Walk With Them

Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1.16)

The Compassion Principle

Not long ago I heard an illuminating talk about compassion. The speaker began by breaking down the word’s Latin roots, pointing out that it literally means, “shared suffering.” Then she said the best definition of compassion she’d ever heard came from a Benedictine nun, who told her to be compassionate is to walk beside people in trouble—actively participating in their journey, meeting them where they are, and supporting their efforts to move ahead. Thus, compassion is an intentional work of grace that collapses the distance and differences between those in need and us. It is not sympathy, which attempts to provide solace from a polite remove. Nor is it empathy, which professes to know and understand another’s situation. Compassion surpasses feeling and transpires in the doing. Our sorrow for others means nothing if it stops short of investing our all to alleviate it. Without committing to walk with them in their distress—to make their suffering our own—we’re merely well-wishers, sympathetic viewers from the sidelines.

The more we study God’s Word, the more we mature in our faith, the more convinced we are that compassion is the core Christian value. This belief is inherited from our Jewish forebears, who filled Hebrew scripture with texts extolling compassion as one of God’s defining traits. Numerous times the writers link God’s compassion with divine faithfulness, as we see in Nehemiah 9.17: “You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore You did not desert them.” Compassion becomes the central theme in Jesus’s message as well, not only in His depiction of God, but also in the expectations He sets for us. Most famously, Jesus marries compassion for others to love for God in the Great Commandment, which we hear in Sunday’s Gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,” followed by, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12.30-31) Then, in Galatians 6.2, Paul underscores compassion’s centrality to our faith when he writes, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Bearing the burdens of others, sharing in their suffering, walking beside them, meeting them in their need—we cannot misconstrue the compassion principle as a call for kindness that keeps its distance. It is the law of Christ that places very specific demands on our attitudes and behaviors toward one another. Compassion, first and foremost, is an act of obedience.

Relentless

There’s a relentless aspect of compassion that we all too often—and easily—overlook. Compassion is an act of faith we carry out by faith, ignoring conventional wisdom, social mores and taboos, and political expediencies that would advise against walking with others. We see the full extent of compassion in God’s unyielding covenant to love and accept us despite our failures and deficits. But we also observe its relentless nature in dozens of biblical characters who are moved to bear the burdens of people around them. None of these examples is more vivid than Ruth’s. Here is a woman dealing with extraordinary loss, whose future is anything but certain, and who stands to lose everything she treasures if she embraces another’s sufferings as her own. Yet that’s precisely what Ruth does. She’s relentless in her compassion for Naomi, the mother of her recently deceased husband, and commits herself—despite her mother-in-law’s protests—to walk with Naomi, to bear her burdens, and to face life’s uncertainties alongside her.

Ruth’s story is familiar to most of us. Yet we risk undervaluing its gravity by underestimating its complexity. Sunday’s Old Testament text (Ruth 1.1-18) introduces her saga with a detailed background that brings Ruth’s dilemma into sharp focus. Ruth and Orpah are two Moabite women who marry the sons of a Jewish couple who relocate to Moab after famine descends on their home in Bethlehem. Despite ethnic, religious, and cultural differences, both marriages prosper. Then the father-in-law dies, as do both sons, leaving three widows with no viable means of support. With no blood relatives to provide for her, Naomi has no choice but to return to her extended family in Bethlehem. Going home is no guarantee she’ll be accepted. Her sons’ marriages to pagan women casts shadows over her and her return no doubt will give rise to resentments about having to care for a woman who’s not contributed to the family coffers for many years. Ruth and Orpah do have a way out, however. They can return to their families and resume the lives they knew before marriage. It won’t be easy. They too will confront prejudices and disdain for marrying outsiders. But they’ll have a safe home and provisions to ensure they won’t starve.

Reluctantly, Orpah assents to Naomi’s wishes. Ruth refuses. It’s inconceivable to her that Naomi should return to Bethlehem alone. So profound is her compassion that she voluntarily severs family, cultural, and religious ties to walk beside Naomi into a strange world, to live among strangers who despise her, to adopt strange customs, to speak a strange language, to worship a strange God. Ruth has absolutely nothing to gain by bearing Naomi’s burdens. That’s why the compassion conveyed in her resolve takes our breath away. “Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you!” she insists. “Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there I will be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you.” (Ruth 1.16-17) There’s no pause to consider what’s “appropriate” or “feasible.” There’s no lengthy hug, followed by a tender fare-thee-well and reminders to “call if you need anything.” Ruth doesn’t promise, “I’ll be there for you.” Ruth is there and refuses to be anywhere but there. Ruth is relentless.

