Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning.
Will you pray with me? As we ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Scriptures for us and open our hearts to hear what God has in store. Let's pray together.
Holy Spirit, Come, we ask, dwell richly in our hearts.
Enlarge the spaces of us to receive all that you wish us to see, hear and be.
Lord, illuminate your Holy Scriptures for us this day. Make the words on the page and the flesh and blood of our lives.
We ask, Lord, that you would animate these words for us and may we hear your Gospel in them. We ask this in your name, Lord. Amen.
Our texts for today are from Psalm 23 in the Old Testament and then the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verses 11 to 15. You will find Psalm 23 on page 435 in your Pew Bible and then John 10:11 15 on page 8. 72 in your Pew Bible. Listen for the word of the Lord in the Old Testament from Psalm 23.
The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me.
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint me with my head of oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
And in the New Testament, the Gospel of John, chapter 10 beginning at verse 11, found on page 872 in your pew Bible. Listen for the word of the lord in John 10, beginning at verse 11.
I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not know the who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.
The hired hand runs away because the hired hand does not care for the sheep.
I am the good shepherd.
I know my own and my own. My own know me just as the Father knows me and I know the father. I lay down my life for the sheep.
This is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Angela Duckworth, I Know, is a name familiar to many of you. She teaches psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She's been credited with single handedly making the term grit a buzzword in educational policy, and she defines GR the passion and perseverance to pursue long term goals. A kind of self control powered by determination. And she even developed a scale to measure grit.
And so when I saw a new article this last month published by Angela Duckworth, I figured it would be about grit, especially when I saw the title. The title was, quote, I study successful people. They have one habit in common.
Okay, I thought this is going to be a habit of building up determination, perseverance, grit.
I was wrong.
Duckworth tells about an experience she had while she was snorkeling with her mom. Her mom was 86 years old at the time, and they were snorkeling off the coast of Miami in Florida, and they were behind the boat and a current, a very strong current, began to pull them further and, and further away from the boat. Her mom, who was struggling against the current, eventually had both lungs fill with water and she passed out.
So Duckworth grabbed her and then tried to rescue her by bringing her to the boat kicking and thrashing. And it got her nowhere. The current was too strong.
So Duckworth said, I changed tactics.
And what she did instead was with one arm she held her mom's head above the water and with the other hand she waved it wildly in the air and she cried out at the top of her lungs, help.
People in the boat heard her, saw her gestures, turned the boat around, and quickly there were helping hands picking her mom up into the boat. And those with some medical training quite quickly had revived her mom.
So this famous author about grit was reflecting on this experience and she said, with grit alone, I was kicking and thrashing and getting nowhere.
What saved my mom, she recognized, was asking for help.
She reflected on how so much in self help literature is about in individual resources, looking within for the strength to make it. And she notes in American mythology how often the individual striver is lifted up, even though they really didn't do it alone. She notes Thomas Edison, for example, who we credit in various ways for breakthroughs, even though he was a part of a whole lot of scientific work done in that arena before the light bulb was invented. Steve Jobs, who's thought to have transformed technology on his own, if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Or Diana Nyad, who we picture alone swimming from Cuba to Florida until we actually realized there was a boat of support going along with her on that journey. Duckworth argues the research on high achievement is abundantly clear. Success for those so called individuals and for us all is inextricably linked to, to asking for help.
Conan o', Brien, she notes, put it accurately when he told Harvard's graduating class, if I could invite everybody, alive or dead, who has contributed to my being your commencement speaker today, all of Cambridge and half of Allston would be crammed shoulder to shoulder.
Research confirms what o' Brien said.
Children who ask for help excel over those who don't. College students who proactively seek help from professors or other students repeatedly outperform those who don't. And in adulthood, there have been ample studies to show those who actively enlist a support network repeatedly show stronger mental health, greater emotional regulation, and a higher level of life satisfaction and sense of achievement. Great grit is well and good, Duckworth herself notes, but it is not enough alone. It will not save us or save those we love.
We need to ask for help.
As a church, we've been looking at the Book of Psalms, and in the Psalms we don't hear this cry. We don't read this cry.
O self control, O inner resources, please help me through this dilemma.
We don't read O grit, lift me up out of the pit.
We hear cries like this from Psalm 69, Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
We read this in Psalm 86, I am poor and needy, O God, in the day of my trouble I cry out to you. You. We read in Psalm 70, oh God, come to my aid, O Lord, make haste to help me.
And I would suspect everyone here can recall some time you felt yourself like Angela Duckworth, kicking and thrashing in some situation and feeling like it got you nowhere, didn't get you where you needed to go. You realized you needed to cry, feeling help.
You lost your job or realized you needed a new job and didn't know what to do.
A relationship that was a kind of anchor for you fell apart, and it left you feeling adrift. Behind the boat, you lost a loved one or you feared deeply for someone you love. The waves of anxiety or worry or financial challenges made you feel like water was filling your lungs. You lost your way and felt you were drifting further and further from the boat. Or maybe you were like me soon after the fires, where some moments it was okay, some hours it was okay. And then I would just be overwhelmed with that sense of loss.
