Year: 2012

“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her”

We have seen this picture far too many times. It is the picture of the weeping widow and the grieving mother. Almost every day and for far, far too many years, we have had to contemplate the spectacles of unbearable griefs and unspeakable sorrows: mothers and wives weeping for the loss of their children and husbands obliterated and destroyed in acts of calculated yet mindless violence in the troubled war zones of our world and day, in Kabul, in Aleppo, in Benghazi, to name but a few. Such pictures have become the commonplaces of our culture and, paradoxically, the commentary upon our capacity for compassion.

We have, I fear, become too accustomed to such sights. Grief has become politicized; our emotions have become the battleground for competing political causes. The real casualty is compassion. Compassion has been killed in us. In its place, there reigns frustration and rage, cynicism and despair at our own impotence. We look upon what we cannot control or perhaps even begin to comprehend. We look and then we look away. We want to run away. Any vestiges of compassion that we might once have felt are swallowed up in bitterness and anger.

And yet, perhaps, just perhaps, another glance at this gospel story might help us to look again and to look again with eyes of compassion, not just cynical disdain, to look with hearts of patient hopefulness, not just crippling despair. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is something here that speaks to the unspeakable griefs of our world and day. In our cynicism and despair, we are like the young man who is dead and who is being carried to his grave. But in the looking again at this poignant picture of a widow’s grief and a mother’s sorrow, perhaps, just perhaps, we shall be raised up in the hope that arises from the compassion of Christ.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Her sins which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much”

To my mind it is one of the most moving stories in the Gospels. In relation to our first lesson from Ezekiel it challenges us about our hearts: hearts of stone or hearts of flesh? What Ezekiel envisions, it is not too much to say, is what is illustrated in this Gospel story, namely, the hardness of our hearts of stone and whether we can be moved to compassion and seek forgiveness.

Ezekiel is speaking about the condition of Israel, about God’s strengthening and providential presence with his people in the places of their exile, about a change in them by his grace and spirit. One heart and a new spirit; a heart of flesh in contrast to a heart of stone.

There is just that sense of contrast between a hard and inflexible spirit and a forgiving and compassionate spirit that is also brought out ever so personally and powerfully in Luke’s story. It is not about being soft and wimpy; it is about something vital and living that moves in us if we will set aside the empty dogmatisms of our empty lives. In a way, this gospel story challenges us about what really matters and about what kind of hearts are actually in us. It brings us to some of the essential and central teachings of the Christian faith. Of course, that is the real challenge: to acknowledge and name the essential teachings which ultimately shape our lives.

It is this unnamed and unspeaking woman who teaches us so much. Jesus is at pains to show the importance of her action and its meaning. He knows what is moving in her heart. Her act, extravagant and moving, is an act of love in repentance. I cannot stress enough how powerful and important that is. I cannot stress enough the importance of the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins of which this Gospel story is such a compelling witness. Jesus says to her, “your sins are forgiven.”

(more…)

Print this entry

“Be not anxious”

I like to think of this as “the anxiety gospel” but that runs the risk of only adding to the problem. “Behold, the fowls of the air,” Jesus says, “consider the lilies of the field” and “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”. Behold, consider, and  seek are strong words  that offer a compelling antidote to our anxieties.

What is Jesus saying here? He wants us to look at the world with new eyes. And it makes a difference for us in our lives. To behold what he wants us to see, to consider what he wants us to ponder, to seek what he wants us to desire counters the paralysis of our fears, the terror of our anxieties and even the anxiety about our anxieties.

Jesus says “be not anxious” and he says it more than once in this gospel. He knows our anxieties and how prone we are to being anxious, quite literally, about “a multitude of things”. It is “The Martha Syndrome” as Jesus diagnoses it elsewhere: “Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about a multitude of things” (Luke 10.41). We all have our fears and our worries, our troubles and our concerns, our heart-aches and our despairs. And we can worry ourselves, quite literally, to death about them.

(more…)

Print this entry