Admonishments and Promises

Stripped of relentlessness, compassion is reduced to sentiment—an affect that has little effect in a harsh world. As believers who seek to reflect God’s nature in all we do and followers of Christ compelled to honor Christ’s commands, we are wise to take Ruth’s example to heart. And that begins by removing the filter of self from our eyes. Especially for American Christians participating in our national elections, this passage comes at a critical time. We cannot of good conscience enter the voting booth alone. We must take those we walk beside with us—those presently struggling with poverty, hunger, homelessness, violence, broken families, and every other form of social neglect. Beyond what may be best for us, we must consider what’s best for them and, if necessary, place their needs above our wants. We must subvert conventional wisdom, social mores and taboos, and political expediencies—many of them endorsed by religious leaders—to demonstrate true compassion in all of its relentless glory.

In Psalm 112.1-5 we read, “Blessed are those who fear the LORD, who find great delight in God’s commands. Their children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice.” (NIV) May we listen closely to these admonishments and promises, and like Ruth, trust God above all else in our commitment to walk beside those in need.

Compassion goes beyond promising to be there. It is there and refuses to be anywhere but there, walking beside those in need, bearing their burdens, and sharing in their suffering.

Complacency

There is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3.28)

By now you’ve heard the name Malala Yousafzai. By now you’ve joined millions the world over made sick at the thought of such barbarity. That anyone—let alone a religious sect—would attempt to assassinate a 14-year-old advocate of educating young girls is beyond comprehension. The more I’ve thought about this perverse tragedy, the more I’ve wondered about the man who actually pulled the trigger. What was going on his mind as he pointed his rifle at a school bus, waiting for the precise moment when Malala passed into its sights? How did he feel in the seconds after he shot her? What is he feeling now? Does he feel like a hero—a warrior of Allah? Has he any remorse at all, or has his inner compass gone so awry that he’s rationalized his crime as an act of righteousness? These questions quickly brought to mind Eudora Welty’s famous short story, “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” Written immediately after the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers (who, like Ms. Welty, lived in Jackson, Mississippi), the story chillingly imagined the killer’s madness from the inside out. Describing what prompted her to write the story, Ms. Welty said she somehow realized, “Whoever the murderer is, I know him; not his identity, but his coming about, in this time and place. That is, I ought to have learned by now, from here, what such a man, intent on such a deed, had going on in his mind.”

In the West, we can’t help but regard the attempt on Malala Yousafzai’s life as too monstrous to contemplate—particularly since it was allegedly committed in the name of Allah. Yet in our rush to condemn, we must also grapple with our complacency about the treatment of women in our own culture. And, tragically, many of the attitudes and policies that relegate women of all ages to second-class status are rooted in antiquated, erroneous Christian dogma. There is simply no excuse—civic or religious—for accepting gender inequality in American society. There is no reason why women don’t earn equal pay for equal work. There is no justification for denying them full access to healthcare, control of their bodies, and the right to safeguard their future with every advantage given to men. What does it say of us as a people—especially we who claim discipleship—that we aren’t grievously troubled by a culture that puts more emphasis on telling women how not to get raped than teaching men rape is unacceptable? What does it say of us that we value male opinions of gender-related issues more than women’s? What does it say of us as a Church that we’ve not yet fully rejected the notion that God is a male and that men are more qualified than women to lead us in worship and service? Like Welty, we know where these voices are coming from—we know their coming about, in this time and place. The question for all of us, but believers in particular, is: are we raising our voices against them?

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul experiences a magnificent “Eureka!” moment that rebuts the sexist slant of his other writings. “There is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” he proclaims. Gender discrimination—or any prejudice, for that matter—has no place in a believer’s life. It simply doesn’t belong in God’s kingdom. We can sigh with great relief that we don’t live in a culture that tolerates the heinous religious violence perpetrated on girls and women like Malala. Yet our daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers nonetheless are the objects of male-propagated injustice. We know where these voices are coming from and they will continue to come until we lift our voices for equality and justice in obedience to our faith. Paul has set before an ideal, prevailing on our belief in Christ as the Great Equalizer, Who makes all of us one. May that belief pierce our hearts and disturb our complacency with a world where men and women are not yet equal.

Zealous for Peace

The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. (Isaiah 32.17)

Yesterday our church gloried in the promise of peace. Our guest preacher, Rev. Dr. Edward Campbell—a highly regarded Bible translator and seminarian whose title belies his salt-of-the-earth pragmatism—said something that stuck with me. As we read Scripture, he said, we should remember it’s the story of people figuring out how the world is supposed to work. Thus, the tension that binds together 66 books written across centuries is manifest in a contest of wills: human will and its wantonness versus God’s will and all that God desires for, and from, us. Consequently, we’ve invented an alternate reality to accommodate weaknesses that, as Scripture persistently reminds us, bear no reflection of God’s vision. Nowhere is this discrepancy more magnified than in human proclivity to make war. The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is rife with war zeal. Repeatedly, we watch Israel engage in military conflicts that lay ruin to its country and other nations. The extreme losses are plain to see. And while it’s true that God sometimes—though not always—intervenes on Israel’s behalf, no stretch of scriptural interpretation can be made to translate God’s role in human combat as a divine sanction of war. When God steps into military conflicts, miracles occur that restore peace. Peaceful cohabitation is how the world is supposed to work.  It is God’s will. Why can’t we figure that out?

