My help cometh even from the Lord; who hath made heaven and earth.
Help!
A single word which signals so much about our human condition: we make life easier for one another when we help out with ordinary household chores; we might improve a situation by offering help in the form of mentoring, feedback or other assistance. Help is woven into our discourse about our common life: Help for heroes and help to buy; helplines to smooth out glitches in our hi-tech lives - fixing our broadband or rescheduling a flight; helplines staffed hour by hour to offer confidential support in the face of abuse or mental distress.
Help!
It echoes in so many registers: commanding, pleading, longing and crying.
There's an intimacy to language of help. It reveals our vulnerability; our co-dependence. It undercuts our self-sufficiency, our omni-competence. Perhaps The Beatles were right: when we were younger, we 'never needed anybody's help in anyway; but now these days are gone, [we're] not so self assured. Now [we] find [we've] changed out mind and opened up the doors'.
It can be offered instinctively, yet it's hard to ask for. Perhaps there's a fear of been refused; or being manipulated. But as life changes; when we feel insecure, giving and receiving help can be transformative. When we're feeling down; when we appreciate someone being round. 'Help me get my feet back on the ground, won't you please, please help me'.
Lennon and McCartney sing if needing somebody; not just anybody; but for the psalmist, that desire finds a very precise focus. Regardless of age or circumstance; help is rooted in the Lord. More than that, it an expression of faith which acknowledges that the Lord is the one who preserves life itself.
Isaiah also expresses words of hope rooted in the conviction that God is our help. He addresses a community in exile; a people who'd confronted the consequences of the failure to walk faithfully in the ways of the Lord. Help for them takes the form of healing, salvation, liberation and restoration. It's profoundly intimate and radically transformative.
'Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you in the womb and will help you': do not fear; sins and shortcomings are blotted out; the spirit is poured out in blessing. A new thing comes into being. God is our help. Don't be afraid. God is with them. God is with you. God is with us.
That with-us-ness of God in the person of Jesus is the ultimate expression of God's help. John's Gospel uses the ordinary stuff of water, bread, light, wine to express the abundance of such love. John recounts Jesus descriptions of himself as a good shepherd and the true vine. We hear of conversations with a teacher of the law under the cover of darkness and a Samaritan woman in the glare of the midday sun. He piles on the images and metaphors to such an extent that the disciples say at one point - perhaps with a hint of sarcasm - that Jesus is speaking plainly.
The passage we hear tonight, is perhaps one where we, like the disciples, struggle to make sense: yet, this monologue tells us both who Jesus is and also reminds us of our need for help.
To set it in context, this passage comes at the end of a chapter full of life and transformation; a chapter full of challenge and controversy. In the first place, Jesus offers help to some of the most dispossessed, broken and rejected people in Jerusalem. He brings healing to the sick - including a paralysed man who's been crushed by despair; who has no one to help him.
Jesus healed him - telling him to take up his bed and walk. He helped him. He gave him new life.
He did so on the sabbath day: a day when people were invited to rest and give time to God. Those in positions of power and privilege were disturbed and angered by what they saw - a man carrying his mat. They had so narrowly interpreted the law that rather than rejoicing in this sign of freedom, the Pharisees condemned it as work. Jesus' response was to help them too: to explore with the nature of God's work with them; to reveal that he and his heavenly Father were working to bring life. In love for them, Jesus begins with what they know: the scriptures, the law of Moses.
Jesus is one with us; he is one with God. He is perfect communion with God. He is the beloved Son, doing all that his Father wills. Life and love flows from them. Our help comes from God who made heaven and earth; who formed us in the womb; who dwelt among us.
Jesus enters into conversation to help them. He sees their fear and their hardness of heart; he names their prejudice and rigid interpretations. It's as if he invites them to respond at a deeper level - attending to the new thing springing forth. Jesus points them to the glory of God at work in him; and therein lies the challenge.
We, just as much as the Pharisees, can get caught up in a chain reaction revealing our own fears and prejudices. Like them, there are times when we seek our own glory or turn in on ourselves; times when we cling to our certainties and miss the grace of God bubbling up in the unexpected places. Yet when we risk response to God, drawing on divine help, we share in the depth of love; becoming channels of help. We proclaim the transformed life of the kingdom.
May the Spirit kindle in us a desire to cry out for help to the one who in Christ, reveals life and love. Or, as Jean Vanier put it:
Jesus came to heal us.
He is calling us
to come out from behind the barriers built up
around our vulnerable hearts
so that we may have life and give life.
© Julie Gittoes 2016
