THE SPIRIT AND COMPASSION
© Dr. Gary Blaine
University Congregational Church
August 8, 2010
Reading: I Corinthians 13: 1-8
William Ellery Channing was the pastor of the Federal Street Church in Boston when he learned of an elderly couple who were near death. He promptly made a visit to their small home. It was wintertime and he found their apartment bitterly cold. They were both shivering in their beds. He also found that they were reduced to skin and bones for the need of food. Dr. Channing discovered that the real problem was they did not have firewood. They could not heat their home or cook their food. From that day forward Dr. Channing personally provided firewood for their stove. He made arrangements for this same service when his busy preaching schedule called him away from Boston.
It was Dr. Channing who wrote that life in the Spirit is “the free and natural unfolding of our highest powers of understanding, conscience, love, and moral will.” The Spirit is compassion that reaches out to two old people, not to feel sorry for them, not to gush about the love of Jesus, nor to write them into the next political platform, but to give them firewood to heat their bodies and cook their food.
Dr. Channing was deeply suspicious of religious emotionalism that would too easily substitute for personal moral resolution and social justice. We are too often driven by sentiment rather than the active conviction to do what is right and just by others.
I am reminded of the three men who were stranded on a dessert island. They had been there several months doing their best to survive. Walking along the beach one day they discovered a small bottle. Hoping beyond hope, one of the men rubbed the bottle and was delighted to see a genie pop out of the spout. Surveying the three stragglers the genie announced that under normal circumstances he would grant three wishes. Under this unusual arrangement he agreed to give each man one wish.
The man who found the bottle said, “I’ll go first. My wish is to be in a Manhattan flat overlooking Central Park, living with the most beautiful woman in the world.” Ignoring the fact that the man had slipped two wishes into one, the genie granted him his wish. Before he knew it he was looking out over Central Park, drinking a snifter of Drambue. A warm fire crackled in the hearth as snow fell gently in the park. A brunette of indescribable beauty purred from the tiger skin fur in front of the fireplace, inciting him to her company.
The second man grabbed the bottle and said, “Genie, my wish is to live with my wife and children on a ranch in Montana.” Instantly the man found himself astride a horse riding in from the range toward his palatial log cabin. Daughter and son rode on grand steeds beside him. His wife of twenty years stood on the porch to greet them.
The third man stood on the beach alone, save for the vaporous genie. “Gosh,” he said, “I sure miss those two fellas. I wish they were back here with me.”
Sentiment is always ego centered. True love is ever more than feelings, however flushed in the moment of inspiration. Indeed, the word love is so easily identified with emotion we do not comprehend its greater depths. I will use the word compassion because it causes us to reflect, if only for a moment, on one of the greatest powers in the human experience. Life in the Spirit, to recall Channing’s words, is a life of compassion. Compassion is the full and natural unfolding of the human capacity to transform life by bringing to it healing and wholeness. Compassion is the act of kindness and generosity that restores human dignity and hope.
Compassion is always about the restoration of human dignity. There are certain human situations that can never be remedied. People are dying at this very moment! Cancer or illness or time ravages their bodies. They will not be cured of their disease. It will kill them! But it is possible for them to die with dignity, their humanity graced in the fullness of respect.
I once heard a missionary in Southeast Asia speak of his efforts to feed the Hmong mountain tribes. It was reported that these people were dying of starvation. The missionary located a shipment of rice and found a truck that could deliver the rice over the rough terrain. There were many villages along the mountain range and the missionary wanted to work as quickly as possible to bring food to the starving people. With all due speed, he worked his way from village to village. He stopped just long enough to open the gate of the truck and drop several hundred pound sacks of rice on the ground. At the end of their delivery route he began making his way back home. As he reached each village he had served he was surprised to find the sacks of rice still sitting on the ground. No effort seemed to have been made to recover and distribute the rice.
In frustration the missionary stopped at one of the villages and sought out the chief. The village chief listened to the missionary’s concern and said, “Sir, thank you for your good intentions. But that is the way we feed our pigs. That is not the way to feed human beings.” The lack of dignity had reduced the missionary’s efforts to an insult of human self-respect. He went back to each village and personally carried the bags of rice to each chief for presentation to the people.
Never in your entire life will you meet a human being who does not need personal respect. You will meet people who have no self-respect. You will meet people who do not respect others. But you will never meet anyone who does not need to be respected. What is more, you will never regret having treated anyone with respect, however disrespectful his or her own demeanor or behavior. I think that is one of the hardest lessons that we have to teach children, especially in a society of obnoxious self-pity.
