“When he saw her, he had compassion on her”
Guilt and compassion, strange as it may seem to say, are killing us. They belong to our current cultural and institutional disarray. Why and how? Because of a profound misunderstanding about both guilt and compassion. We are made to feel guilty about the actions of those in the past at least as seen through the ideological lenses of the present. The old scriptural adage and truth that “the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children of the third and fourth generation” (Ex. 34. 7, Dt. 5.9) now turns into our being expected to confess the sins of the fathers. The effects of the sins of others does, of course, affect many other generations, but we can only confess our own sins and not the sins of others. We do not, after all, have windows into the souls of others, past or present. This is not to say that we shouldn’t seek to make things more just in our world and day though what that might mean is itself a big question.
The Old Testament lesson at Mattins explicitly emphasises the point about the ownership of our own sins. It begins with a proverb that reflects Exodus and Deuteronomy about the so-called ‘generational curse’ – “the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children of the third and fourth generation”. “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (Ez. 18.2). But the Lord tells Ezekiel that “this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel” (vs. 3). For “behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sins shall die” (vs. 4). Each is responsible for his or her own actions, his or her own sins, before the truth and justice of God. “The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (vs. 20).
The whole passage importantly turns upon our complaint to God about injustices and injuries, something which God counters in very strong language. It is a strong counter to the victim culture of our times. “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?” (vs. 25). It is all about each of us being called to account. This is actually our freedom and dignity as belonging to who we are in the sight of God. “I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, says the Lord God” (vs. 30). “Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed against me,” for all sin is really primarily against the truth and goodness of God, “and get you a new heart and a new spirit!” (vs. 31), the law as inscribed on our hearts as both Jeremiah and Paul teach. “Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of any one, says the Lord God; so turn and live” (vs. 32). To turn and live is repentance and grace. These are powerful statements that counter a mistaken view of guilt. Another’s guilt cannot be our guilt however much it affects us.
This problem in turn affects the idea of compassion. It is not simply about feeling sorry for others which easily morphs into sentiment and emotion that often says more about us. If a mistaken view of guilt confuses our sin with the sins of others, a mistaken view of compassion confuses the pain of others with our feelings.
Both the Epistle and Gospel for today show us a deeper understanding of compassion. It is nothing less than the movement of God’s love in our hearts. That is very different from the vagaries of human emotions and sentiments. Paul wants us to know “the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God”. That love, illustrated in the Gospel in terms of compassion, is something divine, something greater than what we can accomplish on our own. It belongs to the perfection and ultimate truth of our humanity but only through the grace and love of God in the sacrifice of Christ Jesus.
Yesterday was the Feast of the Holy Cross, a minor celebration retained in the Prayer Book, which recalls the centrality of the Cross and Passion of Christ. The Cross convicts us of our sins even as it convinces us of God’s love in the overcoming and transforming of our sins. God and God alone makes something good and better out of the disorders of our lives. In a way, the story of the widow of Nain is a powerful illustration of the deeper meaning of compassion as the divine love which seeks our restoration to God and to the community of love.
“When the Lord saw” the widow of Nain in her grief, “he had compassion on her.” It is the only time in Luke’s Gospel that the phrase is used not in a parable, such as the parable of the Good Samaritan or the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but in an encounter with a person and a community in grief and sorrow. Matthew uses the same word for Christ’s encounters with crowds in the wilderness, with people who are like sheep without a shepherd.
The widow of Nain has lost not only her husband but now her only son. The whole city mourns with her. In a way that is the most basic sense of human compassion, our feeling sorry for others. But this is far less than what the compassion of Christ shows us. The word itself refers to our inmost being, to the core of ourselves that looks to the real truth and meaning of our humanity. It refers to the heart or the liver or in the older translations to “the bowels of mercy”. It points to something inward. But in Christ, that compassion has its fullest meaning. What does it mean? He takes the sorrow and grief, the devastating loss of the widow of Nain, into his inmost being where he holds eternal converse with the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. It is not about sentiment and emotion, something passive, something that we feel, something that has to do with how we acted or think we are acted upon.
No. It is the compassion of Christ. That makes all the difference. Compassion is about what is active in us as derived from God just as the Passion of Christ is not simply about what happens to him at the hands of sinful people. It is really about his active will to negate the negation of our sins in love’s overcoming of all sin. Such is the active will of God made visible on the Cross of Christ which is already resurrection and shows itself as such. Here in this story we have a foretaste of the resurrection in Christ’s words to the widow, “weep not”, and his words to her son, “young man, I say unto thee arise”. ‘Don’t keep on weeping’ is what he is really saying, meaning that grief and sorrow are not forever. They don’t need to define us. God’s love is greater than our hearts of sorrow and condemnation. The meaning of the resurrection through the passion is already signalled to us: it results in the restoration of what is broken and in disarray. The son is restored to his mother. There is the idea of communion and fellowship restored.
This excites the crowd who glorify God but in statements which are not the full picture of the meaning of Christ. He is not “a great prophet who has risen among us”, though it is fair to say that in this story, “God has visited his people” but not simply in a passing sense of here today and gone tomorrow. The compassion of Christ that is opened out to us “passeth knowledge”, our knowledge, the limits of human knowing and doing. It is something which abides eternally and belongs to the ultimate good which God seeks for our humanity.
It won’t do to think of guilt and compassion in our superficial and ultimately self-serving ways. It is more about “being rooted and grounded in love”, being “able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height” of what belongs to the love of Christ. He is the true compassion. We seek his love and life in us. This is the challenge and vocation that belongs to the ethic of compassion that always has to be open to far more than what belongs simply to our human emotions and sentiments. Time and time again we confront, if we are honest, the limitations of our feelings and emotions, at best recognising that they are incomplete.
What then should we do? It is not simply about outward actions but more about trying to ground them in the deeper love and compassion of Christ. Such is prayer that carries over into how we act. No doubt we may console ourselves with another adage, ‘doing the best we can’, facere quod in se est, doing what lies within us, but with the recognition that what lies within us is less than what belongs to the compassion of Christ. To know that is the beginning of Christ’s compassion becoming more alive in us yet without the taint of mistaken guilt and mere sentiment. In some ways it comes down to how we see or think about one another in all of the confusions and circumstances of our broken world; in short, to see one another in Christ in his compassion and forgiveness.
“When he saw her, he had compassion on her”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 16, 2024