As clergy and preachers, we're accustomed to leading, offering assistance, and connecting those in need to the right services.
We also preach how right, proper, necessary, and grace-filled it is to help.
However, we don't often preach nearly as often about the flip side of that coin: how right, proper, necessary, and grace-filled it is to receive help when we are in need.
Not only to receive help, but (Gasp!) — ask for it!
It feels odd, foreign, and out of place to be the recipient of others' help —worse, it can feel shameful to ask for it.
But I am in the process of remembering the gift of humility to be the recipient of others' ministrations, and the sin it would be to deprive them of the chance.
Two days ago, my nearly 93-year-old father died. A week ago he fell at home, still living independently in the house I grew up in. He spent a few days in the hospital, then died peacefully in hospice. I was blessed to be there throughout.
It was a good and holy death after a very full life as a father who loved fiercely, wrote books, read many more of them, retired as the editor of a conservation magazine, practiced jazz piano, and in between, painted and drew at his easel. No one could hope for more.
I grieve and will miss him, but feel more grateful than sad.
I have been very busy tending him, and as the executor of his estate, am now managing his affairs.
And once in a while, coming out of the fog to remember I have a ministry to run.
It's hard to admit I can't manage it all.
Shouldn't I be able to manage it all? Isn't that what Americans claim as the ideal? To pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and do it all by ourselves?
The Absurdity of Salvation by Bootstraps
The American ethos of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is an expression with a fascinating origin.
According to this article, "Why 'Pulling Yourself Up by the Bootstraps' is Nonsense" by Caroline Bologna in The Huffington Post (8/9/18):
To pull yourself up by your bootstraps is actually physically impossible. In fact, the original meaning of the phrase was more along the lines of “to try to do something completely absurd.”
Etymologist Barry Popik and linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer have cited an American newspaper snippet from Sept. 30, 1834 as the earliest published reference to lifting oneself up by one’s bootstraps. A month earlier, a man named Nimrod Murphree announced in the Nashville Banner that he had “discovered perpetual motion.” The Mobile Advertiser picked up this tidbit and published it with a snarky response ridiculing his claim: “Probably Mr. Murphree has succeeded in handing himself over the Cumberland river, or a barn yard fence, by the straps of his boots.”
In short, the belief that we can, should, or are capable of achieving impossible tasks alone, is not only absurd, it is antithetical to the Gospel.
The Gospel teaches the raw honesty of the limitations of our humanity, and the impossibility of being more than human.
Look at Jesus's example.
Jesus called disciples to preach, teach, and heal in his name because, as a human being himself, limited by the laws of time and physics, it was impossible for Jesus to be in two places at once.
Jesus needed help to reach more people, so he asked for it.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, it felt impossible for Jesus to manage being alone, anxious, and afraid, so he asked for the help of his three closest friends: would they stay awake with him, even one hour?
Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive, but I don't think he meant it in the sense of never receiving or asking for help, or that it was shameful to do so. Otherwise, he wouldn't have asked for nor received help himself.
Pride, Fear, and the Discomfort of Needing
However, between Jesus's "more blessed" remark and our American ethos, we swallowed the idea that being independent, self-sufficient, and the one to offer help is superior to being dependent and asking for help.
Why? It’s more comfortable.
When we have something to offer to someone in need, we are more in control. We have more power than the other. We are less vulnerable.
And let's be honest: most of us can fall into the sin of pride, enjoying the superior position of having the choice to offer our help or withhold it.
Of course, to be the recipient is the opposite.
We're not in control, we have less power, and we're vulnerable.
We don't have as much choice because we need someone's assistance.
These are feelings most of us fear.
We reject those feelings, deny them, shun them, and pretend they don't exist.
They are too shameful to acknowledge.
Which, in itself, is simply another form of pride: I'm too good for, or above, the need for help. I can do it all. I can help myself.
I can do the impossible: I can pick myself up by my own bootstraps.
Except I can't. And you can't.
No one can.
What is impossible for humans, however, is not impossible for God.
Not that God will help us do the impossible of picking ourselves up by our bootstraps (after all, I don’t think anyone has been canonized as a saint for the miracle of flying through the air, fingers gripping said straps), but God will heal us of our shame in feeling human.
God will heal us of the pride that we are altruistic enough to offer help, but above the need to receive it.
God will heal our arrogance that asking for help is for "other," "weak," or "needy" people, but not for us, because we are none of those things. Ever.
The Blessing of Being Human
I was taken aback when my dad was in the hospital and hospice. He, my brother, and I received truly, exceptionally competent, caring, honest, professional help by nurses, social workers, docs, and techs.
I'm just not used to people being that focused on or concerned about me or those I love.
In addition, during that time, afterward, and even as I write this, I received the help of the Backstory Preaching team of mentors and admins, and the prayers of this community.
Again, I'm not accustomed to being the recipient of so much care, attention, and assistance.
I’ll confess I’m not entirely comfortable with it. Grateful? Yes. But comfortable? That’s a work in progress.
And I did work at it.
The BsP team has done so much to cover for me, that even when I felt I couldn't possibly ask for one more thing of them, I took deep breaths, prayed for humility, and asked for what I needed.
Because I'm only human.
It is impossible for me to be in two places at once, like tending to my dad and BsP.
It's impossible for me to manage all the emotions of losing my last parent, to be alone—for the first time in my life—in that house for days at a time.
So I asked an old friend, someone who also knew and loved my dad, if I could impose myself at her house for dinner.
Deep breaths. A prayer. A request.
It’s work.
But for God, not impossible work.
Do preach the blessedness of giving.
Just don't neglect to preach the blessedness of receiving, too.