Season after Pentecost
You Are Set Free
The Guts of Compassion
Have you ever thought about the beginnings of the word compassion? What does it mean when we say that we have compassion for a person or a people group? Is it as simple as having pity for another, or does the meaning go much deeper than that? In the short story that we get from the Gospel according to Luke this evening, we get a profound telling of what God has done, is doing, and will continue to do on our behalf. In this short narrative, we begin to get a glimpse of the compassion that God has for us through the life of the Son that is powered by the Spirit.
In the gospel text this evening, we are given a story in which Jesus was moved out of the very depths of his personhood to change the reality for a mother that lost her only son. In having compassion for her – feeling pity for her within the depths of his entrails, his guts – Jesus performs an act of charity, a profound act of kindness, for the woman and for her son. Jesus takes a moment to allow the power of God the Spirit to work through him and to flow out towards another person, whom he does not know. Jesus pauses for long enough to recognize that the loss of an only son is an experience filled with pain and suffering; Jesus pauses long enough to take the time to enter into that pain and suffering in order to change it from sadness into joy.
(LONG PAUSE)
It was late in the summer of 2005. It had been several days since the destruction of the small city had taken place. Now, the landscape was filled with debris from trees, houses toppled over, smashed cars, and the ruins of what were once vibrant neighborhoods. Communication outside the city was nearly impossible as all the communication lines were either filled with water or disconnected from any source of power, which continued to be out across the city landscape. It was very unlikely that anyone actually understood that the destruction had been so strong this far inland. It certainly was not the norm for storms of these types; of course, this latest storm had been anything but normal.
As the day wore on, the folks worked feverishly to find solutions to the problems the local community faced in the aftermath of the storm. Though the resources available were dwindling quickly, they continued to share whatever resources they had available to serve the community. It was beginning to get very uncertain how much longer they would be able to sustain any kind of response – no matter how pitiful it might have been – without some help from outside. Hope was hanging by a thread.
In the late evening, the sun began to set and the work for the day began to wind down. Another long, hard day of trying to find resources to respond to the growing needs of the community. Another day filled with difficult, gut wrenching questions to which there were no good answers. Then, hope appeared slowly turning into the drive way. Three large trucks modeled after the box shaped ambulance turned into the drive each carrying a load of fresh supplies and volunteers. People entered into the pain of the community and brought with them hope – the realization that others were aware of what was happening in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Those volunteers entered into the pain and suffering of a disaster-torn landscape. They entered into the landscape to suffer with those that were directly affected by the hurricane. They had compassion. Interestingly, the roots for the English word compassion are two words in Latin – “com” meaning together and “pati” to suffer. To have compassion for another is to suffer with that person together. It is to enter into their reality and be present with them in that reality. It is to freely enter into a landscape torn by a disaster in order to suffer through those hardships while also bringing hope. It is precisely what Jesus does in the narrative this evening. He enters into the mother’s reality of suffering and brings hope into the situation. In seeing her tears of sadness, Jesus had compassion – a gut wrenching pity for her that called him to suffer with her together.
We, too, are called to have that kind of compassion with our fellow human beings, but the more challenging thing for us is to find that gut wrenching desire to help another in the face of everyday injustices. Injustices like poverty, mental illness, homelessness, hunger; these are the injustices within our time that deserve our compassion – our willingness to suffer together with those that feel the brunt of these injustices. In finding the courage to have compassion for the poor, the hungry, the destitute, the mentally ill, the homeless, the migrant or any other person suffering under the weight of societal injustices, we are taking part in the ministry of God’s justice. When we enter into suffering with another together and bring the hope of Christ into that situation, we are sharing the power of the Spirit just as Jesus did in the gospel narrative tonight. We are allowing the power of the Spirit to flow through us to touch the life of another, and in so doing, we find that the Spirit has an even more profound effect in our own lives. We discover that by allowing God’s blessings to flow through us, we also receive more blessings from the people we meet in our own suffering. Enter into your own ministry of compassion – of suffering together with another – and take the light of Christ out into the world to share His joy and hope.
A Healing, Holy Whisper
The story from today’s Gospel, at first glance, feels like a healing story. It has all the elements of a healing story – a character that is sick or dying, a crowd of people following Jesus, Jesus moving from one place to another, a miraculous achievement at the story’s end. It feels like, sounds like, moves like a healing story. And perhaps the absolute best way to understand this particular story from the Gospel according to Luke is as a healing story, but it is not the healing of the centurion’s slave that deserves our greatest attention. The fact that Jesus heals the centurion’s slave because the centurion (not the slave!) deserves it is evident from our first reading of the text. We know that the slave is healed before we get to the end of the story. The real question for us to consider is how does the story that we read in Luke’s account also work to heal us? How does it challenge us to move forward in our lives with a re-membered reality – a reality that is taken apart and put back together again? How does the story challenge our own assumptions about the realities of human life, of human tragedy, of human triumph, of human calling?
At a deeper level of is a story of the ways that boundaries are broken, ignored, transgressed, shattered. It is a story about the courage of two characters doing the unacceptable in order to convey some new truth about the creation in which we live. It is a story about two characters that enter into a faithfulness that will always batter the walls of the accepted in order to achieve the impossible. It is a story that pushes us to grapple with what we understand our call to be as disciples of Jesus Christ, which is also a grappling with who we understand Jesus to be. Today, we are confronted with a story that is begging us to begin tinkering with everything that we know in order that we might begin to hear the whispers of God as they travel across the water of the soul.
Listen – closely, carefully, intentionally. You don’t want to miss those whispers. They carry a profound and life changing meaning. They carry the force required to breech the walls of the impossible; they effortlessly invite a harmony unheard on earth. The susurrations of God echo across the chasm of time and reverberates within the walls of space. They are holy murmurs gently calling, lapping at the edge of the soul, to sing to a new melody, a new dance.
But of course, it is difficult to hear these murmurs of God’s being in the reality of today. The booming bass line of the world beats on booming out a message of true reality. “I’ve have all the answers!”, booms one voice. “Believe me!” it continues. And then, quite as loudly, “I am really what you need! I bring experience to this table!” chimes in another. And yet still there is the loudest voice of them all that says, “Blame that group there, for your tragic downfall!” Add to the cacophony those voices that exclaim, “Protect what you have, lest it be taken! Strengthen the walls, let us never be shaken!” and the voices that extol the virtues of the human economy, the human solutions to everything. Suddenly, it becomes very difficult indeed to hear the whispers of God. Continue reading
Being drawn to the Bread of Life
“It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”
In the Gospel reading this morning, we continue into John’s discourse on the Bread of Life and are once again faced with doing are very best to understand what Jesus is trying to teach us through these verses. We are, once again, faced with some rather enigmatic sayings from Jesus that make this faith of ours seem quite bizarre, and we might find ourselves echoing some of the thoughts of Jesus’ interlocutors, which up to this point has been a crowd of people. In today’s reading, the crowd suddenly becomes “the Jews” and the hostility within the reading increases as the discourse continues.
Early in the discourse today, the question of origins comes to the forefront after Jesus makes the claim that he is the bread of life and that he comes from the Father. You can almost feel the temperature rising as you read the passage from today’s Gospel. As I entered into the text, I could feel the anger that was cast towards Jesus. So, what happens when we read the Gospel with that kind of tone put into the mouths of the people that are discounting what Jesus is saying? For example, it might sound something a little like this:
“Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, `I have come down from heaven’?”
A Journey In Faith 