He healed their infirmities. He helped them in their times of need. For those who were like "sheep without a shepherd," Jesus came to be known as "the Good Shepherd."
Now God doesn't intend for us always to feel harassed and helpless! Our faith should prepare us to meet some challenges on our own. As St. Paul wrote in an optimistic moment, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
Yet we also have times in our lives when we feel weighed down by what the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called, "the force of things." Then, we have to know what to do when we aren't feeling strong and independent.
I recently conducted a funeral for a woman from Connecticut. Before she died, the woman had requested that her service be held at Incarnation because she had met her husband many years ago at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in our Assembly Hall.
Now the Twelve Step movement is very sensitive to the need for a balance between looking for God's help and doing what we can to solve our own problems. The woman whose funeral I conducted asked that the famous Serenity Prayer be read during her service.
The Serenity Prayer asks for courage to seek God's help in changing the things we can change — at the same time as we also ask for the serenity to accept the things that we can't change — and the wisdom to know the difference!
Technological glitches again provide a mundane example of how to apply this spiritual lesson. While we may be able to learn something about computers and how they work, even experts are sometimes baffled. (I have watched in amazement — and some secret amusement — while a professional computer repairperson has struggles just as much as I did to fix my machine!)
At times, then, we have to apply ourselves to solve our problems. At other times, we have to grit our teeth and accept that we'll have issues that we can't solve.
The Prayer Book's General Confession speaks of "things done and things left undone." I don't know which is worse. We can regret the things we have done; we can be sorry for the things we haven't done.
Yet, it may be harder to put up with harassment than to struggle to get out from under it. As the Serenity Prayer wisely points out, though, there are things we can't change. We have to accept the unchangeable with the serenity God gives us.
In the end, we can draw two conclusions from this view of the Christian faith. The first is this: religion can't solve all our problems. The Bible isn't a leather-bound set of advice columns; we can't always ask, "what would Jesus do?" Life is vastly more complicated than that. And the Christian religion is vastly more complicated.
This is not to say, however, that Christianity gives us no help at all when we have problems. The Serenity Prayer, for example, is quite helpful.
And there's a second teaching to be found in the Gospel Lesson for today. In the passage, after St. Matthew notes Christ's compassion for the crowds who followed him everywhere, Matthew goes on to record the detailed instructions Jesus left for his disciples about how they should go out as he did to serve others. And go out they did.
Psychologists note that one of the few things depressed people can sometimes do to alleviate their condition is to help others. In a similar way, someone who feels isolated can — instead of feeling sorry for himself — ring up an invalid and offer her some companionship. Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step Groups succeed because they are groups. The groups bring individual strugglers together so they can help each other.
And for many of us, the Church is the supreme "support group." Not only do we receive "advice" from Christian teaching-but we get a chance to put that teaching into practice. No longer harassed and helpless, we become ministers — and we are ministered to ...
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.