Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her”
Dante describes Luke as the scriba mansuetudinis Christi, “the scribe of the gentleness of Christ”. It is not by accident that St. Luke’s Gospel is sometimes called the Gospel of Compassion and rightly so. The phrase “he saw… and he had compassion…” appears in several places in the Gospels and particularly in Luke’s Gospel. Somehow how we see leads to how we act.
This is almost the reverse of our age which tends to think of thinking as what follows action rather than what precedes or is implicit in each and every thing that we do. Thinking is more than reaction to actions; it is more than afterthought which doesn’t mean that it is simply predictive – a feature of the scientific world or at least one of its desiderata.
We meet in the angelic air of the early Fall and just after Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. The Angels are very much part of the liturgical and spiritual landscape of our thinking and praying. We are very much a part of a spiritual community – the host of heaven comprising saints and angels. Redeemed humanity finds itself in the company of angels – such is our liturgy. Unseen and yet known, the Angels belong to our thinking the good and refusing the evil; they are the ideas of God in creation. Perhaps it is with angels’ sight that we can best think about the seeing that is compassion, even the compassion of Christ.
Luke consistently links seeing with compassion but with the awareness that our seeing others in need does not always result in acts of compassion. “A certain priest” and “Levite” “see” but “pass by,” after all. Ten men were cleansed but only one “when he saw that he was healed” turned back “giving thanks” to the one whose compassion upon our humanity results in healing. In the parable of the prodigal son, the Father “saw” his wayward son returning to him and “had compassion on him”. Just so, too, “a certain Samaritan” who “when he saw him” – meaning the man who is in need – “he had compassion on him.” There is something important about the seeing that results in compassion and restoration; in short, salvation. And just perhaps it has something to do with angels’ vision.