I submit we have figured it out. What we’ve not yet resolved are the international, cross-cultural, and political conflicts that cause war. Proverbs 14.31-34 diagnoses our failure when it says: “Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor God. The wicked are overthrown by their evildoing, but the righteous find a refuge in their integrity. Wisdom is at home in the mind of one who has understanding, but it is not known in the heart of fools. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Emphasis added.) When we set our hearts to prove our superiority over other nations—when we advance policies and actions that promote poverty, violence, and suffering, whether abroad or at home—we forsake God’s call to righteousness. We will not live in peace. As we’ve recently experienced in a recession largely brought on by reckless war-making, the costs of militaristic bravado are enormous. Conflicts wrought of aggression inevitably exact a huge toll on the aggressors. And the prices aren’t just paid out of pocket: they’re deducted in human lives, bodies, minds, and emotions. War is not God’s will. Why can’t we figure that out?

Isaiah 32.17 says, “The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” We are not so naïve to expect global righteousness and its peaceful effects will prevail in our present world. Yet, as Christians, we must also ponder how we can expend our resources to promote righteousness. That we need adequate defenses against malevolent powers is a given. The question is whether we permit our leaders to pursue unrighteous policies of aggression—to foster nationalistic, military bravado that is quick to pull triggers and create undue poverty, suffering, and loss of life. We must be zealous for peace at all costs, as the price of warfare is more than we can bear. We are regularly confronted with the harrowing realities of warfare, yet we cling to the myth that war can ever be just. Military aggression is the way of the world. But it’s not how God intended it to be. It’s time we figured that out.

Right Religious

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1.27)

In the month preceding the US elections, Straight-Friendly will offer brief reflections on what God requires of us, in hopes that we can enter the polls fully confident that our candidates of choice will promote policies that align with our personal convictions. Nothing here should be misconstrued as an endorsement of one candidate over another. It is simply meant to remind us of our responsibilities as faithful believers and citizens.

Every time we vote we make a vow, a personal pledge to care for our nation and its people. Every election presents us with a sacred moment, when we’re deeded the opportunity to look beyond ourselves—our immediate needs and long-held dreams—so that we can consider the needs and desires of others. Voting is the ultimate expression of community, a concept that we, as people of faith, inherently understand. And we know how community works because Jesus taught us a new way of building one. Community building (a concept that, sadly, has been ridiculed by many religious) reverses human “me-first” logic: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” Jesus says in Mark 9.35. So, as Christians, we enter the voting booth at the end of a very long line of people we must serve. Their needs come first, their dreams above our own.

In case we’re unsure who these first-comers and preferred dreamers are, James spells it out. They are “widows and orphans in their distress”—the bereaved and abandoned, the easily blamed, readily overlooked social and economic casualties among us who are struggling to survive. And we should be very clear: they are not the lay-abouts and system-abusers that so many paint them to be. (We’ll discuss the indolent and parasites in a future post.) The people James calls us to care for are genuinely in distress due to misfortune. They are the homeless, the hungry, the sick, the disowned, and the defeated—the ones who inevitably find themselves at the end of the line. It is our duty as Christ’s followers to interrupt the social order and put them first, giving them our place and taking theirs. The world doesn’t see it that way, of course. But we we seek a higher plane that lifts us above the world’s ways. Right religion begins with honoring Christ’s community-building principle. Anything less stains us with the ugly sinfulness of a faithless world.

Every vote is a vow—to God, our nation, and every citizen in distress—a promise to care for all in need. Every election is a sacred right to live out the teachings of our Savior and advance God’s kingdom in very real and tangible ways.

Be Opened

Then looking up to heaven, Jesus sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. (Mark 7.34-35)

Fragmented

One of the worst sicknesses I’ve ever endured occurred a few years ago, when I contracted a sinus infection that spread to my left inner ear. Pressure built up behind my eardrum, creating unbearable pain that left me in yowling in agony. I was stranded in a Dallas hotel, in the care of a local physician who called on me once a day for nearly a week and room service staff who brought me juice to wash down an arsenal of high-power antibiotics and painkillers. Before the doctor would release me to fly back to Chicago, he wanted to be certain the infection hadn’t spread to my right ear and hinted it might also affect brain tissue. Although my partner, Walt, called constantly, I was totally alone, in a strange place, facing the possibility of being hospitalized far from home. Inability to hear in my left ear compounded my sense of isolation. I lay there, in insufferable pain, helpless, contemplating terrible outcomes. Deafness. Brain damage. Very possibly waiting for Walt to get to me while strangers herded me through the ER and hospital admissions.

