Assisted Loving
Living every day while loving every person according to God's high and holy expectations is simply too much for us to accomplish alone. In today's lesson from Colossians 1:1-14 we learn about Assisted Loving. July 22, 2007.
Louise once held her family together with the best of matriarchal love and skill. She orchestrated the family vacations, the holiday dinners, and the house renovations. She taught her daughters how to play the piano and sew a hem stitch. She baked brownies that melted in your mouth. She juggled membership in two book clubs, Ladies’ Guild, her college alumnae association, and the hospital auxiliary. She navigated her family through multiple illnesses, one house fire, and the slow death of her husband. She wore floral dresses with matching purses to church every Sunday. In recent years she learned how to change light bulbs and use the right terminology when describing a mechanical problem with her car. She also enjoyed spoiling her grandchildren who were sprouting up instantly from preschoolers to college graduates. But sometimes she had trouble remembering all their names and then began mixing up their birthdays. One day she slipped in the kitchen and broke her arm. For Louise, that was the beginning of the end of her independent living.
For a while her daughters covered the doctor appointments, financial planning, and grocery shopping. But they had their own lives to manage, too. After about a year of doing their best to help, Louise drove into the drive-in at the pharmacy – literally into the drive-in window thinking she was pushing on the brake but it was the accelerator instead – and they realized their aging mother needed more help than they could give. It came in the form of assisted living. Not a nursing home, but an upscale complex of cozy apartments staffed by nurses, cooks and recreation directors. A cheery place where there’s still a lot of living to do and Louise could reward herself (after 80-plus years of doing everything) by letting others wait on her hand and foot. However, she didn’t see it that way. She didn’t want the assistance of nurses checking on her meds and cooks serving her meatloaf without the savory taste of her own secret ingredients. That would have meant she couldn’t do those things any more. A harsh reality to face and, for now, one she’d try to avoid.
Needing help but not wanting help isn’t just an inner turmoil for the elderly and outer tension-builder for their families. The desire to live independently enters this world with us, dramatically displays itself for the first time when we’re two years old, reenergizes when we’re teenagers, and then comes and goes until its final burst of stubbornness in our aging years. We need to realize that we’re better off with help than without it, and we can come to realize that with the patient assistance of family, friends, teachers, coaches, and doctors. And needing help but not wanting help doesn’t just apply to our social life but our spiritual life, too. Living every day while loving every person according to God’s high and holy expectations is simply too much for us to accomplish alone. Relating to others, who at times test the limits of our patience and kindness, isn’t as easy as it sounds in fairy tales, Veggie Tales, or the true tales of Jesus showing perfect love. Today God’s Word, in the opening verses of Colossians, approaches this topic and accomplishes two nearly impossible goals. First, God convinces us that we actually do need help loving others, and secondly, God provides us with all the help we will ever need loving others. Call it Assisted Loving. A cheery place where there’s a lot of loving to do, where people who have thought for years we can independently love others our own way learn to do it even better God’s way.
By God’s wisdom
Earlier we heard Jesus tell the parable of the Good Samaritan, an engaging story with a happy ending and a lesson for us to show love and kindness to people who wouldn’t expect it. What prompted Jesus to tell that parable, however, was the stubborn independence of a religious leader who wanted to make his own rules for loving others. The Bible says that he “stood up to test Jesus” and “wanted to justify himself” (Luke 10:25,29) he didn’t want any help when it came to loving others. He interpreted the Bible’s command to love God and people according to his own independent evaluation: loving God meant belonging to a church, and loving people meant being nice to those who were nice to him. Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan in order to smash his self-made religious pride. He hadn’t even come close to loving others God’s way, and worse yet he felt good about it. When Jesus told him to show the kind of mercy that the Good Samaritan showed, this man cringed inside. He needed help. The kind of Assisted Loving that would redefine for him what it really meant to love. A harsh reality he didn’t want to face and, for now, would avoid.
