OTE: I finally was able to get my Sunday sermon notes done - hope they make some sense.Mother Theresa once said that a spiritually mature soul chooses to walk towards the pain of the world because they understand that our hearts must be broken in order to release all of God’s love. Frederick Buechner came to understanding our calling – that is, living in a way that was in harmony with God, self and creation – as finding the intersection of the world’s greatest need and our greatest joy. Apparently there is a connection between authentically embracing the will of God and opening our hearts to others in love – and they call it compassion.
Compassion is the willingness and commitment to open your heart to the suffering of the world – feel it rather than flee from it – and respond to it with tenderness and solidarity. Marcus Borg has observed that: Some people find the experience and practice of compassion as a spiritual discipline to be a more direct route to the transformation of the heart than prayer. It is not that prayer does not or should not play a role in their lives, but their way to the opening of the heart lies through deeds of compassion. "Just do it" summarizes this path of transformation.
And almost every spiritual tradition celebrates compassion as one of the most direct and bold ways of encountering the heart of our Living God. Like the Dali Lama
said: The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, forgiveness. That is why our proposed mission and vision statement ends with a call to action: “In community with God and each other, we gather in worship to reflect on our Christian faith, to do justice and to share compassion.”
+ First, we gather in community – not as a collection of individuals – but as a living body with a common heart and soul to reflect, think, question and express our doubts about what it means to follow Christ in the 21st century.
+ And second, after worship and other times of reflection, we move into the world for action – doing justice in the spirit of God’s grace – and sharing compassion with open hearts.
So let me continue to explore some of the implications of what this call to compassion might mean for us. Specifically, let me share with you four key verses from our Biblical tradition about what compassion in the spirit of Jesus could mean for us. And then describe why this discipline is simultaneously dangerous and essential to our vitality as a congregation.
Literally compassion means to suffer with – to stand in solidarity alongside those who are wounded – from the La
tin “pati cum.” It is not sympathy, empathy or pity – it has nothing to do with feeling sorry for another – and everything to do with actively sharing in the brokenness of creation. A prayer by one of the ancient Hassidic rabbis, Nachman of Breslov puts it like this:
Teach me to search for the fine qualities in others, to recognize their immeasurable worth. Teach me to cultivate a love for all Your children, for no one, no one is without redeeming value. Let the good in me connect with the good in others, until all the world is transformed through the compelling power of love.
Quite a prayer, yes? So how do we cultivate and deepen such a way of being so that more often than not we move in the direction of compassion rather than anger, habit, prejudice or judgment? Consider Psalm 51 – a call to experience God’s compassion so deeply that from the inside out we are cleansed and made whole. This is a healing psalm of forgiveness and grace – an invitation to let God transform us so that we might live in the world in the spirit of gratitude not guilt. Two parts are essential:
Compassion is the willingness and commitment to open your heart to the suffering of the world – feel it rather than flee from it – and respond to it with tenderness and solidarity. Marcus Borg has observed that: Some people find the experience and practice of compassion as a spiritual discipline to be a more direct route to the transformation of the heart than prayer. It is not that prayer does not or should not play a role in their lives, but their way to the opening of the heart lies through deeds of compassion. "Just do it" summarizes this path of transformation.
And almost every spiritual tradition celebrates compassion as one of the most direct and bold ways of encountering the heart of our Living God. Like the Dali Lama
said: The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, forgiveness. That is why our proposed mission and vision statement ends with a call to action: “In community with God and each other, we gather in worship to reflect on our Christian faith, to do justice and to share compassion.”+ First, we gather in community – not as a collection of individuals – but as a living body with a common heart and soul to reflect, think, question and express our doubts about what it means to follow Christ in the 21st century.
+ And second, after worship and other times of reflection, we move into the world for action – doing justice in the spirit of God’s grace – and sharing compassion with open hearts.
So let me continue to explore some of the implications of what this call to compassion might mean for us. Specifically, let me share with you four key verses from our Biblical tradition about what compassion in the spirit of Jesus could mean for us. And then describe why this discipline is simultaneously dangerous and essential to our vitality as a congregation.
