9-11 Compassion

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 09/11/2011

Our world is full of overwhelming floods, chaotic, furious, indiscriminate, devastating. The world around us shaken to its very foundations.

10^th anniversary of 9/11.

This past month, earthquakes. Hurricanes. Wildfires. Floods that sometimes seem to come from God or at least be allowed by God.

Some floods are much more personal: job loss, health crisis, tragedy strikes, relationship breakdown with someone important in your life.

Our natural responses tend to range from despair on one end of the continuum to anger on the other. But as students of Jesus, we have a new work of God at work within us, compassion’s rising tide. [tide as water’s response to the gravitational pull of moon, etc.] The world within us responding to the pull of Jesus’ Spirit on our hearts. It’s beautiful, furiously intent on love, deeply personal, and in God’s grand scheme, unstoppably engaged in the restoration of all things.

So, today we are going to talk about how we join in with God’s response to overwhelming floods in our world.

One thing the scripture teaches over and over is that God himself enters our floods. In particular we see this in Jesus, crucified on the cross. Through Jesus, God himself becomes the victim of the flood with us.

Which means that it’s often in floods in which Jesus meets us, or it’s into floods that we can go to join with him. Floods in which mercy and justice are resolved as salvation emerges victorious over judgment.

So whenever there is a flood, if we are students of Jesus, our job is to look for God, to develop eyes to see him coming, or eyes to see him inviting us to come join him. To find him running compassionately into the flood to meet us, or to wade ourselves into compassion’s rising tide, so that others can find him present in the flood through us.

To explore this, let’s look at one of Jesus’ simple but brilliant stories, in Luke 10, starting in verse 25.

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered: “‘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, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”



But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

The thing about the half dead is they appear to be dead but you can only tell if they are half or whole dead by touching them. The priest and the Levite (someone who was from the priestly tribe of Levi but not a direct descendant of Aaron – someone who would have had lower level responsibilities in the Temple) knew that by touching the dead, they would be incurring a condition called “ritual uncleanness” meaning they would have to go through the inconvenience and expense of a cleansing ritual before being able to resume their priestly or Levitical duties. So they played it safe, as the wrong kind of religion always advises—safety first! Don’t take any risks!—and walked on by.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that if you’re the half-dead man, or even an outside observer, it might be tempting to think that the priest and the Levite represent God’s response to the flood. After all, they are meant to be God’s representatives, aren’t they?

But the true God never plays it safe, does he? Think about Jesus hanging out with the tax collectors and sinners. Think about Jesus touching the lepers, receiving the worship of the prostitute, spending time alone with the Samaritan woman at the well, healing the centurion’s son. Jesus arrested, beaten, nailed to the cross.

So take heart, if you’re in a flood, and you see people not taking any risks to come close, those people aren’t where God is in relation to your flood. Keep looking, maybe in less likely places. Because he’s coming.

And here’s where Jesus throws in a twist. The third guy to come by is a Samaritan.

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

The Samaritans to the Jews were like the Mormons are to historically orthodox Christians. They took the basics of the faith, added a twist here and there that just threw the whole thing out of whack. The Jews reserved special contempt for the Samaritans; the same contempt we reserve for people who claim to be what we are, but aren’t so far as we can tell.

In fact, earlier on this same road trip, Jesus’ own disciples had wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy some Samaritans who weren’t being hospitable to Jesus; only to be rebuked by Jesus [isn’t that so like us? Someone doesn’t want the love we offer, and we want to say “to hell with you, then.” Not Jesus, thankfully. How often have we been inhospitable to his love? Thank God we haven’t gotten a “to hell with you, then” from Jesus]

The Samaritan “came where the man was” –he approached the half dead man to see how dead he really was. When he saw him, he took pity on him. The Greek for “took pity” means “moved in the gut with compassion” (the Greek word being related to our word for the spleen). In English, take pity implies “there, there”: a patronizing, distancing response. But compassion is “here, here” as in “Here, here, let me get close and help.” Compassion begins as a passion, a feeling in the gut. An emotion, like all emotions, designed to cause “motion”, action.

He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him.  The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

The Samaritan dipped into his own resources, supplies he needed for the journey and bandaged the man’s wounds, pouring oil and wine (used to soothe and cleanse wounds). He didn’t just draw from his rainy day fund but his traveling necessities—his suitcase and carry on. [Didn’t as a habit carry extra money – no travelers checks, credit cards. Extra cash was just more money that could be stolen on a journey. Any first aid supplies he might have had were packed for his own potential use – not like there was a Rite Aid to stop at to replenish it on the rest of his journey.] Put him on his own donkey, slowing his progress through dangerous country. Then he made sure the man had enough to recover, working together with the innkeeper.

He did what he could, not what he couldn’t. But he did do what he could.

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Do you see it costing somebody something to be with you in your flood? Do you see somebody having mercy on you? You’ve found the first signs of God present with you.

Do we satisfy ourselves that we have all the right answers to the floods that we encounter, or do we “go and do likewise,” joining with the Answer and wading into the floods along with Him, transforming them into Compassion’s tide?

Have we made homes for ourselves close enough to the gravity of God’s compassion that it pulls on the tender parts inside of us when we come across Jesus in one of his disguises? Will we respond to the tidal pull of compassion that we feel in our guts when we see the suffering along our journey? Will we get close enough to feel the shallow breath of the half dead, the faint pulse, to see the smallest of movements? Will we slow our pace and give up our donkey for a time, dip into our traveling funds and carry on luggage?

Do you notice that floods always seem to come at the worst time? Of course when the floods hit us it’s always bad timing – no one is ever ready for a flood. But also when they hit someone else God wants to move us to have compassion towards. It seems that so often it happens just when we feel like we have the least to give.

[can’t think of the last time I thought, ah, perfect – this is happening just when I had some extra time, some extra resources, etc. I often discover later that the timing was perfect, but it hardly ever feels like that in the moment – Joe’s motorcycle accident story…]

I imagine the Samaritan in the story had similar thoughts as he approached his half-dead neighbor. Bad timing! I was making good progress on the journey, and now this. What if the guy is still alive? The kind of shape he’s in, it’s going to take a lot to just give him a shot to live. Maybe if I don’t get too close, I won’t know for sure, and I can move on without my conscience bothering me too much.

But those stingy thoughts were just that, thoughts. He put one foot in front of another and approached his neighbor. When he saw the man, it didn’t matter that he was Jew, it only mattered that he was a fellow sufferer, and he was moved with compassion. And that compassion moved him to go back to his own provisions and draw down his supply of necessities.

Later, Jesus’ students could remember this story and see Jesus in it. The Samaritan as a picture of Jesus—an outcast who gives of himself to restore the half dead to full life. We can do the same, and recognize that every time we come across people who have been tossed about by overwhelming floods, we have a chance to join with Jesus to become part of Compassion’s rising tide. A tide that is sweeping over the whole of the earth, eventually to overwhelm every overwhelming flood, eventually to create breathing room for every fellow sufferer who has been beneath the waters of the overwhelming flood. Let’s surrender ourselves to Love, and discover who love leads us to carry, and discover most of all where love carries us together.

Practical Tips:

1. Don’t buy anything for 3 days.

2. Travel on roads where half-dead people sometimes lay. Compassion Ministry. Children’s Ministry. Youth Ministry.

3. Do a daily gut check.

4. And then do what you can. Something. Anything.