Walking with ........the role of compassion

What does compassion require of us?  

For many, compassion is a sentiment which pulls at your heart strings, triggered by touching stories, personal injustices and at times, puppies and small children.  The weak or powerless move us to a compassionate response so we paste a link on Facebook,  write a check, or volunteer some hours to a cause. 

Taking the time to reflect on those people or situations that move us to compassion would be a good spiritual exercise.  Take a couple of days and make a running list of what has moved your heart, what has brought to the fore your 'that's not right' response.  

How many of your items were from your own neighborhood?  Your state?  The nation?  The world?

Who moved you to a compassionate response?  Were they children?  Women?  Teens?  Men?  The Elderly?  Did they all look like you?  Share the same beliefs?  Speak the same language?

What situations prompted your injustice meter?  Hunger?  Addiction?  Abandonment?  Violence?

Were there situations that only led you to argue quietly within?  The homeless person with a sign at the intersection for example.  Did you find yourself saying..."If I give them money, they will only use it for drugs"? "How do I know they are really homeless?"  "Why can't they get a job?"  Not that I am condemning these internal conversations, I am simply asking that we all be truthful with ourselves.

What did it take to move you beyond 'thoughts and prayers' to a concrete action to right the wrong and support the suffering?

At its core, the word compassion means ‘to suffer with or alongside’.  Although we might begin at a distance with a news story or chance encounter, compassion calls us to move closer.  We are to suffer  alongside those whose plight has challenged our sense of justice, to walk with them.  Compassion feels the pain of others, and ultimately, requires action on their behalf.  In the end, a life of compassion is a life of action for others. 

The quintessential example of this in the Bible is Luke's story of the Good Samaritan (chapter 10).  Lots of folks saw the beaten victim of robbery laying on the side of the road.  Priests and officials, plus, I would expect some ordinary citizens trying to get to the market.  They looked, they saw, and yet, 'passed by on the other side' of the road.  The Samaritan (who, BTW, every Israelite thought of as less worthy) stopped, bound up his wounds and provided for his care.  The Samaritan whom no one would have called 'neighbor' acted as neighbor to the anonymous man.

None of us can act every time, in every situation, with equal amounts of commitment and support.  From a spiritual perspective, the problem is not the demands of acting every time, but rather, the emptiness of never acting at all.

When Jesus walked the via dolorosa he provided us with the divine example of what it means to have compassion - to walk alongside those who are suffering, taking their suffering on your shoulders.  

Compassion is not about the weeping that accompanies a poignant TV commercial; it is about taking up your cross with your neighbor.

Are you able......?

....to drink the cup that I drink?"

That's the question, and just perhaps a litmus test.  Jesus has been asked to gift James and John with  the two pre-eminent positions in the coming kingdom....and he was asked by James and John themselves (I am not fooled by Matthew's version that it was their mother who asked).  So Jesus asks a question back, "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?"

For once, this is not a metaphorical question.  This is as concrete as it gets....or will get in a chapter or two when they nail Jesus to a cross.  The cup Jesus drinks is the cup of suffering out of love for his neighbors......every single one of them.

To be clear, Jesus is not asking if you are lining up for the next round of crucifixions.  He wants to know where you stand on suffering....not your suffering, but the suffering of those around you.  Looking for a way out?  Looking for protection and security?  Looking out for yourself?

Do you see the suffering around you?  Do you know their names?  Do you know how this world is built on winners and losers?  Do you care whether the hungry get fed?  People of color get dissed?  Children get abused?  The elderly get scammed?

Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?

Or as the decade old song asks, "How deep is your love?"

Not that Jesus will love you any the less if you walk away, shaking your head, and changing the locks on your heart, handing out the keys to a select few.  It's just that there are no private rooms in the kingdom Jesus rules.

Holy Week: death and resurrection

As a culture we tend to move quickly over suffering.  Until great loss has entered your life, it is easy to mouth the (useless) advice of 'let it all go' and 'it's time to move on.'  Deep suffering, deep grief leave real scars on your heart and your life. 

Certainly the disciples fast lost hope as they watched Jesus die.  We know about that kind of gathering darkness, where our breath becomes more shallow and our will begins to fade.  Despair hovers.

So it is no surprise that even people of faith are prone to leap frog over the dark events of Holy Week so to take up the bright beauty of Easter morning.  Yet without the stark darkness of death, the miracle of resurrection loses its capacity to astonish.  


We know suffering.  Jesus knew suffering.  This is what binds us together in reality.  Walk with Jesus this week and consider what God might be saying to you about life, about death and about love.

Come to the table......

That's what my Mom would call when dinner was ready.  "Come to the table."  It was both invitation and command for children who  are apt to want to linger with whatever seems more important than the hot meal that waits.

Adam and Eve, on the other hand, should have lingered a little longer.  Their appetite had all kinds of consequences, the majority of which they could have never imagined.  When they saw that the fruit was pleasant to the eyes and good to eat, they said, "Why not?" and the results of that have played out through the ages.

