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What is it all about, this experience we call life? In our earliest days, we think it’s all about us. “When we open our eyes as babies,” says William Temple, “we see the world stretching out around us. We are in the middle of it. All proportions and perspectives in what we see are determined by the relation of the various visible objects to ourselves. This will remain true of our bodily vision as long as we live. I am the centre of the world I see. Where the horizon is depends on where I stand. “Now just the same thing is true at first of our mental and spiritual vision. Some things hurt us. We hope they will not happen again. We call them bad. Some things please us. We hope they will happen again. We call them good. Our standard of value is the way things affect ourselves. So each of us takes his place at the centre of his own world. “But I am not the centre of the world,” Temple continues. “And I am not the standard of reference as between good and bad. I am not, and God is. In other words, from the beginning I put myself in God’s place. This is my original sin. I was doing it before I could speak, and everyone else has been doing it from early infancy. I am not ‘guilty’ on this account because I could not help it. But I am in a state, from birth, in which I shall bring disaster on myself and everyone affected by my conduct unless I can escape from it.” (Christianity and Social Order, p. 60) C. S. Lewis describes what he sees as the disastrous consequence of this state of self-absorption. Lewis was once in a cottage in some remote place, and he woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, aware of how utterly alone he was. There was nothing to indicate the presence of anyone or anything outside himself – not a sound, not even of the gentlest breeze or the vaguest rustle of leaves, just absolute stillness and darkness. And he became terrified, he said, as he considered that such isolation must be what hell is, an absolute alone-ness and loneliness that must be the logical and ultimate destiny permitted by God to those who would choose a life lived entirely for self. As Temple and Lewis perceive, it’s not all about us, this experience we call life. It’s about God, and about others, and about our relationship with them. Education can help us see this a little, adds Temple. “Education may make my self-centeredness less disastrous by widening my horizon.... [Education] is like climbing a tower, which widens the horizon for physical vision while leaving me still the centre and standard of reference. [It] may do [even] more than this if it succeeds in winning me into devotion to truth or to beauty, [a] devotion [which] may effect a partial deliverance from self-centeredness. But complete deliverance can be effected only by the winning of my whole heart’s devotion, the total allegiance of my will – and this only the Divine Love, disclosed by Christ in His Life and Death, can do.” John Calvin, the great Reformation theologian, once said that just as people with poor eyesight need “spectacles” to “read print distinctly,” so those who are dim of sight for the wretched and the poor of the world need the Scriptures to help them gain a spiritual sight that can cultivate compassion. Learning that life is not all about us is a function of spiritual vision that we learn from reading the Scriptures, says Calvin. “Well, where do you start?” someone might ask. Which reminds me of the question James Boswell asked Samuel Johnson. “We talked of the education of children,” wrote Boswell, “and I asked [Johnson] what he thought was best to teach them first. ‘Sir,’ replied Johnson, ‘it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which [leg] is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them both.’” So, as Calvin recommends, the Bible is a good a place to start. Today’s Gospel reading, like the Bible as a whole, is about spiritual vision. Today we find Jesus going from town to town, teaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every kind of illness and infirmity. And he’s tired, and the crowds press in on him, and he looks at all the people around him. And Matthew says that he “had compassion on them, because they were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.” The Greek word that’s translated “compassion” here is a tongue-twister of a word that means Jesus poured out his guts for them. Or the way we might say it in English is that the sight of the harassed and dejected crowds was gut-wrenching to Jesus. Our English word “compassion” means the same thing. It tells us that Jesus suffered with the crowds. He identified with them, and with their dejection. His compassion moved him outside himself and made them the center of his concern and interest. That’s what compassion does to a person. Karl Barth says that “the fact that [Jesus] was moved with compassion means originally that He could not and would not close his mind to the existence and situation of the multitude, nor hold himself aloof from it, but that it affected him, that it went right to his heart, that he made [their situation] his own, that he could not but identify with them. Only he could do this with the breadth with which he did so,” adds Barth. “But his community cannot follow any other line. Solidarity with the world means that those who are genuinely [followers of Jesus do the same. It means that] those who are genuinely righteous are not ashamed to sit down with unrighteous friends, that those who are genuinely wise do not hesitate to seem to be fools among fools, and that those who are genuinely holy are not too good to go down ‘into hell’” for the sake of those Jesus loves. (The Doctrine of Reconciliation, IV, 3, 2) Jesus had compassion on those who were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And he called his disciples and sent them to do the same. He charged them to go out among the crowds with no more in their pockets than a dead man can carry to his grave. “Take no money with you,” he said. “No bag for the road, no second coat, no sandals, no walking stick. Rely only upon the hospitality of those you go to serve. