Self Help

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
October 13, 2019
Proper 23, Year C
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Self-help is big business these days.  Google it and you will get four billion results in less than one second.  Four billion.  And that is just a listing of articles, books, seminars, programs, quotations, and tips.  Searching the term “self-help industry” and you get another 536 million results in less than a second.
 
Back in the days of the old west, there were salesmen who went from town to town peddling various oils and potions to help with everything from rheumatism to melancholy.  The practical and pragmatic people in of old west learned quickly that these itinerant marketers were mostly frauds and hucksters.  They called them snake oil salesmen, and pretty soon, everyone got wise to the medicine show scams.
 
Apparently, the internet has opened up a whole new frontier and snake oil sales are booming.  By industry calculations, self-help is a 13 billion-dollar self-help market that is completely unfiltered and unregulated, competing for our affection, attention, and purchasing power.  Contrary to their claims, psychological data and qualitative research find more harm than good in so-called self-help as most of it trades on feelings of shame, inadequacy, and quick fixes.  This analysis tells us something about ourselves, and I am not sure it is good news.  This is not to say that being and becoming better, more whole-hearted people is an unworthy pursuit.  This is to say that like the old song goes, we are “looking for love in all the wrong places.”
 
Ten lepers meet Jesus on the road, asking him to ask for help.  They beg Jesus to have mercy on them, but Jesus does much better showing mercy. Jesus heals them.  Then, he tells them to go and show themselves to the priests.  In their day, leprosy and other skin issues were thought to the highly contagious and many were, and only the priest could certify a person with skin diseases to be cured, and therefore, safe to live in the community again. (This is one job I am glad I do not have as priest!)  And as the story goes, only one of the healed lepers came back to Jesus to give thanks.
 
This story is an old chestnut with clear implications about how much God does for us, and how daft and inconsiderate we can be, even in the presence of enormous blessing.  It has some ethnic tension in there too as the only one who came back was a Samaritan and the Samaritans were seen as uncouth and unclean, yet even a Samaritan, of all people, recognized God’s power in Jesus.  All of my googling this week started when I googled the lesson of the ten lepers, searching for a commentary I once read.  Instead of that, guess what I found?  About half of the hits were all about self-help resources pointing to the benefits of having an #attitudeofgratitude: all one word.  That is a thing.  On the one hand, it is a positive thing.  Even snake oil salesmen can appreciate what is true and good and valuable, but as with most things solely self oriented, it focuses only on the individually resulting happiness in gratitude, and leaves out the absolute value of living, playing, and belonging in community.
 
Part of what we come to Church to re-remember is that we are not in this life alone and that real growth lifts up those we love and serve.  When the writer and theologian C. S. Lewis was coming to faith in his later life, he remarked that “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”[1]  In knowing that we are not alone, and that are we are not made whole flying solo, we are open to God working in and through our lives.  There were ten lepers in the gospel story because they shared the difficulty of disease and isolation together.  Rather than wither away alone, they found community, and their best idea of seeking Jesus arose from their common need.  That encounter saved their lives.
 
The problem with #attitudeofgratitude movement is that it is thought apart from action.  And though the slogan is catchy and rhyming, it is only a place to start.  I can have the attitude of being a marathon runner; I can get the right shoes, the best exercise watch, some running magazines, and I can even enter a race.  But the only way to run that marathon is to get out there and pound the pavement, practice, and develop the necessary endurance.  And even if I fail at marathon running, I can get more fit and closer to the goal than sitting around with all the right gear, reading about it, and cultivating a runner’s attitude.  Likewise if we need a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant, we need them not just to have an attitude of being expert, we need them to practice what they profess to know.
 
As we begin our stewardship season, we have to begin at the heart of the thing.  It is not hard for all of us to agree that giving to God’s work in the world is a good thing.  We have this physical space, this beautiful setting, and the stuff we use in worship because most among us, and those who have gone before us, have been givers of time and ability and money.  What we do together going forward depends on that giving to continue and grow.  Through I do not know how much people give, or have given in the past, I know how many have done so, and it represents a vast majority us all.  People of Emmanuel have shown more than an attitude of generosity, the people of Emmanuel have put that belief into practice through giving.
 
When Janice and I sit down to make our financial pledge to Emmanuel for 2020, we will do so with prayers of gratitude and prayers for God to stretch our horizons.  We will consider all of our resources and set a percentage of those resources as our stewardship commitment.  Our goal in giving is ten percent.  While we are not able to do that, we are practicing to make it so.   We will donate to other things as we are able.  But what we give for the work of our parish will come first as it is the ground and source of our life in community.  While we have not been here all that long, you all are our people and the Church is our extended family.  Above all, we trust that giving to Emmanuel is wise, worthy, and helping support its work is our part in loving God’s world in a tangible way.
 
There is a great prayer in our prayer book that begins with this phrase: “Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.”[2]  That is a good one to keep in front of us as we face a world that promises all kinds of self-actualized foolishness.  We come to Church to grow up together.  We come to Church to touch the mystery that is God.  We come to church to know and feel the abundant love God has for all of us, and all creation.  The best, most appropriate, and most genuine prayer we can say is “Thank you.”  The best, most appropriate, and most genuine thing we can do is practice our thanks.  Amen.


[1] C. S. Lewis The Four Loves, Harcourt, Brace, 1960.

[2] Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent, page 218.