July 15, 2007

COMPASSIONATE HEARTS

by Susan Gamble Dankel

Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

Key Passages:

“The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” (Deuteronomy 30:14)

When [the Samaritan] saw him, he was moved with pity. (Luke 10:30)

What a joy it is to be back worshiping with you, and to thank Connie for allowing me to preach today. I also want to thank you for the wonderful way in which you have taken Connie into your hearts and especially in the last months for the kindnesses shown to her. You are an example of what I believe the Scriptures are saying to us today: we mirror God’s likeness when we show compassion to others.

Let me ask you to think back to some time when perhaps you were not so compassionate. It doesn’t have to have been a big decision, just an incident, perhaps at work or at home when you didn’t reach out to do something compassionate, or generous, or merciful to another person. Have you thought of something? I have one from just a few weeks ago. I had gone into a restroom at the hospital where I work. There were several stalls, all vacant. I decided to go into the handicapped one, because it was a little roomier. As I was opening the door, another woman came into the restroom. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that she was a very large person. My immediate thought was, “Oh, I should give her this stall because she could use the extra space.” And then just as quickly I pushed the thought away, and went into the stall myself. As I tended to my business, I thought, “Well she probably wasn’t officially handicapped. She didn’t have any more right to use this stall than I did. And why is she so big anyway? She probably eats all the wrong foods. Probably has fat kids too. Is she visiting someone in the hospital? Doesn’t she know what a bad example she is? ...blah blah... goes my interior monologue.

What have I done? In a flash I have gone from thinking of doing something gracious to being judgmental and uncaring. I have gone from thinking of this other woman as a person, with her own history and needs, to making her an object of scorn for me. She is no longer a person, but a bundle of mistakes and unrealistic expectations. I have turned her into an object. And it happens that quickly and unconsciously.

I have recently read a very interesting book, called Leadership and Self-Deception, written by members of a consulting group called the Arbinger Institute. These authors have analyzed the dynamics going on in such incidents, and they have called what I am doing “self-deception.” By not acting on my compassionate impulse, I have betrayed my best self. I have deceived myself. And then I have to go through a series of justifying thoughts to get myself off the hook. My impulse had been to help this woman, but I squashed that instinct; I betrayed my compassionate heart and refused to see her as a person. She became an irritant, a source of frustration for me, someone not worthy of my assistance or even of a further thought from me.

The authors of the book call this “being in the box” towards that person. I am inside the confines of my own betrayal and no longer able to relate to another as a person. If this is someone with whom I have frequent contact, I begin to carry the box around with me all the time. I am loaded with self-justifying thoughts and behaviors, just ready to launch them on a moment’s notice. I may lose the compassionate thoughts entirely. When this happens with people with whom I have continuing relationships, you can see the damage that can occur. We’re just waiting for our spouse or our child to exhibit some “unreasonable” need, and we are ready with our whole box of justifications. “The trash can is full again. This is your job around here. I do practically all of the housework. Why can’t you do this one simple thing? You don’t care that I always have to carry an extra load. You are such a slacker ...”

Let’s see how this concept of self-deception applies to today’s Gospel. A clever person comes to test Jesus. He asks for a roadmap to eternal life. Jesus points him to the traditional summary of the law, which the man can quote: “You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” When Jesus congratulates him, the man wants further justification by asking “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ response is the familiar story of the Samaritan who “shows mercy” to a man who has been robbed and beaten.

We don’t learn much about the two who refused to help. Jesus’ hearers would have recognized the priest and the Levite as religious leaders. The priest was the one who offered sacrifices at the Temple; the Levite carried the Torah. Each sees the man robbed and beaten; each “passes by on the other side of the road.” We can imagine their inner monologue: “Look at that man in the ditch. He’s got blood on him. He is impure, ritually unclean. Why wasn’t he more careful as he traveled? He should have been prepared to take care of himself. He probably wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings. I’m supposed to risk my own safety for someone who didn’t take proper precautions? It’s unreasonable for him to expect me to take care of him. It encourages him to be irresponsible. He’s just a bum.

But then the Samaritan comes. Jesus says “he was moved with pity.” He sees the beaten man as a fellow human being, who is in dire need. He sets about to take care of him. He sees the other man as a person—not a threat or an obstacle or an object of derision. Though he himself is an outcast, a foreigner, someone whose racial heritage leaves him outside the chosen people, he is depicted as demonstrating God’s compassion. He is the one who shows us what it means to live the demands of the law: to love God and one’s neighbor. Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s question is not a theoretical description of the requirements of the law. It is a story, a narrative depiction of someone whose compassionate heart reflects God’s love.

What does it mean to be compassionate? The word “compassion” comes from the Latin meaning “to suffer with.” So compassion is the ability to identify with the suffering of another person, to put ourselves in another’s place, to see the world through another’s eyes, to “walk a mile in their shoes,” as the saying goes. As we empathize with another person and begin to understand their circumstances, we make a connection with them. When we truly make this connection, then we move beyond blame or denial, which are our natural reactions to the misfortunes of others. Jesus as the incarnation of God in human form is God’s ultimate act of compassion: to identify so completely with our suffering by becoming part of the human family, to demonstrate love, to suffer rejection, to die, and to offer new life to all of us.

That’s the message of Jesus’ life and death. God has promised to be with us. The story of Jesus is God’s most eloquent demonstration of this truth. And as Jesus practices compassion with the most vulnerable in society, he shows us God’s compassion. As we read in Matthew’s gospel, it is in helping the hungry, the naked, the sick, and the prisoners that we are ministering to Christ. Ignoring these needs is to turn away from God’s presence.

Some years ago then-Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia addressed a prayer breakfast in Washington, DC. He told a story from the conflict that was then raging in Bosnia. A reporter was covering the fighting in the middle of the city of Sarajevo when he saw a little girl shot by a sniper. He threw down his equipment and rushed to the man who was holding the child and helped them both into his nearby car. As the reporter stepped on the accelerator, racing to the hospital, the man holding the bleeding child said, “Hurry, my friend, my child is still alive.” A moment or two later, he said, “Hurry, my friend, my child is still breathing.” Then a moment later, “Hurry, my friend, my child is still warm.” Finally, “Hurry. Oh, my God, my child is getting cold.”

When they got to the hospital, the little girl had died. As the two men were in the lavatory, washing the blood off their hands and their clothes, the man turned to the reporter and said, “This is a terrible task for me. I must go tell her father that his child is dead. He will be heartbroken.” The reporter was amazed. He looked at the grieving man and said, “I thought she was your daughter.” The man looked back and said, “No, but aren’t they all our children?”

“Yes,” concluded the Senator. “They are all our children. They are also God’s children as well, and God has entrusted us with their care.” (Who Speaks for God? by Jim Wallis, pp. 72-73)

God calls us to be compassionate. As we learn to love God with all our heart and our neighbors as ourselves, we grow in our ability to be conduits of that love. In today’s first reading Moses assures us that following the commandments of God is not too hard for us, nor is it too far away. God has written divine love onto our hearts: “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” We just have to pay attention to our God-given compassionate hearts.

Thanks be to God.

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