God Help Us

God Help Us

A Sermon Preached by Bill Levering

at the First Reformed Church of Schenectady

on September 23, 2007

(sung) Our God our help in ages past; our hope for years to come.

Many of the slogans and catch phrases that crystallize Christianity are set to music, much like the idea of 'amazing grace' that we looked at last week. This week, we will look at the phrase, often spoken as a prayer, sometimes as exasperation. “God help us!”

Many, if not most of the Christians that I run into have a notion of how God operates in the world that is very immediate. Christians commonly think of God as assisting them mechanically in their daily needs. That God would see to it that a parking space was available to them when they needed it.

I must admit that this idea bothers me a bit. I want to give you fair warning however. If you are offended by the idea that God may not be in the business of insuring our individual prosperity, you may wish to leave now, before the offering.

God is not the tool of our selfishness.

Prayer or faith or favor does not mean that you are going to get treated any differently by the conditions of the world. Jesus noted that God “makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)

I admit that sometimes it appears otherwise.

The second lesson today from I Chronicles was a little slice from a genealogy that got a little attention five or six years ago. Bruce Wlikinson published a book called The Prayer of Jabez. It was a big thing. The contextual problem is that in this long list of names, only Jabez gets singled out for getting what he wants. Were these other folks not praying enough or in the right way? It was optimistic for the biblical writer to assume it was because of prayer. God's purposes are not under our control. Yet, this passage has become a focus for praying for prosperity.

Wilkinson’s book The Prayer of Jabez sold 8 million copies in 2001 alone. That’s a lot of books! A piece on the jacket promised it would "help you discover how the remarkable prayer of a little-known Bible hero can release God's favor, power and protection."

There was also a wide array of official "Prayer of Jabez" merchandise including key chains, mugs, backpacks, Christmas ornaments, scented candles, mouse pads, jewelry, and a framed artist's conception of Jabez himself. This may very well have turned out to be a story of prosperity, because at a minimum the story of Jabez was very financially helpful to Bruce Wilkinson. I must disagree with this idea that believing in Jesus will make us money. It is simply not how Jesus talks about things at all.

God does not and should not help us be selfish as individuals or as nations.

Listen to part of the "War Prayer," by Mark Twain, published after his death. "O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire. . . blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!"

We need help all right. We need the help of humility. We need new habits of the heart. We are stubborn children stamping our feet for more candy.

The prophet Ezekiel understands what we need when he hears God say, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."-

How can God help us? In general, God speaks to our hearts.

God is the helper of the heart.

Of course, I am not here to limit God. By definition God is omnipotent and can do whatever God wishes. But as I look at the New Testament, the words of Jesus and the experience of people who call upon God, I see that as a spiritual principle, God is the helper of our hearts, not the aid to our ambitions.

The standards and patterns of life that people who consider the nature of the divine figure out help us by establishing values that lift us out of the small orbits of our own whims.

The revelation of God in scripture comes to the community of faith. We become the body of Christ. God helps our heart by showing us that we are not alone. The presence of God in the world as Jesus is the highest sign and signal of God’s presence with us in all of our struggles.

God’s presence also comes to us in community by people gathering to discern what is holy or simply best. Especially in the reformed tradition, we gather together as workers with God to understand the working of the Spirit, to share discernment of what is right.

We are also helped by God in the very knowledge that we are not in charge of the world. As simple as it seems, to know that we are not God means that we don’t have to manage the world. We are not in charge. Our prayers do not regulate the flow of sunshine and rain. There is another power in charge of the nature of things. Relax. You are not in charge of the world.

God may not arrange parking spaces for us, but God stands with us as we search for them, as we cope with not finding them, as we celebrate getting one.

God helps by showing us hope.

Jabez was the name chosen for that baby because in Hebrew, the word sounds like pain. The prayer of Jabez is the prayer cried by his mother in pain. And we cry "When will there be an end to pain?" The answer is the miracle of Jabez, the miracle of birth out of the despair of relentless pain. It is not that Jabez made a bunch of money, but that out of excruciating pain came life.

We can also pray for help in the midst of pain.

• In the midst of mourning, we can pray for the healing of our hearts.
• In the midst of pointless and counterproductive warring, we can help each other remember the ways of peace and humility.
• In the midst of the politics of personality in our state, we can understand that God gives us the heart to care for each other.
• In the midst of more jails and less justice, more guns and less grace, we can call on God to help us remember that there is a kingdom of heaven within us, waiting to be born.
• In the midst of a Christianity determined to judge and exclude and use the name of God to justify classism and corruption, we can call upon the name of God that transcends our pettiness.

We can lift our eyes to behold a presence that is greater than our selfish mechanisms. A presence that is beyond life and death, powers and principalities, beyond things now present and things to come.

The help we need most is a noble hope. This is the gift of God.

(sung) Our God our help in ages past our hope for years to come.