Literally compassion means to suffer with – to stand in solidarity alongside those who are wounded – from the La
tin “pati cum.” It is not sympathy, empathy or pity – it has nothing to do with feeling sorry for another – and everything to do with actively sharing in the brokenness of creation. A prayer by one of the ancient Hassidic rabbis, Nachman of Breslov puts it like this:Teach me to search for the fine qualities in others, to recognize their immeasurable worth. Teach me to cultivate a love for all Your children, for no one, no one is without redeeming value. Let the good in me connect with the good in others, until all the world is transformed through the compelling power of love.
Quite a prayer, yes? So how do we cultivate and deepen such a way of being so that more often than not we move in the direction of compassion rather than anger, habit, prejudice or judgment? Consider Psalm 51 – a call to experience God’s compassion so deeply that from the inside out we are cleansed and made whole. This is a healing psalm of forgiveness and grace – an invitation to let God transform us so that we might live in the world in the spirit of gratitude not guilt. Two parts are essential:
+ Generous in love—God, give grace! Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry… I've been out of step with you for a long time… and what you're after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.
+ God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don't throw me out with the trash or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile, you…
One part of cultivating a compassionate heart has to do with experiencing God’s healing compassion from the inside out through forgiveness. Like the old timers say: you can’t give what you ain’t got, and you can’t go where you don’t know! Compassion begins with an inner healing – a Genesis week shaped from the chaos of our
lives – so that there is order, and focus and rejoicing within us.
Then, you see, we can live in gratitude rather than guilt – and gratitude makes all the difference in the world. Gratitude puts everything into its proper place and perspective. It rejoices at all of God’s gifts, is always ready to light the candles of the banquet table and refuses to be enslaved by the old cronies of boredom, despair and taking-things-for-granted. So first we begin with God’s inner healing and compassion and say: Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me.
Second, consider Jeremiah 31 – a pivotal portion of scripture for the early Protestant Reformers – that holds great promise for us, too:
The time is coming when I will make a brand-new covenant with Israel and Judah. It won't be a repeat of the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt… This is the brand-new covenant that I will make with Israel when the time comes. I will put my law within them—w
rite it on their hearts!—and be their God. And they will be my people. They will no longer go around setting up schools to teach each other about God. They'll know me firsthand, the dull and the bright, the smart and the slow. I'll wipe the slate clean for each of them. I'll forget they ever sinned!
Did you get that? I will put my law within them – I will write it on their hearts – and they will make the way of the Lord visible by how they live! The covenant of the Lord – the promises God made with Israel in the desert, after the flood and after exile – will now be a part of our inward being. In Hebrew, you see, to speak of the heart is not to reference our emotions, but the soul and source of all wisdom. We might even call it our conscience or the core of deepest convictions. So the promise is that in our heart of hearts – at the center of our being – we will know the will of God and be able to make it flesh and blood through our living – not merely our words or texts – but through our living.
+ God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don't throw me out with the trash or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile, you…
One part of cultivating a compassionate heart has to do with experiencing God’s healing compassion from the inside out through forgiveness. Like the old timers say: you can’t give what you ain’t got, and you can’t go where you don’t know! Compassion begins with an inner healing – a Genesis week shaped from the chaos of our
lives – so that there is order, and focus and rejoicing within us.Then, you see, we can live in gratitude rather than guilt – and gratitude makes all the difference in the world. Gratitude puts everything into its proper place and perspective. It rejoices at all of God’s gifts, is always ready to light the candles of the banquet table and refuses to be enslaved by the old cronies of boredom, despair and taking-things-for-granted. So first we begin with God’s inner healing and compassion and say: Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me.
Second, consider Jeremiah 31 – a pivotal portion of scripture for the early Protestant Reformers – that holds great promise for us, too:
The time is coming when I will make a brand-new covenant with Israel and Judah. It won't be a repeat of the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt… This is the brand-new covenant that I will make with Israel when the time comes. I will put my law within them—w
rite it on their hearts!—and be their God. And they will be my people. They will no longer go around setting up schools to teach each other about God. They'll know me firsthand, the dull and the bright, the smart and the slow. I'll wipe the slate clean for each of them. I'll forget they ever sinned!Did you get that? I will put my law within them – I will write it on their hearts – and they will make the way of the Lord visible by how they live! The covenant of the Lord – the promises God made with Israel in the desert, after the flood and after exile – will now be a part of our inward being. In Hebrew, you see, to speak of the heart is not to reference our emotions, but the soul and source of all wisdom. We might even call it our conscience or the core of deepest convictions. So the promise is that in our heart of hearts – at the center of our being – we will know the will of God and be able to make it flesh and blood through our living – not merely our words or texts – but through our living.