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, drive out demons. You received without cost. Give without charge.” That’s you and me he’s talking to. “Freely you have received; freely give, just as you have received freely. Die to self. Give without expecting repayment.” In other words, change the center of your universe. It’s not all about me, this experience we call life, says Jesus. It’s about God, and about others, and about my relationship with them. Perhaps it starts small, this caring and compassion. Perhaps it starts, as Mother Teresa suggested, by caring first just for the one person right in front of you. Then you might advance to maybe serving two or three who need your care, then to your doing works of compassion for a small group, a family perhaps. Gradually you may even reach “graduate-level” compassion, with a heart like the heart of Jesus, a heart big enough to care for a multitude. Encouraging such spiritual vision and commitment is what the Bible is doing to us on this Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. It calls us to put on our spiritual spectacles, to enlarge our spiritual horizon. It calls us to look beyond ourselves, to look at the world around us to see what is out there. It calls us to recognize that the Lord God has had compassion on us when we were harassed and helpless, and has brought us on eagle’s wings out of our misery in Egypt. The Bible calls us to see, as St. Paul puts it, that God’s love and grace are “prevenient,” anticipatory. It calls us to see that Jesus died for us while we were still powerless, that he reached out to lift us up when we were like sheep without a shepherd, and brought us to himself, not because we deserved it or were worthy of it, but because we were the center of his concern and love. But we are not brought to Jesus in order to sit on our good fortune, to sit on the fact that we are loved by God. God’s prevenient grace, his anticipatory love, delivers us from our need in order that we might offer the same kind of deliverance and grace and love to others. We were delivered on eagles’ wings from our misery and slavery in Egypt and led to the Promised Land, not to sit on our good fortune here, but to be a light of godliness and love and compassion to the world, to make a home and a life for the stranger and the alien and the poor among us, remembering that it was the Lord God who did the same for us. We are called by Jesus, as his first disciples were called, not only to tell the world about God, but to see the world as God sees it – to identify with it; to make ourselves one with the harassed and dejected and helpless of the world; to go out with no more than we can carry to the grave; to go out, that is, as the poor and needy among the poor and needy, to heal, to comfort, to raise up others on the wings of eagles. Do this, Jesus says, because the same, and more, has been done for you. “Freely you have received; freely give.” Change the center of your world. “[Compassion] is not natural to man,” Johnson said to Boswell. “Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. [Compassion] is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason,” acquired and improved by my behaving “to a nobleman as I should expect he would behave to me, were I a nobleman and he Sam Johnson.” Which is reason as Johnson first learned it from the Bible, of course: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Can that be done? Can that be done today? Or is the Bible just about spiritual truths for olden times? Back in Jesus’ day the crowds were surely smaller by comparison. Maybe it wasn’t such a big job then. But what about today, with the crowds in need of compassionate help as large as they are now? Can it be done in our day with the world in the mess it’s in? But the world of my immediate horizon is not large. The world of my immediate horizon holds only those right in front of me, like the horizon of the man Rabbi Howard Weiss tells about in Los Angeles. “I was outside Schwartz’s bakery on Fairfax Avenue when I first saw him do it,” writes Rabbi Weiss. “I was waiting in my car for my wife, watching the crowd go by, when my attention was drawn to a poorly dressed young woman pushing an old grocery store cart filled with bundles of rags, paper bags, and the other things that go into living hand to mouth. A small child sat cushioned in the cart, and another walked alongside her, passengers in poverty. “Coming from the opposite direction was a man I recognized. As he passed the woman, he turned around suddenly and called out something to get her attention. I didn’t hear what, but when she turned, he pretended to be picking up some money from the sidewalk. Green it was; how much wasn’t for me to know. He motioned that she had dropped it, and then quickly put it in the child’s lap, and was gone. “It was less than a month later, while I waited at the checkout counter at Safeway, that I saw the man again. He was standing behind an obviously poor person who was counting out her pennies to pay for her milk and bread. He didn’t see me, but I saw him as he bent down and came up holding a twenty in his hand, all the while saying that she must have dropped it. She said, ‘No, it wasn’t hers,’ but everyone in the line urged her to take it, and finally she did.” “The powerful thing for me,” said Rabbi Weiss, “is that I had never liked that man until then.” What’s it all about, this experience we call life? It all depends on what we see in the checkout line at Safeway. Do we see someone on the horizon of our experience who is holding us up with her stack of coupons? Or do we see a fellow passenger in poverty who is at the center of God’s world and concern? Jesus called his disciples and charged them to go out to serve their fellow passengers in poverty. Go out with no more than a dead man can carry to his grave. “Take no money with you,” he said. “No bag for the road, no second coat, no sandals, no walking stick. Rely only upon the hospitality of those you go to serve. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, drive out demons. You received without cost; give without charge.” Change the center of your world. That’s the charge Jesus gives his disciples in the Bible. But have you noticed that it’s also the very same charge you and I pray for at the end of every Eucharist: “Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou has prepared for us to walk in, through Jesus Christ our Lord....” (Rite I) “Almighty and everliving God, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the Body of your Son, and heirs of your eternal kingdom. And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.” (Rite II) Do you see it? “Freely give, just as you have received freely.” Open yourself to a change in your spiritual horizon, and live accordingly. It makes no difference where you start, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Jesus just calls us to get spiritually dressed for working the crowds out there. In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |