Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity
“I have compassion on the multitude”
Compassion. It is a rich and wonderful word and one which is frequently bandied about in the therapeutic culture of our world and day. What does it mean? Literally, it is about suffering with others or at least being able to identify with the sufferings of others. The word is used a number of times in the Gospels where it takes on a much more radical meaning than its use in our contemporary culture. In the Gospels the word is used entirely with respect to human redemption. As such it extends beyond any worldly sense of sentimental kindness. It speaks to the radical healing and restoration of our wounded and broken humanity. It is really about “the quality of mercy which is not strained”, as Portia puts it in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In other words, it is not limited or constrained by the finite world of our everyday experiences, our experience of suffering and pain. No. This mercy seasons or perfects human justice and human care. How? Because compassion in the Christian perspective cannot be understood apart from the passion of Christ.
Compassion belongs to the idea of redemptive suffering. What is that about? Simply this. God and God alone can bring good out of evil, out of our evil. That, too, by the way, is why Jesus can command us to love our enemies as we heard last week. Compassion belongs to the radical goodness of God which is greater than all and every evil. To let that idea take a hold of our minds and souls changes us and allows us to face the hard and harsh realities of a world of suffering, both our own and that of others.
Christ is said to “have compassion” or says himself that “I have compassion” a number of times in the Gospels, sometimes in relation to the healing of infirmities or illnesses, sometimes in relation to the raising of the dead, as in the story of the widow of Nain where Christ’s compassion upon seeing her leads to the restoration of her only son, and sometimes in relation to our humanity collectively speaking as in the stories of the feeding of the multitudes in the wilderness. Yet, most importantly, the word is used to establish an ethic of compassion for us in the powerful parable of the Good Samaritan.
