The Compassionate Life
" And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
So what does the Lord require of you?
What would people say to this question? What do you say to this question?
What is the most important part of being a follower of Jesus Christ?
Compassion is the main answer on the whole that the Bible gives.
How do we learn compassion? How can we increase our capacity for compassion?
There was a poor man standing outside a grocery store. He was shivering In the cold rubbing his hands together which clearly stung. Beside him was a dog, part wolf part German shepherd. A man and a woman pulled into the grocery store parking lot and watched what unfolded next. The man in rags went into the grocery store and clearly with what little he had left came out with a can of dog food and gave it to the mangly animal. Sometimes lessons in compassion can come from the most unexpected places. A homeless man showing that by our very nature we are wired to be compassionate. He looked at the dog who was hungry and was moved to help it despite his own level of need.
What has compassion taught you?
I experience us as a compassionate community. I experienced this first hand when I was sick with the flu for a week. I had email and phone calls, and even flowers Jean Howard not to mention names. These are acts of caring, of entering into the experience of the other and knowing how difficult a situation must be.
When have you seen compassion?
What about compassion in the church?
400 distinct passages in the Bible that deal with rich and the poor, over and over again God calls people to provide food for the hungry.
"Finally all of you, live in harmony with one another be sympathetic love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.”(1 Peter 3:8)
"Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”(Hebrews 13:3)
Greed is hoarding more than you need when people have not enough.
Greed is the opposite of compassion.
Our witness needs to be rooted in compassion. Our lives need to go deeper into the mystery of compassion, the very mystery that comes from the heart of God.
Karen Armstrong the esteemed writer won an award for her work in compassion. She believes that while compassion in intrinsic in all human beings we need to cultivate it and develop it within ourselves as a spiritual issue.
It is time to cultivate a heart of compassion for the poor. Our parish should find new and creative ways to respond to poverty. There is no greater agenda in the Bible or in Jesus ministry than this. What is our response?
Compassion is central to God’s heart and we hear that from Micah. The starting point of compassion is walking humbly with God and being open to learn.
What are the priorities of Christians today?
The world is dangerously polarized. People are locked in their various camps believing they have the corner on the truth. World religions hide under the cloak of the idol of ambition, power, and control rather than following some semblance of the golden rule which all share in one form or another.
In our world compassion is often set up to fail and we must be intentional about it.
Our world values competition and individualism being a "self starter.” And yet it is contrary to our very nature that is set up to be compassionate and think of another.
"it is one of the privileges of the prilveged that you don’t know you’re privileged.”
She writes
Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.
Everyone has asked from the beginning of time "What is God’s will”? In this section of Micah in eight verses we see the experience of God who remains faithful to a disobedient people. The passage is set in a courtroom implying that God has an issue to contend with the people.”
You might expect righteous anger but instead we have bewilderment and pleading.
The relationship is an intimate one as described by "O my people.”
The people have forgotton their story and as such have fallen out of right relationship with God.
There may be no better summary of the Christian experience than a bumper sticker with those words.
This text emerges from God’s deep disappointment in the people
Compassion- Christian world versus other religions
They think religion is worshipping correctly and staying away from those who do not.
Micah suggests that having the right answers is not an important as showing compassion.
Gospel reading is the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are beautiful and poetic and yet we must be struck with the impracticality of the instructions. They are opposite. Typically it is the shrewd, the rich, and the established that do well in this world. It is the aggressive business person not the mericul one.
We need to look at them as a whole. There is one overarching theme that I want to focus on today that connects us to Micah and that is compassion.
Compassion is not associated with either pity or sympathy it goes deeper. To have pity on another means you feel sorry for them,
Henri Nouwen suggests that compassion grows with the inner recognition that your neighbor shares your humanity with you.
This suggests that regardless of the privilege you live with you are able to see the humanity of others. This means you somehow get that the poor are not in that state because of something they have done or not done. There are advantages given to come by virtue of their skin and status.
We are distinct but we are all created in the image of God. Compassion requires walking in another’s shoes.
Living into the spirit of compassion is not impractical at all, it is one way to respond to God in the world.
To love compassion what does that mean? It is not just cultivating it but loving it.
How can we learn from one another? How can we grow together in cultivating compassion?
What does that mean in our church? It means at least firstly that everyone is welcome here and we will be kind to you. You are allowed to be yourself and to make mistakes and we will love you. You can consider this a safe place to think and learn and grow.
Today we will gather for our vestry meeting. We will discuss the year gone by and look toward our future as a parish. I hope that we accomplish both with compassion walking in one another’s shoes, not judging but deeply listening.
The most important thing we can do in our discipleship is to love compassion.
I believe in 2010 we have shown a lot of compassion to each other and to the poor. I also believe we can do more. I believe we can cultivate this spiritual gift in ways that can energize us. I believe that this will cause our community to grow in unimaginable ways and that by loving compassion we will take further steps to do God’s will in the world.
In order to do this we need to be compassionate in our growth. We need to be compassionate with new ideas, with being challenged in the ways of compassion.
So how do we cultivate compassion in our community?
I think it begins with nurturing our relationship with Christ. We do that by being here and listening to his Gospels and the lessons he has to teach us as his disciples. We do that by spending time in scripture each day reading and reflecting and dwelling in the Word of God. We accomplish a greater level of compassion by practicing it. By looking around and seeing who might be having a difficult time and reaching out to recognize that.
Compassionate communities like ours are ones that follow in the footsteps of the one who made the blind to see, the lame leap for joy, and the stones cry out. Jesus is our center of compassion from which our capacity for it may grow. We need to spend time with him intentionally to do this. When we do not our capacity for compassion decreases. We will be more centered on self and perhaps family but likely not others. Christians are renewed in Christ in the baptismal waters and the ongoing baptism of a life plunged into the compassionate needs of the world.
Clothe yourselves with compassion Saint Paul says. Indeed for us it is the most important thing we could nurture here to build the kingdom of God in our midst.