It was like a feeling of drowning.
Or maybe what overwhelms you, what makes you feel like you are drowning sometime, is fears for the world. You despair, runaway AI, nuclear war, climate catastrophe, or a new deadly pandemic. With all those threats out there, it's just too much. You wonder, is it hopeless?
And in that pit you Found yourself echoing the cries we see again and again in the Psalms. God, help me, help us.
And maybe you heard the response, which we also hear again and again in the book of Psalms.
Psalm 70 puts the response like this, O God, you are my help and my deliverer.
In Psalm 40, the response goes, God inclined and heard my cry.
You have lifted me up out of the pit, O Lord. Or Psalm 18. God, God reached down for from on high and took hold of me. God drew me up out of deep waters.
You cried and help came.
Maybe it came from the helping hand of someone God put right in that situation to assist you, to lift you up into the boat and provide just the care you needed. And you saw in the hand of a medical provider or nurse or someone who was at your hospital bedside. Ah, this is in fact a hand of a member of the body of Christ. This is God at work, helping me right now.
Or maybe you sense that in whatever crisis you faced, you weren't alone, that there was a higher power with you, upholding you, accompanying you. Maybe you found strength you didn't know you had, that you knew was beyond you and you credited to God. But somehow, some way, you cried for help.
And a response came often with the face of another person or a hand of another person.
That is so often the rhythm of faith. Call and response, cry and answer.
And for many of us, the most resonant portrait of God's response, a portrait so resonant that we read it during memorial services, is Psalm 23.
This Psalm might not contain the cry, help me, oh God, as so many of the other psalms do, literally. But Psalm 23, it seems to me, presumes this cry, and it answers it in a whole host of ways to the call. God, I need help, comes this Response in Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want to the call. God, my soul, my life is in turmoil, comes this response.
God makes me lie down in green pastures. The Lord leads me beside still waters and restores my soul.
God, I'm confused. That's the call. What direction should I go? What decision should I make? Help me.
This is the response of Psalm 23. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I. I fear no evil, for you are with me. God leads me in right paths for his name's sake.
The cry or call, O God, evil forces are running rampant, those in power, tearing down things I love, threatening my life, threatening the world. Answer, God, my shepherd. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me in the journey.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
Call God. My income, my achievements, my grit, none of it is enough.
It doesn't satisfy the longing in my heart. Help me.
Response you, O God, anoint my head with oil and my cup overflows.
Call God. There's so much wrong, wrong in the world, wrong in me. Won't you help? Response Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Call God. My sister, my father, my friend has died. And I know soon I will die too. Can't there be some way you help us from the specter, the shadow of death?
Answer I shall dwell, we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever, for all the length of days with that kind of call and response. No wonder that so often in the Gospels we see the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It's often with the kind of imagery we find in Psalm 23, for that is such a resonant response to the cries of humanity in their need. Remember how Jesus told the story in Matthew's Gospel about a shepherd that left the 99 to seek after the one who was lost, and when that one was lost, there was rejoicing in heaven. Or think of how Jesus, according to both Matthew and Mark, looked out on a crowd at one point and saw they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. So what does he do? He teaches them, because he could see that was the help they needed and he wanted to offer it. Or think of John's Gospel from the text we read today, and how when Jesus was trying to speak of the great love of God and how it came to earth in the very one speaking to them, he says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down their life for the sheep.
Later in John's Gospel, Jesus will say, no one has greater love than this, that they lay down their life for their friends, for those they love.
And as Christians, we believe that's precisely the kind of love God showed us in Christ. And that love lifts us up out of the pit. That love restores us, connects us to God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and connects us to his body, makes us part of being, helping hands to our neighbor and to the world, especially to the least, the last and the lost.
Still, I don't know about you, but even for me, even for those of us who know that Savior, who believe Christ is with us, Christ has helped us, Christ as our Savior. It's hard to ask for help.
It really is.
There's something about us, something in me, I admit, that resists it. And maybe that's because asking for help is a kind of admission of weakness. And it is. We want to think. I want to think. I'm a lion.
I'm a tiger.
Scripture says I'm a sheep.
I'm a lamb.
I'm defenseless and vulnerable and alone, separated from the other 99 sheep, separated from the shepherd. I'm done for.
I'm done for. I can't save myself. I can't thrash and kick my way back to the boat. And that sense of powerlessness is a hard truth.
Sometimes it takes a near drowning or a catastrophic illness or a global pandemic or a wildfire destroying your house and your neighborhood to realize how much we are vulnerable and in need.
But along with that hard news that we are sheep, I am sheep, you are sheep. There is this good news of scripture. God hears our cries, the cry from the core of our being. And God.
