On Mission 1: Helping People

The first in a series that unpacks our church's mission statement: Helping people walk with Jesus in faith, hope, and love to the glory of God.

To see the full message, scroll to the bottom.

Our mission statement begins, “Helping people...” 

Helping people (and being a helping people) is in our DNA. Genesis 2:18 provides the starting point for understanding who we are as a helping people.  

“It's not good for the human to be alone. I'm going to make the human a helper” 

That Hebrew word “helper” is the word is transliterated to English letters as ezer. That exact same word, used to describe Eve, is also used to describe Yahweh God. 

God is our ezer.  

Our soul waits for the LORD; He is our ezer and our shield. Psalm 33:20-22 

There is none like the God of [Israel], who rides the heavens to your ezer, ...  the eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.  Deut 33:26-27 

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God created humanity in His own image;  in the image of God He created; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:27 

God created humanity in His image. 

Part of that reality, part of that creation, part of our identity as the image of God is that He is our ezer, and we are built to help—built to be helped.  

We are created in the image of our ezer, but in case you hadn't noticed a lot of water has gone under the bridge since the 2nd chapter of Genesis.  

Sociologists sometimes study religion within society. How the two interact, and how the two clash. In 1898 (when people were coming our building on Sunday mornings wearing bowler hats and big skirts) Emile Durkheim wrote about the ‘cult of the individual:’ a mindset in which the individual is at the same time both the idol and the worshipper.  

Another writer, Danièle Hervieu-Léger, in 2006 wrote that “in the contemporary do-it-yourself approach to religious belief and practice, traditions simply serve as symbolic repositories of meaning available to individuals to subjectively use and reuse in different ways.” 

In other words, there was a time in the church when we approached our faith in Christ like a jigsaw puzzle. We would go to the store, buy the puzzle according to the picture on the box. We would take it home and dump the pieces on the table. We would find the pieces that made sense to us, and put them together. What we ended up with might not be complete, but it reflected the reality of the picture on the box.  

Today, we approach our faith in Christ more like Lego blocks. We go to the store and buy a kit that has a picture of the Starship Enterprise on the cover. When we get it home we dump it on the table. We sort out the pieces. We put the box over there somewhere. We lose the instructions. And when we finish putting together our pieces, we don't end up with the Starship Enterprise. We end up with a horsey and a wagon. This is how our approach to faith has changed.  

When it comes to our faith and our identity, we don't want help. We don't want the instructions. We don't want the picture on the cover.

I define me. 

Even among Christians, I define my spirituality. My faith has room in it for me and Jesus.  

But our mission statement begins with the words “helping people.” Because being a “helping people” is in our DNA. We are created to ezer. We are created to receive ezer from each other.  

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We live in that tension--between living ‘my’ faith in Jesus (which is legitimate, important, and valuable) and living ‘our’ faith: 

Our soul waits for God.

We live in the tension between doing what we are conditioned to want to do, and doing what we were created for.  

How can I ask for help? How can I accept help? That's just going to make me look weak. How can I offer my help? I don't have it all together. I don't have everything figured out. I'm going to look silly or judgmental.  

This is the challenge presented to us by those first 2 words of our mission statement: “Helping people.”  

How do we navigate that challenge? 

As a Baptist Pastor, might I humbly suggest that—because our identity, because our humanity began as an idea, fully formed in the mind of Yahweh God, because He created us in His image—is it possible that we might find help in a book that began as an idea in the mind of Yahweh God?  

Rather than just trying to figure it out for ourselves, trying to listen to the voices of our culture, the voices of our family of origin... Listen to the voice that God has recorded for us in the Bible. 

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We are created in the image of God. We are commanded to follow Jesus, to become more like Him, to do the things that He did.  

How can we be ‘helping people?’  

First, we can offer our help in empathy. Being present in the lives of others, but also learning to see life through their eyes. Learning to relate to their perspectives, putting ourselves in their shoes. If I were sitting there... if I were standing there... if I were experiencing that... how would I feel? What would that look like to me? What would my options be? What doors would be closed? What would be impossible? What would be possible? Empathy is crucial in understanding how to help people well.  

Empathy is what Jesus did.  

Jesus’ entire life:  

• His conception, His birth, childhood, puberty, adulthood.  
• His friendships, His family, His citizenship, His neighbourhood.  
• His career as a carpenter, learning a skill and working with His hands.  
• His career as a teacher, working with His spirit, His mind, His voice.  
• All of His joys, His everyday griefs and temptations.  
• The moments when Jesus sat celebrating at the wedding of a friend, rejoicing for His friend while knowing that He, His human self, would never be the groom.  
• The moments when He sat with children on His lap, laughing at their delightfulness, and booping their noses, knowing that He himself would never be a human dad.  
• The moments when He stubbed His toe and saw the bruise start to come up.  
• When He was working in the shop and had to ask Joseph to dig a splinter out of His hand and saw the redness of His own blood.  

His whole life was the ultimate act of empathy. 

This was our ezer walking with us, feeling our emotions, feeling our pain, experiencing all that it is to be human. Being one of us.  

Jesus lived a life of empathy.  

The second way we can live as a helping people is to offer our help in humility.  

Not because I know better than you. Not because I have more than you. Not because if you would just listen to me, you wouldn't have these problems.  

Jesus was God. But the Scripture writer Paul tells us that Jesus:  

...emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. Philippians 2:7 

Jesus, who is God, got down on His knees. He cleaned up messes. He answered questions in words of one syllable, because that's what we needed.   

He could have put himself so high above us, but He chose not to. He chose to humble himself, down where we are. 

For Christians—for believers in Jesus—who are called to imitate him, who are called to become more like Him little by little by little, helping people and being a helping people doesn't mean having all the answers. It doesn't mean telling people what to do. It doesn't mean giving them what we think they ought to need. It doesn't necessarily even always mean being right.  

Helping means being present, showing up, meeting people where they are, and travelling together.  

• Sometimes helping means doubling down on truth and saying, “I can't compromise on this.” 
• Sometimes it means giving people permission to pry their own fingers loose from what they need to let go.  
• Sometimes it means helping them carry it by grabbing the other handle. 
• Sometimes helping means standing with people and saying nothing. Sitting with people and saying nothing.  
• Sometimes it means speaking for them when they can't speak for themselves, and sometimes it means doing the stuff that we can do.  

We learn to distinguish how best to help people in different situations by being present. Being part of a family. Being part of a community. Being part of a group who are all trying to travel in the same direction, and follow the same leader.  

Our mission statement begins, “Helping people...” 

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