Sharing in God’s Compassion
We have a most difficult and challenging Gospel tonight (this morning). Jesus encounters a rich man who is willing to follow religious regulation but not willing to give up everything he had to follow Jesus.
This reading is so challenging because, well, who among us is willing to do this? Priests and nuns, particularly of the cloistered and mendicant variety, have done so, and we can only stand back and be grateful for their wonderful sacrifice. But this still begs the question: what about us?
Fortunately, I don’t think Jesus had this particular kind of sacrifice in mind for all of us. After all, even Jesus had his wealthy benefactors. We believe that Mary Magdalene, and the so-called women of Jerusalem Jesus encounters during his Passion, were wealthy themselves. Jesus did not tell them to give up everything and follow Him. He needed their financial and logistical support. Jesus also had wealthy friends with whom he dined and with whom He kept friendships. And of course, who bought Jesus’ burial plot? None other than Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin.
So perhaps at this point you might be breathing a sigh of relief. Whew! I guess I don’t have to give up all my prized possessions. Well, don’t get too comfortable yet. For the challenge of our Gospel is still great. It still should, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews says in our second reading, pierce more sharply than a two-edged sword.
The Christian faith manifests itself in two ways. One is in the building of the Kingdom of God in the world in which we live. This is called exteriority and includes our advocacy for efforts to build human dignity, human decency, stewardship of God’s creation, the dignity of work and workers, the sharing of possessions, and the building of a more peaceful world.
Then there is interiority. Part of interiority is what we are doing tonight: prayer, sacrament and Scripture. The other is individual service. Service is at the essence of all love and loving God and loving one another are the two greatest commandments. Here is where Jesus’ call in our Gospel to reject our possessions comes into play for all of us.
When Jesus came to this earth, He fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that a Messiah would come that would be called Immanuel, God-with-us. You remember that in Advent, the song, “O Come, O Come Immanuel”, reminds us of this. There is great significance to the term Immanuel. For Jesus was a Messiah who enters into the lives of humans in the deepest of ways. And he calls all of us to that intimacy.
For the Christian God is a God of compassion. And it is an intimate compassion that we are called to share. All of us are called to be instruments of God’s mercy, even to those we do not like or maybe even know. We do not always do that, as shown by the story of the rich man. But sometimes we do. So what are the means that we can be share God’s intimate compassion?
First, during his public life, in moments of pain and suffering, Jesus was there. Even if there often not much we can do for the suffering, we can be present. We can show we care. When we ignore the call to be present, we ignore our faith. For being present is a radical call, a call that should penetrate to the roots of the way we live our lives. And God will always be there when we are there, entering into others and us in our problems, confusions, and questions. We enter into God’s intimate love. By our being present to others in times of trouble, we see God present as our refuge, our stronghold, our wisdom, and our shepherd. Jesus was often moved to compassion by the suffering around Him. And so must we be.
Second, Jesus, in total freedom, chose to suffer fully our pains and sorrows. It was an expression of a God who calls us to understand that our sinful selves can be overcome by the divine expression of compassion that Jesus shares with us. For us, Jesus’ life transforms our broken human condition from one of despair to hope because his suffering for others was freely chosen, and we can so choose sacrifice for others as well. Jesus healed many in his public life not to impress, to prove, to convince. And we are called to heal not to impress, to prove or convince but to relieve and share suffering.
Keep in mind that many in Jesus’ time might well have encountered him, but they were not healed in a physical sense. Jesus did not, and does not, always take physical pain away but our God is so compassionate that he shared suffering with us. God is not a distant god, a god to be feared and avoided, a God of revenge, but a God who is moved by our pains and participates in the fullness of the human struggle. And so must we be moved by others pain and our human struggle and the struggle of others. The miracles were real, just as miracles are every day. But their source is the consolation and comfort of a compassionate God.
Third, possessions must never dominate us even if we have many of them. Instead, compassion for others should dominate our lives. This often means rejecting the life of endless competition, the life of greed, the life of esteem and credit, entering instead into the life of God himself. It means emptying ourselves so as to receive new, compassionate relationships with God and each other. By accepting our identities from the one who is the giver of all life, we can be with each other without distance or fear. We can move beyond sympathy for others to empathy for others. We can move from offering charity to seeking justice. We can not only be aware of the poor, but put them in our Rolodex.
Jesus showed us a whole new way of living, a way of living like the Apostles and the saints who were witnesses to Christ. We can take on God’s compassion for others, a compassion that is so deep and full that it cannot help but bear fruit. This compassion, the interiority of faith can take many forms. It may be simply praying for others if we are too weak or infirmed to do anything else. We can consider tithing of income and investments to provide both direct service and empowerment of the poor. We can be aware of and participate in the outreach ministries of our parish. We can go to the poor and afraid, as many of our parishioners do with single pregnant women, the hungry, and the sick.
So this evening, (morning), brothers and sisters let us pray that the God of deep and inexhaustible compassion enter into our lives and that we accept that compassion. May we be a compassionate people, a people that shares each others suffering, and never lets possessions dominate us. Let us be instruments of God’s mercy rather than instruments of fear. Let us empty ourselves in compassion, entering into the new way of life to which Jesus called us.