These verses in Colossians help us understand that the Good Samaritan sets a standard for us that is far beyond the low standard we have independently set for ourselves when it comes to loving others. One of God’s most frequent complaints in the Bible about his followers is that we’re too easily satisfied with our low standards of love, while happily ignoring his higher expectations. We independently redefine God’s expectations for sex and marriage, for managing our money, for how we talk and where we look, for healthy living, for helping the poor, and for time spent in prayer. We pat ourselves on the back like the religious leader for doing a good job when, from God’s perspective, we haven’t even come close to loving God’s way. And we make ourselves ignorantly happy with our sub par performance like Louise who avoids listening to the doctors telling her that she needs to make lifestyle changes … so she continues happily ruining her own life and the lives of people around her. We can happily ruin our life with God and others, too, or we can confess that our independent loving is insufficient, selfish, and needs to change.
But how? Where do we start? The opening verses of Colossians have the answer, and it is not found within ourselves or our own independent standards. Our recovery from the faulty ignorance of our selfish sin is found in “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” because he “has rescued us from the dominion of darkness (that darkness clouds our judgment of what is truly loving and shades God’s higher expectations from our consideration) and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” God our Father loves us so much that he adopted us into his very own family to be with his very own Son. God the Son loves us so much that he redeemed us from our sins by paying the price for our forgiveness, his very own suffering and death. That is God’s kind of love. Undeserved love. Love that gives its all. Love that chooses to love because it is loving, not because its object is loveable.
The God who shows you that kind of love also shares his wisdom with you, chasing away dark ignorance and enlightening your understanding. The Bible says that your Assisted Loving begins by God’s wisdom that you “have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you.” God’s truth comes to you by faith from outside yourselves and from inside the true Word of God, which instructs you, raising the bar of what it means to love. Loved by God and guided by God, you can love others more “asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding … in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way.” Your Assisted Loving is not guided by selfish interpretations or stubborn independence, but guided by God’s perfect love and God’s perfect wisdom. Then you please God. You make him happy. And you feel good about it. But you and God aren’t the only ones who benefit. “Bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,” your Assisted Loving produces fruit that others experience and enjoy.
By God’s will
Dear Louise finally gave in. She came to an acceptance of what she wouldn’t have concluded on her own, but her family and doctors have finally convinced her it was the best choice: assisted living. But it was still scary. She wasn’t sure she’d like it. She didn’t look forward to being herded to the cafeteria or coerced to take yoga. At the Sunrise Village assisted living facility, however, she discovered a pleasant surprise. The people on staff don’t treat her like a little child, tugging her by the ear wherever they want her to go. Instead, they affirm her dignity and allow her own decision making. When she gets a little lazy they work with her, not despite her. When she feels week and worn out they encourage her and empower her, letting her do the work and enjoy her accomplishments.
Do you ever felt weak? Worn out? Do you lie awake at night dreading the heavy responsibilities waiting for you just hours away? Assisted Loving isn’t easy! God expects more than perfection. He expects the impossible! He expects you to handle hardships you would have never chosen, relationships that need the kind of maintenance and repair you haven’t been capable of giving, temptations that came and conquered you then came and conquered you and are coming again, and pain that distracts you from performing daily tasks. Why doesn’t God handle these by himself? Because God affirms your dignity by allowing you to make choices, allowing you to fight the good fight, allowing you to engage in behavior that pleases him and not tugging you by the ear all the way. But he doesn’t leave you alone. As much as he shares his wisdom with you, he also shares his will with you. That is, his will power. What he wants for you, what he wills for you, he shares with you to have the same will power to accomplish what seems impossible, “being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience.” Your Assisted Loving is powered by God himself – his will power that works mightily in you.
Over 40,000 assisted living facilities in our country offer their help and care to people who can no longer live independently and care for themselves. When it comes to loving God and others, we can’t do it by ourselves. We need help from outside ourselves, and we have it in our God, who in this section of Colossians calls people “holy and faithful” who turn to him for Assisted Loving. You are holy and faithful when you face a decision and first ask, “What does God say?” You are holy and faithful when you take up a responsibility and first ask, “What can God do?” That’s the best kind of help. Assisted Loving. Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on July 22, 2007
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