Message: Second step: Compassion. Jesus is the Good Samaritan who shows the meaning of compassion and who says, “Go and do likewise.”
This is the second of three homilies titled,”Focus on Mission.” Last week we saw the first step in discovering one’s mission or purpose. The first step is gratitude: We are grateful for the Kingdom of God. Pope Benedict gave this definition of the Kingdom: God exists, he is really God and he is at work in the world. That’s what Jesus asks us to proclaim. Before we can proclaim it, of course, we need to gratefully receive it – that is, allow God’s rule in our lives. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
The first step is not easy. We keep falling and we keep going back to square one. As Pope Francis said, “The Lord never tires of forgiving. It is we who tire of asking for forgiveness.” Even though we get weary of our weakness, the pope urges us not fall into despair. Make a new beginning: Receive the kingdom with gratitude.
After making – or re-making – that first step, there is something more. A second step. In today’s parable Jesus indicates what the next step requires: compassion or mercy. He tells about a man beaten by robbers and a Samaritan who takes pity on him.
Compassion or pity is the natural human response when we see the suffering of another person, or even of an animal. We feel sorry and we want to do something about it.
The early Christians loved this parable. They lived it and they took it to a higher level. They saw that the Samaritan – in the deepest sense – is Jesus himself. The man on the side of the road represents humanity – you and me. We started out in Jerusalem – the holy city, Mount Zion, a place of union with God. But we left that city to go down to Jericho. In the Bible Jericho represents the allure of sensuality. On the way to Jericho robbers attack the man, steal his goods and leave him for dead. The robbers of course are the demons who attack us when we separate ourselves from God.
By putting ourselves into the parable, we can learn something important. Before we can have compassion for the other person, we need to first see ourselves as the man beaten by robbers. Have you been there? Have you felt half-dead? Have people kept their distance, not wanting to come near?
If you are like me, you can say, “Been there. Done that.” You or I would have been lost except for one person. Jesus, the Good Samaritan, has touched you and me – though prayer or through the word or act of a disciple.
We do know what it’s like to be beaten, left half-dead. That’s why we approach the other person with delicacy. When I was a young priest, someone told me, “Treat each person as if he had a broken heart. And you will not be wrong.”*
So the second step in mission is compassion: Recognizing that the other person needs Jesus as much as you or I do. Reaching out to that person can be tricky in a culture like ours. People have constructed elaborate defenses – to keep God out.
I’ll talk about how we overcome those barriers next week in the third and final homily in this series – Focus on Mission. For now I want to encourage you to have confidence that the other person needs Jesus – as much as you do.
Do not be afraid that others might see your wounds. Maybe some of you have seen Shakespeare’s play, Coriolanus. It’s about a war hero in ancient Rome. He could be a great leader, except for one thing: He was too proud to let the people see the wounds he had received.
This does not mean we have to tell our sins. Save that for the confessional. But do not fear that you once found yourself in the ditch. And that you would not be here except for the Good Samaritan, Jesus.
He is the one we announce when with gratitude we proclaim that God exists, that he is really God and that he is at work. In Jesus we see God’s compassion for us. He is the Good Samaritan who reveals the meaning of compassion and who says, “Go and do likewise.” Amen.
************
*Or as the 17th century Puritan divine, Richard Sibbes, said, “God’s children are bruised reeds before their conversion and oftentimes after.” Here is a more ample quote from The Bruised Reed:
God’s children are bruised reeds before their conversion and oftentimes after. Before conversion all (except such as, being brought up in the church, God has delighted to show himself gracious to from their childhood) are bruised reeds, yet in different degrees, as God sees fit. And as there are differences with regard to temperament, gifts and manner of life, so there are in God’s intention to use men in the time to come; for usually he empties such of themselves, and makes them nothing, before he will use them in any great services.
WHAT IT IS TO BE BRUISED
The bruised reed is a man that for the most part is in some misery, as those were that came to Christ for help, and by misery he is brought to see sin as the cause of it, for, whatever pretences sin makes, they come to an end when we are bruised and broken. He is sensible of sin and misery, even unto bruising; and, seeing no help in himself, is carried with restless desire to have supply from another, with some hope, which a little raises him out of himself to Christ, though he dare not claim any present interest of mercy. This spark of hope being opposed by doubtings and fears rising from corruption makes him as smoking flax; so that both these together, a bruised reed and smoking flax, make up the state of a poor distressed man. This is such an one as our Saviour Christ terms `poor in spirit’ (Matt. 5:3), who sees his wants, and also sees himself indebted to divine justice. He has no means of supply from himself or the creature, and thereupon mourns, and, upon some hope of mercy from the promise and examples of those that have obtained mercy, is stirred up to hunger and thirst after it.
THE GOOD EFFECTS OF BRUISING
This bruising is required before conversion that so the Spirit may make way for himself into the heart by levelling all proud, high thoughts, and that we may understand ourselves to be what indeed we are by nature. We love to wander from ourselves and to be strangers at home, till God bruises us by one cross or other, and then we `begin to think’, and come home to ourselves with the prodigal (Luke 15:17). It is a very hard thing to bring a dull and an evasive heart to cry with feeling for mercy. Our hearts, like criminals, until they be beaten from all evasions, never cry for the mercy of the judge. Again, this bruising makes us set a high price upon Christ. Then the gospel becomes the gospel indeed; then the fig leaves of morality will do us no good. And it makes us more thankful, and, from thankfulness, more fruitful in our lives; for what makes many so cold and barren, but that bruising for sin never endeared God’s grace to them?
Likewise this dealing of God establishes us the more in his ways, having had knocks and bruisings in our own ways. This is often the cause of relapses and apostasy, because men never smarted for sin at the first; they were not long enough under the lash of the law. Hence this inferior work of the Spirit in bringing down high thoughts (2 Cor. 10:5) is necessary before conversion. And, for the most part, the Holy Spirit, to further the work of conviction, joins with it some affliction, which, when sanctified, has a healing and purging power.
After conversion we need bruising so that reeds may know themselves to be reeds, and not oaks. Even reeds need bruising, by reason of the remainder of pride in our nature, and to let us see that we live by mercy. Such bruising may help weaker Christians not to be too much discouraged, when they see stronger ones shaken and bruised. Thus Peter was bruised when he wept bitterly (Matt. 26:75). This reed, till he met with this bruise, had more wind in him than pith when he said, `Though all forsake thee, I will not’ (Matt. 26:33). The people of God cannot be without these examples. The heroic deeds of those great worthies do not comfort the church so much as their falls and bruises do. Thus David was bruised until he came to a free confession, without guile of spirit (Psa. 32:3 5); nay, his sorrows did rise in his own feeling unto the exquisite pain of breaking of bones (Psa. 51:8). Thus Hezekiah complains that God had `broken his bones’ as a lion (Isa. 38:13). Thus the chosen vessel Paul needed the messenger of Satan to buffet him lest he should be lifted up above measure (2 Cor. 12:7). Hence we learn that we must not pass too harsh judgment upon ourselves or others when God exercises us with bruising upon bruising. There must be a conformity to our head, Christ, who `was bruised for us’ (Isa. 53:5) that we may know how much we are bound unto him.
Ungodly spirits, ignorant of God’s ways in bringing his children to heaven, censure broken hearted Christians as miserable persons, whereas God is doing a gracious, good work with them. It is no easy matter to bring a man from nature to grace, and from grace to glory, so unyielding and intractable are our hearts.