I am beginning today a series of messages on the theme, "How He Helped Humanity." "How He Helped Humanity." The idea behind this is very simple, but it branches out in many different ways.
The basic idea is that we are working toward becoming a helping church, a servant people. But we need training in how to do this.
I don’t think there is a single hard heart in this congregation. All of us want to help people who are hurting. All of us have a desire to see needs met. The problem is how best to do it. How to help others without deepening their hurt.
The old saying has it, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Most of us don’t want to be fools, so we don’t rush in to help. We sort of stand around and wonder what we should do. How do you help humanity? How do you serve human need?
Someone has commented that the Bible says that Jesus went about doing good, but that most of us just go about! We don’t know how to help. We don’t know what to do.
That’s what this series is going to be about. Learning from Jesus some basic principles about helping others. Discovering from the Lord Himself how to touch others’ lives so that they can be healed.
Each week, beginning this coming Sunday, I will put a brief summary of the previous sermons in the bulletin, and by the time the month is over we should have a very useful outline. This can be a key month in shaping what we will do and be for the next several years.
So come join the 4-H club! Learning “How He Helped Humanity”!
Introduction
The first lesson is this, in a nutshell: that before we can help anybody else, we have to receive something ourselves. Before we can be any good to anybody else, something has to happen to us. We cannot be effective helpers until we do some growing up and understand our own hearts.
Both Margaret and I used to supervise student summer missionaries. Student summer missionaries are college students who agree to invest a summer in some sort of ministry. Some of you know about this; we have had two or three student summer missionaries here. Well, they come at the beginning of summer all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, motivated and enthusiastic. They are going to save the world in ten weeks flat! They are going to organize children, gather up youth, visit the lonely, and put on a musical extravaganza, all in ten weeks! Some of them have so much energy and bounce you half expect them to balance the District budget and bring Newt down to earth in the very first week. But it isn’t long, usually, until they discover that things are not that easy. Problems don’t go away just because you want them to. And those students end up feeling guilty. Very guilty. Their goals have not been met. Their brash promises cannot be kept. Guilt permeates everything.
So that’s where I want to go to work today. I want to deal with the shame and guilt that we carry around and which makes it impossible for us to help others until we deal with it. The way we deal with shame and guilt I am calling "Clean All Over". Clean all over.
Listen to this story from the ministry of Jesus and pay particular attention to the last phrase in it:
John 13: 1-10a
There it is. Clean all over. We will not be helpful to anyone else until we first get clean all over. We will not be of value to anyone else until we have heard the good news for ourselves.
There are two ways that that shame expresses itself when we try to help others. I’m going to use two five-dollar words to describe the mistakes we make because we have not yet become clean all over.
One of these guilt mistakes is maternalism. And the other is paternalism. Maternalism and paternalism. Now that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are behind us, maybe we can look at these two things and why they hurt more than they help.
I
Maternalism is too much mothering. Maternalism says, "I’ll protect you." "I’ll keep you from getting hurt," "I’ll shield you from reality." Maternalism is not just mother love, it is smother love. It means keeping someone from facing what they need to do to help themselves. It means insulating others from hurts; it means keeping them from learning how to take responsibility for their own lives.
And that comes from guilt. Maternalism, too much mothering, comes out of not feeling secure with the temptations and trials that are all around. It works like this: if I don’t trust myself to handle temptation, then I don’t trust you either. If I think I’m too weak, then I think you are too. Maternalism really doesn’t help anybody very much.
In our Bible story, when Jesus approached Peter to wash his feet, Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet." "You shall never wash my feet". What do we hear in that?
We hear Peter saying that he is not going to expose himself to a new experience. He is not going to put himself on the line for something he has never felt before. He is protecting himself. That’s maternalism. Protecting himself.
More important, he is not only protecting himself; he is trying to protect Jesus too. "You don’t have to do this, Jesus. You don’t have to humiliate yourself. You don’t have to take on this tough task. Jesus, don’t venture out like this." Peter wants not only to protect himself, he also wants to protect Jesus. Isn’t this the same Peter who, when told that the Son of man must suffer many things and be delivered to death? The same Peter who blustered out, "God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you?"
That’s maternalism. It’s trying to protect others from things that are difficult. Trying to keep others from having experiences that expose them to hurt, harm, and danger.
But when we are maternalistic, we are not really helping. Two weeks ago we heard Martha Norris’s wonderful message on Father’s Day. She told us about the young man at VMI, and how he had to learn to get out of bed, on his own, at some ungodly hour. She said, "Sometimes he longed to hear his mother’s voice, ’You can get out of bed if you want to, baby. ’" But no, he had to learn to do for himself. Protection, maternalism. It really wasn’t helpful.
To Peter Jesus replied, "If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.’" Don’t protect yourself, Peter. Don’t protect yourself from new and untried things. And don’t protect others either; don’t keep others from doing what life gives them to do. This comes out of your own shame; and it won’t help anybody else.
We’ve got a nesting bird right next to our driveway. Mother bird built her nest kind of low, and sometimes when we go to get in the car, we are eye to eye and beak to beak with the quietest creature God ever made. She sits tight. She is going to protect those eggs. And when they are hatched, we probably will not even be able to use the driveway; she will be fierce. Protective. But someday, she will know the right time, she will push those hatchlings right out of the nest. She will make them fly. She will insist they test their wings. She will let them get hurt. It’ll be all right. It’ll be time for them to be what God wanted them to be. No maternalism.