Our appetites are still getting us into trouble because appetites are immediate and life is long. God had warned the first humans that eating of that fruit would have disastrous consequences but they chose to trust the serpent, the craftiest of all the animals God had made.  Interestingly enough, many Bible commentators when analyzing this story point out that the serpent was right, Adam and Eve did not die............not right away at least.  Instead they died a thousand deaths as they wrestled with the dark side of this creation and their lost connection with the Creator God.  'Why can't it be like it was?'  Don't we ask similar questions, seeking a gentler, kinder time to which to return?  You know, the good old days.

We fool ourselves if we think that there was no suffering in the 'good old days'.  We delude ourselves if we truly believe that life was easier, people were nicer, and neighbor helped neighbor.  Some did, some didn't.  Folks then knew their own kind of hard work, short lives, fragile health, unpredictable growing seasons and economies.  Folks knew what a destitute old age meant and most had buried at least one child from diseases that are now preventable.Their suffering might have been different, but it was suffering just the same.  Even their children lingered when Mom cried out, "Come to the table."

Jesus calls out the same invitation to us and it is primarily invitation but a little bit of command as well.  Come, it will nourish you.  Come, lay down whatever task is at hand.  Come, eat.  Eat with your brothers and sisters.  Eat with your neighbors and strangers.  Come and discover the human family again.

I will feed you.  I will place in your hands a bit of bread, the staff of life, the stuff of life and it will sustain you for a while.  I will place in your hands a bit of wine, to ease your thirst and clear your throat and prepare you for the tasks ahead.  Come to the table....that's where you will find everything to satisfy your appetites and focus your life.

At this table you will come back into yourself, find your humanity, find peace for your spirit....find the Creator God you continue to seek.  Come to the table and be made whole.

Suffering, Christ, you, me and the world

How does the struggle and pain and loss and suffering of our day to day lives intersect with our spiritual lives?  Does our spiritual life support us in those times?  Give us some framework of meaning?  Is our spiritual life a source of strength.....and if so, how?

Of the many questions that come to me as a pastor, questions about suffering - the pain that comes from physical hurts, or relationship betrayals or social rejection...are the most challenging for both the one who is asking and for me.  They are the questions and answers that count in the final analysis.

Yes, some folks get all exercised over whether Noah was a real person living at some time long ago.  Some folks draw the line at Jesus walking on water or 7 days of creation.  But the real kicker, the one that really counts is suffering.  Why?  Why me?  Where is God?  When someone cannot find a their way through the haze that suffering creates; when the anger and fear overwhelm them, their grasp of God and God's good will slips away.

One might say that at the cross - the cross that we will all encounter in our lives - our faith is tested almost beyond bearing.  At our cross, the simple almost glib explanations of faith fall away; the discussions about female clergy or gay bishops becomes inconsequential; the Sunday School stories of Abraham or Peter or King David look too much like fairy tales.  

So what do we reach down and cling to when everything else has been stripped away?  
That's the question.  What has worked for you?  What message or practice or image or ritual was the source of strength for you?

For it is in suffering that we are truly challenged to walk with one another.  Perhaps our experience can help us strengthen the spiritual lives of others for that moment when there cross comes into their lives.

What do people want?

What questions are people asking?

As a teacher I learned that until I answer the question that YOU have, you have a difficult time listening to what I am saying.  You get stuck on that question; it becomes a block to further enlightenment.  Once it's answered you can go again.

I remember a cartoon from a long time ago where one character was carrying a sign which said 'Jesus is the answer.'  In the next frame, another character has a sign which reads, 'What was the question?'

So it is important to answer the questions that folks are asking, which has a great deal with what folks truly want.  I made a list:  folks want life to be a little easier, to have their struggles have some meaning or purpose, to have their suffering acknowledged or mourned or at least to have someone walk with them through it all.   People would like good to be rewarded and evil punished.  People want to both be loved and feel loved.  They would like to be blessed (however they might define that). *

All of this is background to Sunday's gospel reading (Mark 8.27-33) which is a pivotal text in Mark's telling of the gospel story.  It begins with Jesus asking, "Who do people say that I am?"

It is important for people to understand what they are looking for when they turn to Jesus and call him Lord, or Son of God, or Savior.  In this text, Jesus makes it abundantly clear that his definition of Messiah, Anointed One, includes more than just healing and teaching and extra bread.  It includes suffering, rejection and a cross. 

If you are looking for daisies and roses, then this Jesus just won't do.  It is best to get that straight right up front, because from this point on, the pressure is on and the cross is on the horizon.


*When I consider folks who seem to embody evil, who do horrific things to one another, I wonder if a list like the one above is too 'pollyanna'. Do these folks want the same things? How do these folks end up consumed by such a destructive force that they are dangerous to themselves and others? Have these folks been so crushed by this world that they can only crush it back?