The problem is never whether somebody needs help. The problem is always which somebody we can help.
The issue is never whether there are any needs. There are always needs. In any given moment there are more needs than anyone person can possibly address. The issue is how to make the choice. Who needs help, how can we give that help, is this the right way to help? But never is the question: "Does anybody need help"?
There are no end of good things to do. There is no end in sight of the needs that human beings have. Someone speaks of the thousands of homeless people on the streets of our cities. Someone else describes the plight of the unemployed. Still another talks of the need to combat AIDS, and someone else counters with the need to fight heart attacks. My mail every day brings me appeals to do everything from supporting public television to collecting for the disease of the month to writing letters to the President. How do I select from all those things?
Closer to home, one group in our church seeks to work with single parents, another with at-risk youth, another with persons who need to make decisions for Christ. Still another hopes to run an after-school program for children. How are we going to center down on something? How will we choose where to make a difference?
It feels overwhelming, doesn’t it? The sheer volume of human need is absolutely staggering. So most of us end up doing one of two things. Either we turn it all off, every bit of it, and do nothing, feeling very guilty. Or we do a few little symbolic things, the odd gesture, five dollars here and a couple of hours there, and feel we’ve done our bit to make the world a better place.
But I wonder. I wonder whether there isn’t a better way to decide who we are going to help and how we are going to do it, out of all the thousand and one possibilities. Washington Irving writes of the frightened schoolmaster Ichabod Crane that he saddled his horse and rode off in all directions! Can we do better than that?
There is a clue in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus’ style of helping others was to have authority and to give authority. To have authority and to give authority. Jesus first developed a sense of personal rightness; and then he enlisted others to help Him. Having authority and giving authority.
Listen to how the Scripture describes it. Matthew 9:35:10:1
I
The picture you’ve just seen is of a confident Jesus, someone who knows who He is and what He is doing. How did Jesus gain this sense of authority? How did Jesus gain confidence in dealing with need?
I believe that He gained authority and confidence by responding to the needs which were right around Him. He did it by healing the very personal hurts that were right in front of His eyes.
If you look at Jesus’ helping ministry, you will see that it took shape after a series of dramatic encounters with needy people, almost all of whom put their cases to him very personally. In Chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew’s gospel, no less than eight different persons present themselves to Jesus and ask for help. The leper who came and said, "Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean." The centurion who appealed on behalf of his servant. Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, about his dying daughter; the woman with a history of twelve years’ hemorrhaging. All these and others came to Jesus with all their highly personal needs, and he responded to them.
Here’s the thing: Jesus did not run around looking for something to do; He didn’t go out of His way to find somebody to help. He certainly didn’t conduct a surveyor commission a cost benefit analysis. He just responded to what was right there in front of Him.
It is in responding to real people, with names and faces, that Jesus grew His personal passion, His authority. "Then", says the text. ’’Then’’ Important word. Then ... after meeting all these individuals ... then "Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness."
How did Jesus decide to get involved? He first responded to real live persons who came to Him with their needs. And seeing them turned Him to go out and look for others to heal.
When some of us were young, raised during the shortages brought on by World War II, how did our parents get us to eat? If we balked at eating everything that was on our plates, how did our parents urge us to finish it off? Well, mine did it by reminding me that there were thousands of children in China who would be glad to have it. Eat because there are needy, starving children in China, they said. They never really explained to me how my eating asparagus, which I loathed ... how my eating asparagus in Kentucky would help a hungry child in Peking! And I stumped them one day when, in a smart-alec mood, I asked them just to name one. Name one of those starving children in China! I’ll send him this asparagus! It was partly bluff-calling, but it was also partly an instinctive feeling that if I could put a face on suffering, I could be a more willing helper. If you can give a name to the person who is hurting, it makes helping more authentic.
But they couldn’t do that, and so, "Eat your asparagus because of the starving children in China" one day became, "Clean your plate because of the starving children of Europe", We still couldn’t name any of them, either, but they were more like us than Chinese children were, and I guess the strategy was to get me to identify. Well, I still don’t like asparagus very much; but a few years later I married one of the starving children of Europe! I hope she feels helped!
When we deal only with abstractions, it’s hard to feel convinced. But when we deal with real people, with faces and names and definite needs, then we are on the way to discovering our personal convictions. We are on the way to growing personal authority.
II
So now notice what happens next in the heart of Jesus. He has these eight or so personal helping encounters, and what happens to Him? I’ve said that because He dealt with real people, as they presented themselves for help, He felt a call to go out among them and do something more. I’ve called that Jesus’ gaining personal authority and conviction.
But now I want us to notice how that same conviction deepens. I want us to discover how his personal authority grows. It grows because as He rubs shoulders with the masses, He comes to understand them and to develop compassion for them. He gains deeper personal authority because He discerns what the real problems are and grows inside of Himself a passion to handle those problems.
"When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." He saw the crowds. He opened his eyes and felt for them, seeing that they were harassed and helpless.
Real passion for helping, long-lasting commitment to ministry is built on understanding the persons we are trying to serve. When we understand them, we develop compassion and feel able to help them. Conversely, if we do not take the time to understand, we will have no compassion, and we won’t stay by the stuff.
Our church’s ministries include one that has been going on for a long time. Wednesday Club serves a group of mentally impaired patients. It has been at work for more than twenty years. Many of the same volunteers have been at this for most of that time. A couple of years ago I asked if I could meet with the Wednesday Club volunteers. I thought I saw some things they could do in a different way. Well, let’s be honest; I thought I saw some things they could do in a better way! And so we met. I began to talk about these new things: more arts, better crafts, more music, and fewer hours of bingo! All very well-intentioned stuff, theoretically.
