Help of the Helpless

Jan Lievens, St. Paul writing to the Thessalonians, circa 1629, oil on canvas, Kunsthalle, Bremen, Germany, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, click image to link.

Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 77, 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

To this end we always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith.  —2 Thessalonians 1:11

When we turn to 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, we are looking at what scholars believe are two of the oldest documents in the New Testament, written in 50-51 CE.  Why, then, are they placed eighth and ninth in order of Paul’s 13 New Testament letters? During the formation of the New Testament, it was decided to place first Paul’s letters to congregations (nine of them), and in order of length; then next to place Paul’s letters to individuals, in order of length.  First and Second Thessalonians then, are the shortest letters to congregations.

These letters rise out of a visit during Paul’s second missionary journey. I may have seemed natural to visit Thessalonica, the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia, on both sea and land routes between Rome and important city centers of the Ancient Near East. During this time, Thessalonica had a synagogue and many non-Jewish god-fearing citizens.

Here, the Church developed relatively quickly. In fact, it developed so quickly that it was perceived as a threat to the Jewish community. Conflict escalated enough that one dark night Paul and Silas had to flee for their lives. Later, and in light of this near fatal episode, Paul writes about the quality of character and community with which the Thessalonians should live.

In this early stage of his Christian ministry, already Paul was developing a theological understanding of what was happening in a life of faith. When you feel God calls you to follow a certain path, but you run into danger, what does it mean? When you feel God has inspired you with a vision for how the future will play out, but the realization of that vision is destroyed by forces beyond your control, what comes next?

The type of answer that Paul provides is sometimes called “apocalyptic,” from a Greek root that means “to uncover” or “to reveal.” I found in a journal of theology a tidy definition of the apocalyptic theology Paul develops in 2 Thessalonians: “a drama marked by an intensifying, active opposition to God's ways and purposes which comes to a crescendo and is met, disclosed, and finally overcome simply by the eloquent appearing … of the Lord Jesus.”[1]When personal power is not enough to defeat the power of forces set against us, we look for God’s power to defeat evil.

If this sounds too abstract, then let me tell you about a conversation that took place in a Bible study I once taught.  We were mulling over the plight of people whose unfortunate circumstances never seem to change.  And someone said, “Well, after all, the Bible says that God helps those who help themselves.” This led to further conversation about something some knew to be true. Look as long as you like for a specific book, chapter, and verse, but you won’t find it, because it’s not there. The saying is older than Ben Franklin, who popularized it in his Poor Richard’s Almanack. Church researcher George Barna says a majority of American Christians believe that “God helps those who help themselves” is biblical,[2] making it one of the most common misunderstandings of the Bible. Years ago, sociologist Robert Bellah said that Franklin’s work expressed “utililitarian individualism,” and reinforced our cultural tendency to admire and respect people who, we might say, “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.”[3]

You and I believe that internal motivation and self-sufficiency are important characteristics to have for facing the challenges of life. Some contemporary theologians point out that belief has more to do with the position of privilege that most of us occupy. In Paul’s world, in many slices and segments of the world today, there are people who whose experience provides evidence against the notion that God helps those who help themselves, people who feel totally helpless. While we can find examples in the Bible of people taking the initiative to accomplish important things, I wonder if the opposite of Ben’s Franklin’s saying might come closer to expressing the Bible’s perspective that God helps those who cannot help themselves.

I tried to offer just a few reminders of that perspective in today’s worship bulletin. The call to worship echoes the 124th Psalm. “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive …..” There, and in the call to offering, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Some of our beloved hymns express the theme well. Today’s final hymn, “Our God, our help in ages past … our shelter from the stormy blast …. Our hymn of affirmation holds the poignant line, “help of the helpless, O abide with me.”

Paul’s experience at Thessalonica reaffirmed this truth for him. Looking back over the distance that now separates Paul from the Christians there, he sees defeats and feels disappointments. He knows his friends are in a vulnerable position in which they cannot fully help themselves. Therefore, Paul claims, it is God who will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith.

I’ve been thinking about these things in relation to trials of health and grief. Every week, as we work through the long list of blessings and concerns that Donna Crider leads in producing, we are confronted by more needs that any one of us has ability to meet. The blessings and concerns list functions as a regular reminder of our need for help.

I was looking back through my data base of collected articles, and rediscovered the work of Dana Jennings, who writes for the New York Times. Fifteen years ago, his health was so precarious that he wrote as a man getting ready to meet his Maker. As far as I can tell, Dana Jennings is still alive. During the intervening fifteen years, he has devoted a good portion of his talents to describing his journey, and reflecting upon its meaning. He is honest and open about medical treatment, and candidly shares the help he receives from God through family, congregation, song and prayer.

He writes, “I need the skills and the insights of the nurses and doctors who care for me. But they don’t treat the whole man. Medicine cares about physical outcomes, not the soul. I also need –even crave – the spiritual antibodies of prayer, song and sacred study.  And it’s a powerful thing to know that others are praying for your return to health. My faith reminded me that I am not alone, that I am part of a larger whole, part of an ancient tradition and timeless narrative. Disease often makes us feel cut off from community, even from ourselves, and faith helps defy that sense of isolation. One of our cultural verities about serious illness is that it often challenges our faith. But for me, if anything, having cancer has only deepened it, heightened it.[4]

As we finish up our look at Paul’s letters to the congregations under his care, I think there is something similar in the ways that Paul the Apostle and Dana Jennings have faced serious life challenges.  How good it is to be reminded that divine favor is not limited to the strong, talented, and beautiful people for whom everything seems to go along perfectly, who seem always able to help themselves. The Bible actually offers a different and more comforting word: God is the friend of the friendless; God helps those who cannot help themselves.

 
NOTES

[1] Paul G. Ziegler, Abstract on “How it Ends: Brief Remarks on Reading 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12,” Pro-Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, 27 Jan. 2022, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10638512221076401#:~

[2] “Researcher Predicts Mounting Challenges to Christian Church,” 16 April 2001, website of the Barna Research Group, http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/43-researcher-predicts-mounting-challenges-to-christian-church

[3] Robert N. Bellah et. al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1985.

[4] Dana Jennings, “In Cancer, a Deeper Faith,” The New York Times, online edition, 7 April 2009, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/in-cancer-a-deeper-faith/

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