God answers. God shows up, lifts us up out of the pit. God is our shepherd. We shall not want. Christ is the shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep. God comes to our aid if we have eyes to see it. And so often that aid comes from the helping hand, the generous hand, the generous words of another spoken, shared, given in the name of Christ.
When I was preparing for Marguerite's memorial service, I came upon a quote from an interview with her back in 2004. And the quote struck me of the call and response of Psalm 23 and so much of our psalms and how it was present in Marguerite's life in a way I hadn't known before reading this interview. Marguerite Schuster, as many of you know, was a former pastor here at Knox. This was her first ordained call, and she was one of very few women in ministry at that time.
She later made this her church home in her final years.
And we even had the honor of having her guest preach on a number of occasions.
Well, back in my seminary days, I had the honor of being Marguerite's teaching assistant when she taught homiletics. And this past year, I was given another honor in getting to officiate her memorial service that she wanted to have here at Knox. And it was here at Knox, and we got to celebrate the resurrection and the life and witness of an inspiring professor, teacher, pastor, and author.
But the quote that struck her as I was researching her life from this 2004 interview was about her relationship with a mentor.
I had known about this relationship, at least not the degree she alludes to. She spoke of a professor and Bible scholar she first met when she was an undergraduate At Stanford. His name was Robert McAfee Brown.
Brown's two volume commentary on John's Gospel has long been one of my go tos whenever I've taught or preached on John's Gospel for well over two decades. But Marguerite spoke of Brown's extraordinary clarity of mind and his unparalleled ability to convey grace.
And after having him as an undergraduate professor, Marguerite then maintained a 35 year correspondence with this undergrad professor. And the quote of hers that struck me was when she tells the interviewer about Brown, she writes, he listened to all my despair and answered all of my letters for 35 years.
Now, Marguerite was a famously private person and so even if I asked her, I don't think I would get a picture of exactly what that despair was like. He listened to all my despair.
I wonder what that might have meant. Would it be loneliness?
Did it come from being one of the very few women in ministry in her day? Did it come from opposition she faced?
Or were there more private challenges she was alluding to?
I will never know.
But whatever pit she was in, she cried out for help and help came.
And the help had a human face. It had the face of a mentor answering every one of her letters for 35 years.
And I think today of Marguerite's success as a preacher when so many argued men alone were called to that office. I think of her achievements as professor, as an author, as a mentor of other preachers like me. And I think, oh, that was a secret Marguerite had, the very secret that Angela Duckworth spoke about.
She knew how to ask for help and help came in the name of Christ.
That's the call and response of faith.
So in conclusion, friends, this is the time when we start stewardship season at Knox through October 25th. And so I have to do something that's still hard for me to do after so many decades of ministry. You'd think it'd be easier, but it isn't. I have to tell you this.
I need help.
I need help.
And I also have to say on behalf of our session, our deacons, our staff, everyone who's a part of this congregation, we need help.
We can't worship God in the way we do, drawing God's people in without help, we can't engage in mission partnerships. We can't teach children, youth and adults. We can't gather the community together, our neighbors and others for events like barbecue and bluegrass. We can't be a people of faith together without help. We can't do that, work alone. We're like sheep in need. Of other sheep in need of the other. 99.
We're in need of a shepherd. We need help.
But here's the good news. I get to proclaim each stewardship season and I pray every Sunday the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
The Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want. And time and again I see it. I see God showing up in our lives, individually and collectively to lift us up. And sometimes God's help comes by those in this sanctuary, those watching on the livestream, those who even live in other cities or states yet have given a helping hand in the form of time, talent, treasure to further Christ's kingdom. That generosity, that concrete help, reminds us of what Robert McAfee Brown, in each one of his letters to Marguerite showed. He showed the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want.
Well, this congregation recently received a tithe that provided extraordinary help in a challenging year with some expensive repairs for our north side house.
Among other financial needs, Marguerite Schuster, in gratitude to God, designated a tithe of what she possessed upon her death to go to her former church, to Knox.
What a difference a tithe can make. And so this and every year, we invite you in this season to consider pledging time, talent and treasure to Knox. And each year we also invite you to consider the classic Christian practice of tithing, whether in your annual giving your will or both.
That practice, giving a percentage, even if that percentage is tiny, and then building up eventually to a tenth or tithe. That is a time tested practice among people of faith in generosity and one I have long sought to practice myself. It's the kind of giving that can make a world of difference to a church and more importantly than that, to the giver, because it helps the giver to be part of Christ's work in the world. A helping hand to another person right beside you. You might not know how that help is going to come, but when you offer it, you do it in the name of the Lord. And let me tell you, it is a blessing to see what that help can do.
So as Jill and I join all of you this month in pledging our time and talent and treasure for 2027, hold to the proclamation of Scripture. You need help.
We need help.
I need help.
And hold fast to this proclamation. Our help has come in the name of the Lord and we get to be part of that help. Show the love of the good shepherd to one another in the world. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.