Which brings me to the third text in Matthew 9 where Jesus not only explains but embod
ies the promise of the prophets when he tells us: Go and learn what this means. The Lord our God desires compassion not religion! Here’s the context:
+ After healing a paraplegic, Jesus tells him to go because his sins are forgiven – and this unglues the traditionalists and rule-keepers of the day because they believe that only God can forgive our sins. Now pay careful attention because what they do in response to Christ’s generosity is what almost always happens – even today – with those who choose the rules over God’s grace: their mouths start to spew the ugliness that is already in their hearts. That is, they start to gossip and slander.
+ So Jesus challenges them to put up or shut up as is the Middle Eastern style: What is more important – healing and helping – or keeping the rules? The rules have their place and can be helpful, but go and learn what this means – and he quotes a passage from the Old Testament prophet, Hosea, saying – the Lord our God desires compassion not religion.
Mercy and loving-kindness rather than rituals and rules – generosity and gratitude in place of guilt and gate-keepers – hope and humanity in place of ideology and icy, frozen hearts. The new covenant of the heart brings hope and healing for those who need it the most. It also challenges us to let go and trust God more than we trust the rules because sometimes our rules lock the love of God out of the world.
There’s a story about two neighbors who were visiting over coffee. As they sat in one woman’s kitchen she started to complain about what a poor housekeeper her other neig
hbor was. “You should see how dirty her children are – and her house. It is almost a disgrace to be living in the same neighborhood as her. Take a look at those clothes she has hung out on the line. See the black streaks on the sheets and towels!” So her friend walked up to the window, took and look and then said, “I think the clothes are really quite clean, my dear. The streaks are on your window.”
Go learn what this means: the Lord our God desires compassion not religion. I think that is what is driving St. Paul’s words today, too. He is reminding the young Christian community that there is a discipline required to the new covenant – it isn’t all about us – it is about how we live in community with one another responsibly. How do we help one another become our best self? How do we keep each other from inflicting wounds or shame or pain?
And that leads to the fourth text in Luke 10 which some of us know as the parable of the Good Samaritan. Last week, as I was fighting a truly nasty and debilitating flu bug, I started to read through some of the sermons of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. both in anticipation of his feast day tomorrow as well as the inauguration of Barrack Obama. In many ways this new president makes Dr. King’s dream real – the fulfillment of a dream deferred for 40 years – and besides I love the way King writes.
One of the sermons that has always touched me is the one he preached on the night before his assassination in Memphis – and I had forgotten that he used the parable of the Good Samaritan as his
closing point. After offering some possible interpretations of why the minister and choir master didn’t stop to help the wounded man by the side of the road he said:
There are many reasons for why these souls did not act… perhaps they were going down the Jericho Road to organize the Jericho Road Improvement Association. That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the casual root of the problem rather than get bogged down with an individual effort. But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that these men were afraid… it is a dangerous road… in the days of Jesus it was known as the Bloody Pass. And you know it is possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or they may have thought that he was faking it, acting like he had been robbed or hurt in order to seize them and lure them over for a quick and easy robbing.
And so the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” And that… that is the question for all of us!
The compassion of Christ – the grace of God – and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit all urge us beyond ourselves to ask, “If I don’t stop, what will happen?” Claiming a commitment to compassion is dangerous: not only does it take us outside of our comfort zone
s, it trains us to include others – especially the most wounded – as a part of our well-being.
+ It pushes us beyond the safety of religious rules into acts of generosity and hope, it unlocks the doors of our building and hearts so that real human needs can be met and it punctures any sense of self-righteousness we might carry by showing us how hard it is to really make a difference.
ies the promise of the prophets when he tells us: Go and learn what this means. The Lord our God desires compassion not religion! Here’s the context:+ After healing a paraplegic, Jesus tells him to go because his sins are forgiven – and this unglues the traditionalists and rule-keepers of the day because they believe that only God can forgive our sins. Now pay careful attention because what they do in response to Christ’s generosity is what almost always happens – even today – with those who choose the rules over God’s grace: their mouths start to spew the ugliness that is already in their hearts. That is, they start to gossip and slander.
+ So Jesus challenges them to put up or shut up as is the Middle Eastern style: What is more important – healing and helping – or keeping the rules? The rules have their place and can be helpful, but go and learn what this means – and he quotes a passage from the Old Testament prophet, Hosea, saying – the Lord our God desires compassion not religion.
