Some of you may know Lou Reed’s song “Perfect Day.”  At one point in the song, he repeats, four times—as if it’s a part of the song he wants us to hear very clearly—“You’re going to reap just what you sow.”  I would not have expected to hear Scripture in a Lou Reed song.  The rest of the song is a sort of mellow thanksgiving for the person who helped him to have such a perfect day.  Reed sings of this person, “You just keep me hanging on,” and, a bit later, “You made me forget myself.  I thought I was someone else, someone good.”  This person does more than help Reed bear his burdens.  This is someone who calls the singer to his potential, his possibility, calls him to hope, maybe, even, to faith.

When Reed sings, four times, “You’re going to reap just what you sow,” I wonder if he’s reflecting on this other person or if he’s singing to himself.  It’s one thing to say to someone, “You’re going to reap what you sow,” and it’s another thing to say this to yourself.  What you want to reap, to gather, is what you ought to be sowing.  If you want to receive kindness, sow kindness.  If you want to receive help, give help.  If you want to receive love, give and sow love.  If you want somebody to lean on, be one on whom others can lean.  Bill Withers got it right: “Lean on me, when you’re not strong / and I’ll be your friend / I’ll help you carry on / For it won’t be long / ‘til I'm gonna need / somebody to lean on.”  Or, to put it in Millennial terms, “You get what you give.”

Compassion, sympathy, listening, presence—these are things we love about Jesus, and when Paul encourages us, even commands us, to make ourselves available to our fellow believers in these same ways, we know it is a Christlike thing.  We are to bear with one another the same way Christ bears with us.  I hate to be the one to say it, but we don’t make it so easy for Christ to bear with us.

What Paul is specifically addressing is the need for gentleness, patience, humility, and sympathy in drawing fellow believers back onto the narrow way after a lapse.  Many of us would hate to be thought of as judgmental; to use a phrase of William Barclay’s, we would hate to be regarded as “bleakly unsympathetic.”  Neither Paul nor Jesus tell us to turn a blind eye to sin.  That’s not kindness.  Love for one another means we do what we can not to allow sin to have free rein in the life of another.  We are called to counsel with one another—in a spirit of gentleness, humility, patience, sympathy, and penitence.  Before we speak with another believer about something he or she is doing that doesn’t seem to square with Scripture, we first seriously, prayerfully reflect upon our own weakness, our own failings.  We don’t go to the fellow believer as those who have won the victory, but as those in whom God is winning His victory in Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, a sanctifying spirit.

Be holy, God tells His people (see, for example, Lv 20:26).  How can we be holy?  Bear one another’s burdens (6:2).  Looking to Jesus with love and hope, bear one another’s burdens.  This doesn’t mean that we endeavor to change people: “I see what’s wrong with you and I’m going to fix it!”  Vanity.  Once I change him, he’ll be just perfect—for me.  Once I change those two things about her, then I can really love her.  This is another way of saying, then I won’t have to be patient, then I won’t have to show humility or patience, then I won’t have to have sympathy.  Fellow Christians take each other as we are; we pray for one another.  We grow together in and through God’s Word.  When the Spirit prompts us, we counsel with one another, not from any supposed superiority or perfection, but from the love and righteousness of Christ.  You reap what you sow.  If you don’t offer blessings, don’t expect them for yourself.  We all need somebody to lean on.

Jesus gives us one another.  We who are in Christ all have one standard of conduct and one destination; let’s help one another along the way there.  Paul tells us to bear one another’s burdens, and that sounds very encouraging.  Not long after, he says we must bear our own burdens (6:5).  So, which is it?  The two do not cancel each other out.  Jesus tells those who want to be his followers that we must take up our cross, daily, and follow him (Lk 9:23).  When we help bear one another’s burdens, we don’t completely remove the burden: we can’t.  Only God can.  He has removed it, and He is removing it.  For us, it’s a process: a long, tiring, sometimes dejecting, sometimes miraculously blessed process.  Disappointments, weaknesses, failures, the consequences of our sin—consequences for ourselves and those around us—we’ve got to shoulder that weight, heft that load.  We don’t have to do so alone.  I can’t remove your burden, but I can help you bear it.  You can’t remove my burden, but you can help me bear it, if you want to, if it seems like the right thing, the blessed thing to do.  When I help bear your burden, I am blessing you, and you are blessing me.  For those of us who don’t want any help with anything, please remember that some people find joy and purpose in helping.  Be a disciple, then, and let them help, once in a while.

We must bear our own burdens.  Bear one another’s burdens.  It’s not easy for me to bear my burden—the things I have done that I ought not to have done, the things I have not done that I ought to have done.  It’s as we learn, in Christ, with Christ, to bear our own burdens that we come to understand how beautiful and kind, and truly loving it is to help others to bear theirs, too.  How glad I am that I have Jesus to help me!  My tears of grief and anger are turned to tears of joy.  We can do this for one another.  The remarkable thing is that such help brings blessing not only to the one helped, but to the helper, who grows in patience, kindness, sympathy, and righteousness.  Bearing the burden never means, cannot ever mean, blessing the sin.  Bearing the burden means being an experience of Christ, pouring out mercy, grace, courage, and the counsel of righteousness.  It means calling each other to Christ.  It means striving to help each other to be holy in a world that wants to define holiness for itself, that wants to define righteousness for itself.

Christ calls us.  He calls to us from heaven.  He calls to us from the cross.  He calls to us from His Word.  Today, he also calls to us from this table.  In the bread and the juice, Christ shows us that he is helping us.  Here, he gives us tangible assurance that he is helping and will help us to bear our burdens.  Here, he assures us that, in him, our burdens are lifted.

What have we merited from God?  What do we deserve from Him?  Who are we, that He should come to us?  Beloved, it’s when we are aware of the burden we bear, painfully aware, that the offer to help comes as such relief, such joy.  If we say we have no burden, the help offered here is of no benefit.  You are right if you regard yourself as guilty before God.  You are right, if you cling, in faith, to the truth that, in Christ, God does not regard us as guilty.  He regards us, in Christ, as forgiven.  Forgiven, we can bear our burdens—and we can help others to bear theirs—in hope, in patience, in peace, even in joy, because, in Christ, joy is our destination.

Paul writes that his boast, his only boast, is in the cross (6:14).  Amen.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.