Sunday Sermon: He Ain't Heavy
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Galatians 6:2
“He Ain’t Heavy” Series: “Why Church Matters”
August 9, 2020, Caring
Back in the late 1960s, a tumultuous period marked by much unrest and concern, two somewhat obscure songwriters, Bobby Scott and Bob Russell, penned a ballad at the height of Russell’s battle with lymphoma that would go on to be a major hit record for the English band, The Hollies, and would later be covered by the American singer Neil Diamond. Many of you will remember the song, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” How do the opening lyrics go? “The road is long, with many a winding turn, that leads us to who knows where, who knows where.” Those lyrics are remarkably prophetic; wouldn’t you say? Who knows where tomorrow will lead? However, there is in the song this willingness to face whatever comes and to help another to do the same. And so, the song continues, “But I’m strong, strong enough to carry him. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”
What most people don’t know is that the song’s title goes back to the 19th century and to a story told by a Scottish minister, James Wells, in his book, The Parables of Jesus, in which a little girl is carrying her baby brother. Someone sees the little girl struggling to bear her load, her younger brother not much smaller than she. And when asked if she is tired from lugging her burden, the little girl answers. “No, he’s not heavy; he’s my brother.”
Little wonder how that line over the years has come to represent the recognition by caring souls of how in the course of this life in every group there will be those who struggle to keep up and will not be able to do so unless someone steps up to help them along their way – someone who has a compassionate heart, a heart that moves him to look beyond his own needs to the needs of others and then moves him to do something about it.
One such person to have such a heart was the Apostle Paul. It wasn’t always that way. There was a time in Paul’s life when he was more motivated by rising in the ranks of those who saw the emergence of those first Jesus followers as a threat to what he believed was the truth. In those days the only burden that Paul was willing to bear were the coats of those who would stone Christians like Stephen, the first martyr of the church, which according to the seventh chapter of the book of Acts, is precisely what Paul did. But then, Paul met Jesus for himself on the Damascus Road, and from that point on, everything changed; all things became new. In particular, Paul became burdened for the cause of Christ and for helping other believers come to experience the grace and the peace of Jesus Christ, the one “who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:3-4).
Unlike other letters Paul wrote, this letter to the Galatians was directed to a host of faith communities scattered around this certain region of Asia Minor. The context of the letter is as follows. There were some who had come into the churches in that region and were, in Paul’s words, “preaching another gospel,” which Paul interpreted “to be no gospel at all” (Galatians 1:6-7). In particular, these false teachers were promoting a combination of faith in Christ with a commitment to the Mosaic Law. They were advocating a way of relating to God through impressive feats of spiritual strength, which Paul saw as unnecessarily burdensome. And so, Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians to remind them how Jesus had lifted all burdens at Calvary and there is no reason in this world for us to feel the need to add anything to what he did there for us and our salvation. It is not “Jesus plus” something; it is “Jesus alone” that leads to our salvation.
In this section of the letter Paul follows up his teaching on the fruit of the Spirit, something we looked at over these previous Sundays, with a teaching that would prevent his readers from applying those virtues only to themselves. It is a teaching designed to remind those of us who call ourselves Christian that the church of Jesus Christ functions best when its members work together for everyone’s good. Hence the verse I read for you earlier from the sixth chapter: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
Paul does not want the irony of this teaching to be missed. For those who are concerned about faith in Christ as being something cheap or unduly convenient, Paul uses the word “law.” But instead of bringing in an outside rule, even an outside rule as significant as the Law of Moses, Paul elevates the bar by his reference to the “law of Christ,” which of course is grounded on Jesus’ “new” commandment that His followers “love one another,” in the same way He loved us (John 13:34-35). Paul is reminding us that when we are there to help one another, we are best following the example of Christ.
Are you willing to offer yourself in that sort of way? In a day when too many people are more interested in themselves than others, can you live in a different way so that you offer support to anyone who may be struggling to keep up? If you are, then what you will discover is that in the process of helping others, you come to experience a power in your own life that you otherwise would never have known. That is, after all, what the mission of Christ’s church is supposed to be about. In a world that could not care less, we must show ourselves to be a people who could not care more. Can you make a commitment to be such a person today?
Russ Blowers was the pastor of the East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, for 46 years. He was also active in his local Rotary Club over that period of time. One of the club’s practices each week was to invite a member to give a brief statement about his job. Well, everyone in the club knew Russ was a minister, but no one was prepared to hear how Russ described his work. This is what he said:
I’m with a global enterprise. We have branches in every country in the world. We have representatives in every parliament and every board room on earth. We’re into motivation and behavior alteration. We run hospitals, feeding stations, crisis pregnancy centers, universities, publishing houses, and nursing homes. We care for our clients from birth to death. We are into life insurance and fire insurance. We perform spiritual heart transplants. (Most of all), our product is free for the asking because there’s not enough money to buy it.
I think the Apostle Paul would say that’s about the best explanation of what Jesus followers are called to do. And if it seems that to undertake such a task is way too heavy for us to do, then perhaps we’ll come to see that if we attempt it in the power of the Spirit and as a way of fulfilling the law of Christ, those tasks and those burdens suddenly become amazingly less heavy. Certainly, they become less heavy when other Christians join together and everyone lifts!
Yes, the road in life is long, with many a winding turn, that leads us to who knows where, who knows where? But this is what we do know. We don’t walk it alone. Jesus is with us every step of the way. He is there to lift us whenever we may fall and to give us the power to help others in the same way so that whatever burdens of brothers and sisters we may be called upon to lift in the power of Jesus really aren’t that heavy at all.