Mercy and loving-kindness rather than rituals and rules – generosity and gratitude in place of guilt and gate-keepers – hope and humanity in place of ideology and icy, frozen hearts. The new covenant of the heart brings hope and healing for those who need it the most. It also challenges us to let go and trust God more than we trust the rules because sometimes our rules lock the love of God out of the world.
There’s a story about two neighbors who were visiting over coffee. As they sat in one woman’s kitchen she started to complain about what a poor housekeeper her other neig
hbor was. “You should see how dirty her children are – and her house. It is almost a disgrace to be living in the same neighborhood as her. Take a look at those clothes she has hung out on the line. See the black streaks on the sheets and towels!” So her friend walked up to the window, took and look and then said, “I think the clothes are really quite clean, my dear. The streaks are on your window.”Go learn what this means: the Lord our God desires compassion not religion. I think that is what is driving St. Paul’s words today, too. He is reminding the young Christian community that there is a discipline required to the new covenant – it isn’t all about us – it is about how we live in community with one another responsibly. How do we help one another become our best self? How do we keep each other from inflicting wounds or shame or pain?
And that leads to the fourth text in Luke 10 which some of us know as the parable of the Good Samaritan. Last week, as I was fighting a truly nasty and debilitating flu bug, I started to read through some of the sermons of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. both in anticipation of his feast day tomorrow as well as the inauguration of Barrack Obama. In many ways this new president makes Dr. King’s dream real – the fulfillment of a dream deferred for 40 years – and besides I love the way King writes.
One of the sermons that has always touched me is the one he preached on the night before his assassination in Memphis – and I had forgotten that he used the parable of the Good Samaritan as his
closing point. After offering some possible interpretations of why the minister and choir master didn’t stop to help the wounded man by the side of the road he said:There are many reasons for why these souls did not act… perhaps they were going down the Jericho Road to organize the Jericho Road Improvement Association. That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the casual root of the problem rather than get bogged down with an individual effort. But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that these men were afraid… it is a dangerous road… in the days of Jesus it was known as the Bloody Pass. And you know it is possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or they may have thought that he was faking it, acting like he had been robbed or hurt in order to seize them and lure them over for a quick and easy robbing.
And so the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” And that… that is the question for all of us!
The compassion of Christ – the grace of God – and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit all urge us beyond ourselves to ask, “If I don’t stop, what will happen?” Claiming a commitment to compassion is dangerous: not only does it take us outside of our comfort zone
s, it trains us to include others – especially the most wounded – as a part of our well-being.+ It pushes us beyond the safety of religious rules into acts of generosity and hope, it unlocks the doors of our building and hearts so that real human needs can be met and it punctures any sense of self-righteousness we might carry by showing us how hard it is to really make a difference.
+ You know, most of the time, all we can do is show up and be open, right? I can’t bring healing to another – I can’t end the carnage in Darfur – I can’t bring this stupid and ugly war to an end. In so many, many ways my compassion and love feels impotent.
+ And… at the same time I know that showing up makes all the difference in the world – even if nothing changes. Sitting with a loved one as they are sick – or dying – opens up the possibility of comfort. Standing in solidarity with those who have been wounded helps us all move towards hope. Living without judgment defuses the hatred and guilt that traps us up so often.
So let me ask you to learn a simple prayer designed to deepen your commitment to compassion. This comes from our friends at Spiritual and Practice) There are three parts:
+ And… at the same time I know that showing up makes all the difference in the world – even if nothing changes. Sitting with a loved one as they are sick – or dying – opens up the possibility of comfort. Standing in solidarity with those who have been wounded helps us all move towards hope. Living without judgment defuses the hatred and guilt that traps us up so often.
So let me ask you to learn a simple prayer designed to deepen your commitment to compassion. This comes from our friends at Spiritual and Practice) There are three parts:
+ First, sit in a relaxed position, close your eyes and center yourself saying: Blessed is the Compassionate One who gives us compassion as a way of touching and being touched by the world around us.
+ Second, as you breathe in say to yourself: be compassionate…
+ And third, as you breathe out, say: as God is compassionate.
Lord, may it be so among us now and always.
+ Second, as you breathe in say to yourself: be compassionate…
+ And third, as you breathe out, say: as God is compassionate.
Lord, may it be so among us now and always.
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