But do you know what I learned? I learned that I didn’t know beans about our Wednesday Club guests! I learned that I had seen them, but I hadn’t seen them. I hadn’t taken the time to understand them. I wanted them to flesh out my agenda; I wanted them to do what I wanted them to do. But the Wednesday Club volunteers had stayed by the stuff long enough and had taken the time to understand. And out of understanding, they knew what to do. Out of understanding, they grew the kind of compassion that keeps on going.
"Jesus saw the crowds and had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
I grew up in a very missions-minded church. Only a few Baptist churches in Kentucky gave more money to missions than we did. We were very proud of that. But I knew people in my home church who would gladly give hundreds and thousands of dollars for missionary work in Africa, but who had never even met an African or, for that matter, an African-American person. It was all an abstraction for them. But one day the newspaper carried a story about an African student, a product of our missions work. He had spoken at our church only a few weeks before. We read with horror the story. This student’s wife was about to give birth, but our Kentucky Baptist Hospital, a missionary institution, had refused to admit her because she was black! Suddenly, we identified. Suddenly, we understood. Our commitment to missions took on a new dimension, because now we were dealing with somebody we knew. Commitment deepens when we see others as human beings, and we take the time to understand.
III
So, to help others, we must first have personal authority. We must get that authority by responding to real live people, not just abstractions; and we must deepen that authority and grow our compassion by taking the time to understand those we are trying to serve.
But still, nearly every human need is too big for one person to handle alone. Nearly every issue is one that is too complex for one individual to work with. What do you do when you still feel overwhelmed in trying to deal with some problem? You feel convinced you should help; you feel compassionate for those in need; but you know you can’t handle it all alone. What then?
The answer seems simple, but that’s deceptive. The straightforward answer is, you get somebody else to work with you. You enlist others. Doesn’t that sound easy?
But it’s not so easy. It’s not that simple. The reason it’s not simple is that there is a spiritual issue in ourselves. It is the problem of giving authority. Giving authority. Giving away something that is dear to you and watching it fly under someone else’s leadership.
To be truly helpful to others, not only must we know our own personal authority; and not only must we deepen our own convictions by taking the time to understand those we are trying to serve. We must also trust others who share the vision; we must give them full authority to follow their own lights and see it through. And if that means they don’t do what we would do, so be it. If that means we don’t get the credit, well, that has to be all right too.
Listen to what Jesus did when the time came that he could no longer, all by Himself, serve the needs of the people. He said, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out and to cure every disease and every sickness." What did Jesus do when faced with an overwhelming task? He prayed to the Lord for help, and then gave his helpers authority.
Oh, do you know how much we have limited God’s plans by keeping control? Do you know how much we have stifled growth by playing everything close to the vest? Many churches suffer, not because they do not have capable leaders; they do. But churches suffer because some of us in leadership don’t want to share our authority, our leadership, with others. We think we know best. But we are limiting God’s plans for His church.
Truly to be a helping church means that some of us will have to enlist new people, younger people, and that we must trust them to find their way.
You see, in American life, we are tied into the myth of the lone wolf. We glamorize people who do things alone. Our American mythology speaks of Paul Revere, riding alone over every Middlesex village and town, to tell them the British are coming. It glorifies the little Dutch boy, with his finger in the dike, saving the country all by himself. We tell our children about scientists like Edison, laboring far into the night to find that elusive light bulb filament; or Carver, the lonely genius extracting the secrets of the peanut. We lionize Martin Luther King as if he had been the only drum major for justice. Our American hero is the Lone Ranger, who rides into town on his horse Silver, sets everything right, and ciippety-c1ops away, leaving everybody breathless, “Who was that masked man?"
But this is not the whole truth. Edison and Carver, lone geniuses though they were, trained others to follow them. King had scores of advisors and lieutenants from Montgomery to Memphis. The lone ranger myth has never been the whole truth. Even he had his Tonto! No, God does not call us to hold everything tight. God calls us to enlist others and then trust them and give them authority.
One day this week I had two experiences that offer a striking contrast. Early Thursday morning I was at a meeting at a church in Virginia. It wasn’t too hard to find, but I did notice that it was a little off the beaten path, back in the neighborhood. When I got there, I learned that the site for the church had been chosen by an area missions director years ago; and that he had chosen it all by himself, without consulting anybody. It wasn’t that it was a bad choice; it just wasn’t the best choice. He didn’t trust others; he didn’t give them any authority.
After that meeting, since I was not far from where my son works, and since I had never actually visited his work site, I called him and asked to take him to lunch. When I arrived at his place of business, he took me on a short tour. Here is a company whose customer base has expanded in a little over two years from 300,000 to three million! Ten times what it was when my son joined them; Dad likes to think, of course, that he knows who made the difference! But tremendous growth. I wondered how the boss can manage so much growth, so much change?
Then I started looking around at the workers. The place looks like a college campus! You never saw such a young work force! Everybody dressed in jeans and T-shirts; everybody looking relaxed and happy. Honestly, some of them look like they were headed down the halls to their junior high gym class! So I asked Bryan, how in the world does the boss manage so much change in so short a time with so inexperienced a work force? How can he keep control?
The answer? He doesn’t keep control. He encourages ideas. He trusts us and lets us experiment.
Oh, may the children of the Kingdom be at least as wise as the children of this world! Jesus prayed the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers to help with the harvest. And then he gave authority, genuine freedom, to those who came forward to help.
And guess what? He even trusts us, you and me. He even trusts us to grow our own authority and confidence. He even trusts us to become compassionate and caring people. And then he also trusts us to give our authority to others. "Authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness."
Beloved, if God so loved us, how can we do anything less than love those for whom He died?!
