“Ours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth” St Theresa of Avila

It’s lovely to hear of the generous donations to Vanuatu’s cyclone appeals.

Archbishop Tutu describes this sort of generosity as compassionate love. ^{New Scientist 29 April 2006 p.48}

Archbishop Tutu says this ‘is about feeling with someone rather than just for them. …Compassion that comes from your intestines. But it’s more than just empathy. It is not just a static thing. You are moved by it. It must impel you to do something to try to change the situation that provoked it.’

I noted the ABC Radio National comment that war memorials are not enough; action is necessary or the memorials are a sham. ‘Our memorials don’t rise up against injustice. We rise up against injustice. We shirk that responsibility when we go to a memorial instead of doing something,’ ^{http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/the-trouble-with-dark-tourism/6412726}

Active compassion!

Archbishop Tutu describes the way compassion works on us.
He says, ‘You try to put yourself in their shoes, to enter into their situation. … you may not be able to change their situation, but your compassion still goes out to the victim, and you try to stand side by side with them.

This sounds pretty basic. But then Tutu says we feel this compassion because of something in us that reflects the character of God. ‘So it’s in everyone, not just church-goers; because all people are created in the image and likeness of God who is compassionate.’ That’s a big statement: we’re compassionate not because of what we believe, but because of who created us—all of us. But does God really have this active sort of compassion?

In Holy Week and Easter we’ve explored the story of God acting in exactly this way; God looking at the plight of the suffering, oppressed, afflicted humanity, and feeling compassion that wants to change the situation; compassion that leads to action.

But there’s more. God’s change didn’t happen with a mighty arm smashing down oppressors and then raising up victims. Instead, God chose to enter into the situation of the oppressed; to become one of them. And we see a picture of the God who does that in today’s gospel. ‘I am the good shepherd,’ says Jesus, ‘The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’

What’s the point?

What’s the use of a dead shepherd?

Aren’t the sheep more vulnerable than ever if the shepherd dies? It’s not pointless. We experience suffering as a part of being mortal—it’s a part of who we are. We don’t like suffering, but without it, we aren’t whole people. Suffering is the great leveller—it’s immune to fear or favour. Whether someone hits me on the head or I forget to drink enough on a hot summer’s day, the end result is the same; I go to bed with a headache.

If God sent Jesus as a bodyguard who took away my attacker’s club, it may save me from a headache. But that doesn’t change anything really. The world stays the same and God is still remote. The bodyguard Jesus is immune, and while I’m spared, many other people aren’t. The God of that Jesus is choosey. That God has favourites. That God isn’t the real one.

So, no big Jesus the bouncer. Instead, God came in Jesus as someone who was just as vulnerable to a beating as we are; someone who probably also got dehydration headaches on those long journeys, and when he was out ministering to the crowds. The real Jesus is one of us in our vulnerability; and I’m so grateful that he is. Because then, even the tiniest child has a God who knows what it feels like to be them in their hard times; helpless and blameless when someone or something hurts them. By being the shepherd who is willing to lay down his life for us, Jesus is saying that he has compassion for us—that he is in our situation, feeling what we are feeling—wanting to change it.

He doesn’t want us to face our pain alone.

Our pain is not a weakness; it’s an integral part of who we mortals are. When Jesus says he’s the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, he’s telling us that in our pain, in our fear, in our danger, in our brokenness and incompleteness, he is with us. He is an integral part of who we are too.

So he’s not asking us to break bits off ourselves and throw them away. He’s taking us as we are, and asking to enter our lives and show us how to love ourselves as he loves us. It is in receiving that love, from Jesus, from ourselves, and from each other that we move towards seeing that we are whole and wholly loveable. Then we can change and grow together with the one who knows us most deeply—the one who can transform our weakness into a wellspring of compassion and love just like his. The one who can help us discover that it is in our weakness that we discover compassion, and in our compassion that we discover ourselves as made in the image of the lovely God who is the real one.

Today’s scriptures tell us that Australia’s compassionate response to recent tragedies has something to do with who we really are. We are willing the restoration of a broken people’s wholeness. We are with them in their suffering. We are being Christ for them, and they are being Christ for us. We are diminished by their suffering, but find resurrection with them in their healing.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth, yours are the feet by which he is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which he is to bless us now. Amen

St Theresa’s prayer again. And it might interest you to know that she’s the patron saint of those who suffer from headaches. Amen