Compassion

I preached this at the Beatitudes Preaching Workshop. It was an excellent exercise in taking the time it takes and always to be reading a good book. I was reading a book by Wendy Farley called Theodicy and Divine Compassion. I mentioned it in the sermon, but I don't know if it got mentioned in the text.

“He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.” I should think so. But, have you ever wondered just what Jesus was fasting from? I think that Jesus is fasting from the power of Satan, from the voice of Satan in his head. And I think this because thanks to the polyphonic Spirit, this is what I am fasting from.

Have you ever wondered about the voices in your head? I expect that you, like me, actually have a bit of a Greek chorus – teachers, parents, song lyrics, spouses and partners, preachers and movies, the Huffington Post, NPR, and Fox News are but a few of the voices rattling around in there. All of those voices and more throw in their two cents when we need to make a decision. How do we decide which ones to listen to? How do we decide which one to trust?

Have you ever wondered if some of those voices might be Satan? I can usually tell by what are they offering? Satan offers us power; the power of domination. Those voices that say, “The Spirit doesn’t speak through me, why would anyone listen to me.” Those voices that say, “If everyone would just shut up and do what I tell them. Why is it that I am the only one who knows what we should do?” Those are some of the voices that keep us imprisoned and that enable us to imprison others. Those voices that create ‘the other’ rather than ‘the communion’.

The gospel for today is an invitation to follow Jesus in turning away from Satan’s power of domination. Which makes me wonder about the Hebrew Scripture it is paired with. The lectionary compilers, in conjunction with eons of historical thought, have offered us the story of the Fall, of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and discovering shame. Traditionally, this story is used to explain why there is evil and suffering in the world of a benevolent God.

How do we reconcile the story of the Fall with things like the goodness of creation and free will and a benevolent God? Quite often, the answer to this is to say that Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and got their just reward. Unfortunately, this explanation is then extrapolated to say that whenever something bad happens to us, it is our fault, we caused it, we deserve our suffering. If we are going to read the story of the Fall as the beginning of Satan’s domination, so that Jesus can later refute that domination, we are going to have to answer some tough questions about consequences and freedom. It is easy to see how Adam and Eve had the freedom to act and the freedom to receive the consequences of that freedom, but the world is a lot more complicated than this story.

There is a difference between the suffering that happens when good intentions collide. The suffering that comes from freedom and leads to health and strength and it is not the same suffering that denies hope. God can and will redeem even hopeless suffering, but we cannot say that it is part of a causal chain from the Fall. We cannot say that it is deserved.

Domination is not the power of God. God’s power is love, and it is most readily seen in the act of compassion. Compassion is not an emotional response. It isn’t really an emotion at all, it is a verb, a very active verb. The hallmarks of compassion are righteous anger and sorrow in the presence of suffering, any suffering, but especially in the hopeless suffering of an abused child, of a Holocaust camp, of institutionalized segregation and racism.

You have to see a human as human, without any mitigating circumstances in order to feel compassion. You have to see the world as God’s good creation in order to act out of compassion.

It is all too easy to step over the homeless vet sleeping next to the newspaper vending machine in order to read and bemoan the latest atrocities of war. This is when the power of Satan wins. Because if we step over suffering we have stepped on compassion – we have abdicated our own divine righteous anger and sorrow.

Compassion is what Jesus offered on the cross. He did not curse the crowds, or offer a defense. He offered compassion, because compassion is the only way to break the cycle of domination. Compassion compels us to act in whatever way we can, short of domination, to bring more of God’s love into existence. Compassion says, “I have a dream.” Compassion says, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Compassion says blessed are the peacemakers and the poor in spirit and those who mourn, for they already see the kingdom of God. Compassion breaks the cycle of domination because it does not say, I know what is best for you, but says, I see you as a fellow human and my heart breaks for your pain. How may I serve you?

So my Lenten practice of saying no to the voice of Satan in my head is an exercise in compassion. I am, as it were, starting with myself. Because if I cannot break the bonds of Satan in my own heart, how can I ever imagine that I might break them for any other child of God? I invite you, in the four, now three days that we have together in this Sabbath time, to join me in my Lenten discipline. Shouting down Satan in your own hearts and minds. Anticipating the trampling down of death that is to come. Then we shall be able to overcome the powers of domination with the powers of compassion and lead others to do the same.