My condition’s most awful aspect, however, was how I sounded to myself when I spoke. The voice that came out of my mouth no longer matched the one in my head. It seemed to belong to someone else and, after a while I became unsure I could trust it. (This was partly due to the haze of medication, I’m sure.) But as my condition dragged on, I began to feel less and less in control of my situation. There was the Tim in dire pain and the Tim trying to put words around his pain, and they weren’t the same Tim. I was fragmented.

Astounded Beyond Measure

The deaf man in Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 7.24-37) is in a similar situation. Inability to hear has impeded his ability to speak clearly. The voice behind his clogged ears bears little resemblance to the one he utters. My brief experience with his type of affliction drives home how fragmented his daily existence must be. Obviously his neighbors feel for him. When Jesus passes through their region, they bring their deaf friend to Him, begging Him to touch the man. What happens next is most irregular. Rather than curing the deaf man on the spot, Jesus pulls him to the side, out of the crowd’s sight. As though diagnosing his illness, Jesus puts His fingers in the man’s ears, spits—an odd gesture Mark doesn’t explain—and touches the man’s tongue. He looks up to heaven, lets go a deep sigh (we’re not sure what to make of that, either), and, in the man’s native Aramaic, Jesus says, “Ephphatha,” or, “Be opened.” Immediately, the obstructions in the man’s ears dissolve, his tongue is released, and he’s able to speak plainly. All of the disjointed pieces inside his head come together. Suddenly being able to hear again is a miracle all its own. But being able to hear himself—having his speech reunited with his inner voice—is what makes him whole.

Even more than that, the deaf man’s restored speech brings healing to his entire community. Family, friends, and neighbors who couldn’t understand him now hear him clearly. They no longer have to compensate for his disability. They’re free from the guesswork and stress of parsing his inarticulate self-expression. Freeing the man’s ability to hear and speak is how Jesus makes the community whole. One whom they’d lost has been returned. And that miracle loosens their tongues. Jesus orders them not to tell anyone about the miracle, but they can’t keep quiet. Verses 36 and 37 read, “The more He ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.'” Astounded beyond measure—I so love that! It is exactly what happens when we approach Christ on others’ behalf. What Jesus does for them somehow spills over into us. We can’t possibly contain ourselves, because the wholeness Christ imparts to others inevitably makes us whole as well. We can’t help ourselves from proclaiming, “He has done everything well!”

Voluntary Deaf-Mutes

In the wake of the US political conventions, I’ve also been astounded beyond measure—though not in the good way witnessed in Mark. I’ve been thoroughly astonished, in some cases disgusted, by the prevalence of clogged ears and twisted tongues in our community. From the highest podiums of power to running commentaries flooding social networks, we are encompassed with people whose hearing and speech are severely hampered. Their ears are clogged with inflammatory rhetoric that impedes their ability to express themselves clearly and effectively. Hearing and reading what they say, I think, “Surely that’s not what they believe.” Surely their inner voices cry out for an end to poverty, violence, and injustice. Surely they hear a booming call for righteousness in the depths of their being—a resounding declaration that callous indifference for the least among us must cease. Surely something within them wants to convey concern for others beyond themselves. But the deafening roar of tyrants and charlatans has robbed their freedom to express their faith and humanity in understandable ways. And, all contrary evidence aside, I must believe this is true, lest my ears also become infected and clogged, lest my own speech also becomes harsh and nonsensical, lest I too become a burden to my community, a liability that makes those I live with less than whole.

At the same time, I’m convinced the political deafness and jabber polluting current discourse are merely magnified symptoms—an outbreak, if you will—of a more invidious contagion. We no longer care to listen to one another, let alone the voice of God that calls to us from deep within. We’re no longer concerned about what we say, let alone how we say it. We have become a culture of voluntary deaf-mutes, purposefully closing our ears to anything we don’t want to hear and disregarding the confusion and harm our words create.

We’re becoming increasingly fragmented as people, with the holy person inside us bearing little resemblance to the vain, self-serving one portrayed in our words. We need to find Jesus and beg Him to touch us. We need Him to diagnose our sickness, penetrating the garbage cluttering our ears with His pristine fingers, loosening our twisted tongues with His mighty hand. We need Him to speak to us in language we understand, commanding us to be opened. When our ability to hear and speak clearly is restored, we will be made whole. Our communities will be made whole. Peace, justice, and compassion will be restored. We will be astounded beyond measure and say, “He has done everything well!”

Lord Jesus, if ever we needed healing it’s now. We beg You, come to us, pull us aside, lay Your hand on us, and command us to be opened. Amen.

We have become a culture plagued by clogged ears and slurred speech. We need Christ's healing to be made whole.