Compassion is impossible without respect. Beware the husband or wife who claims to love his or her spouse but proffers them no respect. Beware the parent who disciplines a child without a fundamental esteem of that child. Beware the professional who claims the best interest of his or her client but considers them inferior or incompetent.
I am reminded of the story of the Buddha who went with his disciples to bathe in the Ganges River. The disciples looked upstream and noticed a very old and decrepit Untouchable bathing in the river. The man was so old and feeble he could barely stand up against the current. One of the disciples asked the Buddha if they should make the Untouchable move down stream from them so he would not contaminate their bathing water. The Buddha did not respond to his disciples. Rather, he worked his way up the stream to where the old man stood. With his own towel, Gautama bathed the puzzled old man, gently washing his withered body. The Buddha then took the elder’s chamber pot and washed it with his own hands.
I do not think that we love anyone that we do not respect. Compassion requires us to be connected with other people, transforming hearts of resentment to understanding, anger to gratitude, and anxiety to loving-kindness. Compassion reaches out to other human beings as we open ourselves to their hopes and fears. Compassion means that we are willing to love people enough to be touched by their dreams and their needs.
Compassion is our bond to other people, and the Holy Spirit of compassion is to touch and be touched by their pain. Rabbi Shelomo said, “If you want to raise a man from mud and filth, do not think it is enough to keep standing on top and reaching down to give him a helping hand. You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth. Then take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself out into the light.” Compassion calls us down into the deepest pits of despair and takes the hands of our brothers and sisters that we may raise together above all human indignity and hopelessness.
Whether it is chopping wood or cleansing the body of an old man, compassion is the Spirit of life. I know this does not sound like the stuff that will banner the morning paper or lead the evening television news. Life in the Spirit rises to the occasion of everyday existence, blessing the ordinary with extraordinary compassion. Life in the Spirit is not a supernatural phenomenon, but the natural expression of those compelled by God’s grace. As Channing suggested, the Spirit is compassion, a natural unfolding power in the life of human beings. The challenge before every family and every church is how we cultivate this natural unfolding power in the lives of our community, and in the lives of our children.
In the summer of 1990, I discovered that my wife at the time was having an affair. Within a very few days I understood that she and the man she was with were planning on moving out of their homes and taking our one-year-old daughter with them. She refused any and all efforts at reconciliation or therapy. It was necessary for me to take extreme legal measures to protect the child, including divorce proceedings to claim primary custody. These legal matters would be reported in the newspaper and I knew that I would have to inform my congregation. I wanted them to hear from me.
On the following Sunday, I stood before my congregation to share the legal decision I had made. Circumstances required discretion on my part, and I managed the best I could to share the information and maintain some sense of dignity. In the words of my therapist, I had been skinned alive. Under such maddening pressure composure had its limits. At some point in my presentation the tears began to leak and finally I could speak no longer. You can imagine that members of the church were rather speechless themselves. There were several moments of awkward silence.
From the back of the church a man named Ken Bain began to walk forward. He came up to the pulpit and hugged me. I do not remember that he said anything. I remember, even now in my very bones, that moment of compassion. Before I knew it, a line had formed and every member of the church came forward to embrace me – and all of my fears, confusion, anger, self-doubt, loneliness, and embarrassment. It would take several years, but that moment was the beginning of healing.
Within that same week, my friend, John Burciaga flew up from Florida to spend several days with me. We had long talks and long walks. We went to bookstores, ever the balm in my life, and shared meals together. I do not remember the food we ate or the books we bought. Most importantly, John was there.
Compassion, of course, ripples all the way to the shore on the lake of life. Ken Bain and John Burciaga began a course of healing that would eventually allow me to treat my ex-wife with dignity, even respect. Without the recovery of self-respect and dignity I could not be as happily married to Mimi as I am today. My experience, not only of that kind of pain, but that kind of compassion, allowed me to have insights and understanding for families in a similar situation. Out of this experience and others in my life, I have become convinced that the church can only be about grace – never about shame and condemnation.
Suffering is a reality of the human experience. It will never be a question of having a pain free life. And when those moments of pain and suffering come – moments of sickness, death, loss of work, or loss of integrity – it will be compassion that heals us. There are limits on the powers of medication, surgery, therapy, and jurisprudence. Compassion knows no such boundaries. Compassion is the healing presence of one another. Healing is the compassionate presence of one another. While I do not subscribe to the doctrine of the trinity, the Holy Spirit of compassion has never abandoned me.