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This past week, I was watching a video from a YouTube comedy group I view quite frequently. The video was titled “Men won’t ask for help”.
It starts off with 3 guys out grilling on a summer day. The man grilling, Ben, asks one of his friends, Allen, to help cut some links in the kitchen. There’s a loud “ouch!” off-screen and when Allen comes back, his ring finger is missing just above his wedding band. The other two ask if he’s okay and if he needs any help. He says no, and the two applaud him for not bothering anyone for help.
The second friend, Adam, then gets asked to help at the grill. Immediately his arm catches fire, but he continues on, and his friends applaud his pushing on and not bothering anyone.
Finally Ben, the grilled, feels a sharp pain in his chest. He realizes he is having a heart attack and instead of calling the hospital, he elects to curl up under the house and die quietly. His friends applaud him for this, though each has a look in their eyes while looking at their injuries with a faint sense of wondering if this was all worth it.
Now this group, Viva La Dirt League, has done many videos trying to raise awareness about mental health, and the point they are making is quite clear: ask for help when you need it. This is never more true then when it comes to our relationship with God.
While many of us struggle to ask for help from others when we need it, we all struggle to ask for God’s help. The thing is, we need God’s help. We cannot make it by without it. That’s what Paul teaches us in Romans this morning.
We are in such need of God’s help, we cannot even save ourselves. When we are faced with a choice of doing what is wrong, we make that choice, even if we don’t want to. We see this from the realm of substance abuse or simply the dangers of Candy Crush and Wordle, for we all struggle with addiction. We all struggle with right and wrong. That is how deep the roots of sin are in all of us. We don’t even just have to look at our own lives to see that. We can just look at the state of the world around us too.
When we can’t save ourselves, God can. God died for us and rose again so that we might die to sin, those things we do those things we secretly hate as Paul reminds us. God has given us the opportunity for new life, life we couldn’t have before, life that will return us back to God.
It’s easy to say we need help. We do. It’s even easier to say we need God’s help. We need that even more. Yet the path ahead of us is not an easy one, even if it is the way God wishes us to go. We learned that throughout this past Season of Easter. We learn that today in a passage from our Gospel, a passage still shortly into Jesus’ ministry following the Sermon on the Mount and His sending out of His Disciples and, as witnessed just before the start of this passage, shortly after John the Baptist sends his followers to check in on the ministry of Jesus. This Gospel passage should also be very familiar to us from the Comfortable Words said after the Confession and Absolution. Jesus, at the end of this reading, wouldn’t call the path ahead a “yoke” or a “burden” if it were not so. Yet with God’s help, this “yoke is easy” and this “burden is light”.
Let me put it another way. Many of us try to say that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. What I have learned, from my own experience and the wisdom of my colleagues, is that this is not true. What is true is that God gives us nothing that we can’t handle if we only lean on God for help. The yoke and burden are still there, they are just a lot easier and lighter if we rely on God.
Because it is a yoke and a burden, God’s help isn’t just a magic fix or “get out of jail free” card, except, as a wise colleague of mine pointed out recently, when it is. That is what we see in Genesis today. God won’t normally solve all our problems with a match-making solution. God isn’t Midge Maisel’s match-making mother in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. That’s not God’s role. Yet here, when Abraham’s servant, a member of the household though outside the family, gets tasked with finding a wife for Isaac, the same Isaac we saw last week, he turns to God for help. Help is exactly what God provides.
Yet at the same time, much is asked of Rebekah, the soon-to-be wife of Isaac. Our Psalm, the response to this reading, reflects this. Rebekah is leaving her family to join one that follows only the Lord. This Psalm was written as a royal wedding song. Some even think, though there is no proof one way or another, that the reference to Tyre connects this to Jezebel, King Ahab’s wife and the one to give the Prophet Elijah trouble in the fight between the prophets of Ba’al and him, the prophet of the One True God.
If this connection is true, Jezebel didn’t listen to the call to follow the ways of Israel, which are ultimately meant to be the ways of God. Will we be like her, or will we be different?
Following God is not an easy thing. It requires sacrifice. It requires moving beyond ourselves.
At the same time, we desperately need God’s help. We can do nothing without the Lord. We cannot even lift our yoke or carry our burden without the help of God.
Here I want to lift the veil a bit and let you in on a little secret. It can be hard for us who are ordained to lean on God too. That is why many of us take time for monthly retreats. This allows us to be more present and rooted with God so that when we find ourselves in times of difficulty, we will not forget to lean on the Lord. This was drummed into us during the discernment process. It was drummed into our entire class in seminary. Some of my friends and colleagues still add a note in their letters of agreement that they will have a monthly retreat day. Some dioceses, like our own, even include some provision for retreat time in their own standard letters of agreement for parishes.
We need this time to be with God so that we are prepared to ask for help when we need it. You do too.
Don’t be hesitant to turn to God for help when you need it. At the same time, know that following God’s path is never an easy one. You will need help upon the way. Yet we cannot save ourselves on our own. We need God. Take the time to build God’s presence in your life. Take the time to strengthen your bond and connection with the Lord. If you do so in your times of need you will be ready to lean on God for help, and that will be the only way you can make it through.