Our Very Lives

Main Entry: com·pas·sion
Date: 14th century
: sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it
synonyms see pity

What is compassion? Well, according to Webster's dictionary it is synonymous to pity and sympathy. But somehow I feel differently...

I've learned so so so much this summer, and I'm just beginning to scratch the surface of the heart of God. I have come to realize I'm so shallow in my understanding of what is required of me and how my lifestyle should show true compassion. The more and more I'm out here in the city, the more my faith becomes real; the more the words of the Bible become alive- and with that, my God comes alive. I've grown up in the church, reading verses like Isaiah 58 and Matthew 25 where our Creator plainly speaks about helping the poor and spending ourselves in their expense. In fact, it seems like my whole life I've read and studied verses that say something on the poor and I tend to overlook that part of the passage and focus on other parts. I've done this because it seemed to me like every single part of the Word spoke on the poor and I already knew I had to feed them, clothe them, etc. So I figured I could skip over it since I'd read it a kajillion times- it was old news to me. How many of us can say that is how we read? I think the majority of us do. We make a mental note of the word "poor" and then look for the meat of the verse that actually applies to us.

I truly and sincerely believe that the church and its body have robbed Jesus of his passion; his heart. We dull down his passion for the poor and don't put the weight on it as he did. We even go so far as to read the words in the Sunday sermon and then ignore the part where it calls us to actually go out and actively serve them. But that is disregarding the Word of God, where he says serving the poor is part of our salvation. In fact the entire Bible is dripping with God's heart and love for the poor, from beginning to end. If we really are reading and embracing the Word of God we can't deny that throughout the entire Bible God speaks on serving the poor as part of our life. We will be judged based on our care and compassion for our brothers and sisters. In Matthew 25 Jesus tells the parable of the Sheep and the Goats and how he will seperate us based on if we served Him by serving "the least of [His] brothers" or not (Matthew 25:40). For if we clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit the lonely, then we have clothed, fed, and comforted Christ. He didn't mean this figuratively, but literally. We can physically reach out and touch our Savior by reaching out and touching his children.

Let me elaborate a little. Bear with me :] Jesus performed miracles. Amazing, incredible, mindblowing acts that fed the hungry, healed the sick, and raised the dead. Then in John 14:12 Jesus tells his followers that he is going to the Father and that the Holy Spirit will be given in his absence. Jesus promises that with the Spirit we will "do even greater works than these". I don't know about you guys, but I am definitely not raising the dead, walking on water, or turning water into wine. How is it possible that we would do even greater things than the miracles that Jesus did? Jesus DID do miracles, but life did go on and the multitude that he fed with fish and loaves were hungry the next day, the sick eventually contracted another illness, and Lazurus died of old age later in life. What we remember about Jesus wasn't just the miraculous acts themselves, but we remember his love. The love that compelled him to do these miracles is the miracle itself, and his love is enduring. And the coolest part of this all is that we were given this love! With Jesus' love we are given the privelege of doing "even greater works" and to see miracles happen.

And one of the biggest things I've been learning is that with love comes true compassion. Compassion is not pity. It's not a sympathetic feeling or thinking to yourself "oh, poor thing". In fact, the Gospels express that our God knows and fully experiences the brokenness of our human condition. In Mark 1:41, for example, it says the Jesus was "moved with compassion". Translated directly, it says he was moved in his splagchna, entrails, guts, "the place where our most intimate and intense emotions are located". We get an even better picture when we look at the old Hebrew word for compassion, rachamim which refers to the womb of Yahweh. Compassion is so deep, so central, and so powerful, that it is described as a movement of the womb of God. It is a guttural feeling that forces us to act, to serve. That is true compassion.

The story of the leper is such an intense story. This story is found in Matthew 8:1-3 or Mark 1:40-42. I was talking above about the love that Jesus had for his children and how the intense love was expressed in his miracles. When the leper saw Jesus coming down the mountain, he knelt in front of him and begged Jesus to heal him because he had faith that he could. And He did. The most incredible thing about this is not just that He is our powerful Healer (which he is, hallelujah!) but that he reach out and touched a leper- this man who most likely hadn't been touched. Ever. When lepers would walk through the streets people would call out to the others and tell them to get away so that they wouldn't be infected with the disease. How lonely a life a leper must live when they can't even be in the general area of other human beings. And yet Jesus reached out and touched him- moved by compassion and love for him.

This is true compassion, the compassion we should acquire when we are really living in the Spirit. I believe with everything I am that our God is a God of Healing. He is our healer. And our Jesus was moved with love for his people that he lived among the sick, hungry, dirty, forgotten people. And when we are given the Spirit to live in us and when we die to ourselves (Galatians 2:20) then we can't ignore that calling. We are physically incapable of not acting on that love, because that love is the miracle the Holy Spirit gives us.

Since this our reality as believers and lovers of the true and holy God, we can't just read the Bible and ignore the heart He has for the poor. We are told time and time again, in every book, that we are to care for and have compassion for the poor. This requires us to change the way we value God's word, the way we view the heart of God, and the way we act on his word. We can't just make a mental note anymore and we can't rob Him of his fiery passion for the poor, the sick, the lonely. The Bible tells us more times than I can count that our salvation and future judgement is tied up with the salvation of our brother's and sister's who were created in the image and likeness of God. The reason we serve is not because we're good people. We serve them because they were entrusted with a little piece of God at their creation, and we love them to affirm that divine spark. We are not good people, we just love our God. So we love his children.

One last thing that has been on my heart is reality of who Jesus is. I mentioned that we rob Jesus of his heart, and I believe that wholeheartedly. Here's why: never in my life have I been told or have I acknowledged that Jesus was homeless. He traveled from place to place and stayed wherever he could find lodging. He relied on others to feed him along the way and to give him a shelter at night. The Jesus we know and the Jesus described in the Holy Scriptures was not crucified just for helping the poor, but he was crucified for joining them. This is the Jesus we serve, the Jesus we love more than anything in the world. When we read for ourselves we can't deny it. We are called to radically live out the gospel and radically follow our Savior.

With this realization, I want to pose the question that Shane Clairborne posed to me: How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and then ignore one on Monday? We shouldn't stifle the Holy Spirit and choose to only serve on Sundays, where we're comfortable, safe. I don't want you guys to take my word for it, don't believe me. Dive into the scriptures and ask that you can see the world through God's eyes by reading the word. All of the answers are in there, and when we read it with an honest heart we see the truth. I encourage everyone to really dig in and see for yourself the heart of God. Because when I finally started reading and valuing the words in it my God became alive, powerful. I'm starting to physically see Him, to see his Words breathing and tangible. In Deuteronomy 32:47, Moses is talking Israel about the sovereignty of God's promises, his words. He assures them that "it is no empty word for you, but your very life". How incredible would it be if we believed that every word spoken by God is alive and capable of transforming our very lives in an extremely real and physical way. His words are our very lives.