II
But then there is also paternalism. Paternalism. Not only too much mothering, but also too much fathering. Paternalism says, "I’ll fix it. I’ll take care of you. I’m the big, strong one around here. I’ll manage it." Paternalism wants to do it all, it wants to manage everything, it leaves no room for mistakes. Paternalism, when we try to help somebody, does all the work, thinks all the thoughts, pays all the bills, and tries to control others into being what we want them to be.
Are you with me? Maternalism, too much mothering, says, "I’ll protect you." Stay in the nest, little bird, and let me put myself between you and every threat. Can’t let you see the real world."
But paternalism, too much fathering, says, "You can get out in the world all right. You can go on about your business. But when you get out there you will find out I’ve built some fences so that you can’t go too far afield. I have fixed you. I have taken care of you. I am in charge of you." Like the old cartoon character Deputy Dawg, "I’ll do the thinging around here."
And paternalism too comes from guilt. It comes from feeling ashamed and out of control.
In our Bible story, Jesus said to Peter, "If I do not wash you, you have no part in me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head." Do the whole thing, Lord; wash every part. "My feet, my hands, my head."
What are we hearing this time? Earlier we heard Peter saying he didn’t want new experiences and he didn’t want exposure for Jesus. That was maternalism. Now we hear Peter saying, "I don’t trust myself, Lord. I don’t trust myself to make good decisions. You may have fixed my feet, but fix my hands, fix my head, fix me, Lord. Fix me, because I am in a fix. I am out of control." That’s Peter’s guilt speaking. He thinks he cannot be trusted to do what is right.
And it becomes paternalistic because he also presumes to tell Jesus what to do. Jesus cannot be trusted to do what is right. Peter wants to take over. He wants to insist on things being done his own way. Feet, hands, head, I’ll decide. I’ll call the shots. That’s what paternalism always does. It insists that others do things my way. My way is the right way. And I will set it up so that you can’t do anything else.
That’s why racism, for example, is paternalism. You folks ought to do what we folks do, and so we set up the system so that you have to. But that comes out of feeling guilty, and it doesn’t bless anybody. I long ago learned that running around feeling guilty for the sins of Caucasians wasn’t going to earn me any points with African-Americans. Just telling people what they ought to do is not help. It’s paternalism.
We cannot help anyone by making all their decisions. We cannot insist that they be just like we are. We cannot help anyone if we make the rules and set the standards so that they are sure to fail. What we have done is to take our own guilt at not being all that we should be and we have loaded it on to somebody else. That’s not helpful. Not at all.
III
So: if we don’t help others by being maternalistic, too much mothering, protecting them; and if we do not help others by being paternalistic, too much fathering, clamping down controls; then what is left? How do we get ourselves ready to help? What kind of person is able to help humanity?
One who knows that he or she is clean all over. One who know that he or she is forgiven, thoroughly forgiven. Jesus said to Peter, "He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over ... "
Do we want to help others in their hurts? Let’s hear the good news for ourselves. The way for us to start healing others is to be healed ourselves, to know that God loves us. God accepts us, just as we are. He loves us unconditionally. We are clean. Clean all over.
Oh, we may feel some shame because we’ve done some things we should not have done. We may even feel some shame because we’re not prepared to get out there where life is rough and dangerous. We’ve mothered ourselves too much.
But listen to the Lord. You are clean all over. I have freed you. When He put us in the waters of baptism to cleanse us, He brought us up and sent us on our way. The Lord is not mothering us any more. We are free. We are children of God. We are clean all over. He saved us and set us free; He doesn’t protect us from temptations. He empowers us to deal with temptations. He trusts us. Clean all over. No shame once you know that.
Or we may feel some guilt because we haven’t kept all the rules. We haven’t met our own standards of behavior. We haven’t managed everything perfectly and completely. We can’t always control everything, let along ourselves. But have you heard the good news? We are clean all over! We were sinners, yes, but we are forgiven sinners. All we like sheep went astray, yes, but we have a fresh start. Clean all over, we are washed in the blood of the Lamb. The verdict is pronounced: not guilty! Clean all over.
Have you heard the good news! That’s where we have to start to be of any good to anybody else. To know the good news for ourselves. We are clean all over.
Some of you know Howard Rees. He was my supervisor when I first came to Washington. I would go to see Rees to get my assignments. Generally, it would involve something pretty large. Something like planning a retreat for the whole metro area. Site, meals, speakers, logistics, everything. A big job.
It would have been easy for him to have mothered me and to have said, "This is too much, this is too hard. Let’s not do it. You don’t need to stretch yourself that far." But he didn’t say that. He let me try my wings. He knew that would help me grow.
Or he could have been paternalistic. He could have said, "Well, you can try your ideas, but I’ll manage the budget, I’ll control the format, I’ll set the rules. I’ll fix what you will break." But he didn’t say that either. He let me manage it all. He let me make mistakes. He knew that would help me grow.
How do you think I felt after those meetings? Did I feel burdened, weighed down, overwhelmed? Did I feel inadequate, powerless, a failure? No. No. The bigger the task, the more my heart sang. The larger the job, the more my mind raced to the challenge. And I flew! He helped me. He empowered me.
That’s what we can do when we know that we are clean all over.
And He who knew no sin, no shame, no guilt, has become sin for us, so that we may be clean all over.
