Compassionate Living

Photo of The Rev. Canon Joe Behen by The Rev. Canon Joe Behen

There’s an old story about a young refugee who entered a small village, trying to hide from enemy invaders.  The people there gladly sheltered the young man.  But when soldiers showed up looking for the refugee, they became afraid.  These soldiers threatened to destroy the village and everyone in it if they did not produce the refugee by dawn.  The frightened community went to their village priest, asking him what they should do.  Faced with nothing but unpleasant options, the priest spent the night pouring through scripture, looking for a passage that might provide him some guidance.  Shortly before dawn, he located a passage that read, “…better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.”  When the soldiers showed up at dawn, he and the villagers directed them to where the young man was hiding.  After the soldiers had disappeared with the refugee, the people began to celebrate their leader who had saved them.  The priest, however, still not feeling right about what had happened, dreamed that night of an angel, who said to him, “Do you know that you handed over the Messiah?  “How could I have known?” he replied.  The angel answered him, “If, instead of reading your Bible, which says many things, you had looked into the young man’s eyes, you would have known.”[1]

Throughout Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been at odds with the Jewish authorities, mostly over interpretation – over what it means to live, according to what is found in the Holy Scriptures.  The authorities tend toward exact replication of the words found there.  But Jesus contends that the cost of their interpretation is people.  Just a few chapters before today’s passage, Jesus’ disciples were found combing a field on the Sabbath because they were hungry.  Of course, Jesus was verbally assaulted by the Pharisees for this.  After all, Scripture says quite clearly that the Sabbath is not a work day.  But Jesus’ response here is significant for understanding today’s story.  He says to them, “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”[2]  It seems that the heart of scripture must be understood; the intentions behind what is written.  All words found there, then, reveal a truer meaning.

Today’s passage includes a word that can be understood as this heart of scripture to Jesus.  That word is “compassion.”  “He saw a great crowd, and had compassion for them.”  Nearly everything else in this story, and in all of Matthew’s gospel, flows from this compassion.  But the one thing that precedes compassion is Jesus simply looking at the crowd.  He looked at them, and then he had compassion for them.

So what, then, might be the connection between seeing and having compassion?  Well, I’m sure you all know people who hear just fine, but don’t tend to do much listening.  Maybe it’s also true, then, that many who see others just fine don’t very often choose to truly look at them.

In his final address in 1968, Thomas Merton said that, “The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.”[3]  In other words, until I can look at another, and see myself in them, they can be dismissed as
- an opposing ideology
- as a competitor to be defeated
- or as a tool to be dominated for my purposes

But when I look in their eyes and see reflected there something of myself, and something of the divine, then they have become fully human to me.  Their good can be seen as interwoven with my good.  When we say the Nicene Creed together, we confirm with each other that we are holy, catholic, and apostolic.  But before any of these, we are one.  And “Seeing this one-ness, is the beginning of compassion -- it allows us to reach beyond aversion and separation.”[4]

Now, the word compassion comes from the Latin word “com,” which means “together,” and the word “pati,” which means to bear, or to suffer.  To have compassion for someone, is to bear something together, or to suffer together.  Jesus saw the suffering of the crowd, and he suffered with them.  They are one.  This unity makes both the seer and the seen fully human, fully connected to each other, and more the image of God than at any other time.

Today’s story of the Feeding of the 5,000 intentionally calls to mind for listeners the Last Supper, and thereby, the sacrament of the Eucharist.  “…he looked up to heaven, (notice Jesus looking again.  Looking toward – God and neighbor).  “…he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples.”  The thing is, the bread doesn’t stop with the disciples.  It was given by Jesus, and it must be given by them.  Can you imagine the disciples, sitting around in a circle, cramming bread and fish in their mouths, and saying, “Jesus, this is great.  I’m stuffed.  But what about all of them?”  What the disciples have been given is for their own sustenance, and it is for them to sustain others.  What Matthew seems to want to say in making this Eucharistic connection is that participation in the Eucharist requires Eucharistic living.  Our lives should begin more and more to take on a Eucharistic quality.  And this is all set in motion by compassion.  Compassion which began with a feeling of connectedness with others.  But it goes way beyond a feeling.

Matthew has the disciples first come to Jesus with their own plan.  “Send the crowd away, so that they can go and care for themselves.”  There’s no indication here that anything is behind their statement except genuine concern for the people.

Following Jesus’ lead, they have looked into the eyes of those they serve, and they’ve been moved to feel a sense of one-ness with the crowd.  They’ve seen themselves there, and they’ve become concerned.  So the seeds of compassion have been planted.  But seeds must grow.  “You give them something to eat,” Jesus tells them.  The feeling isn’t enough.  It must mature, must take flesh.

The story that I began with shows without doubt the beginning of compassion.  But the way it ends makes it feel a bit the way today’s gospel might feel, if Jesus had actually sent the crowds away.  What if the village priest had instead found this passage in Scripture: “When Jesus saw the crowd, he had compassion for them…”  Having chanced upon this heart of Scripture, the whole story may have gone very differently.

When they awoke the next morning, the villagers saw the soldiers leaving their town.  The refugee was no longer in his hiding place, and his tattered, blood-stained cloak that he had worn was gone.  The people wanted to celebrate their priest who must have saved them.  They went to his hut to look for him, but they found instead the young refugee.  They asked him where the priest was.  “I don’t know,” he replied.  “He came to me in the night and said, ‘Go now, and hide in my hut.  It’ll be okay.’  Astonished, the villagers ask, ‘Then where did he go?’  ‘Well…nowhere, I think.  He just laid down on my pallet, and covered himself with my cloak.”

Amen.

[1] From Henri Nouwen’s book, The Wounded Healer (New York: Doubleday Publishing, 1979) p. 25, 26
[2] Matthew 12:7
[3] Thomas Merton, from his final address, during a conference on East-West monastic dialogue, delivered just two hours before his death, quoted in Religious Education, Vol. 73 (1978), p. 292.  I actually located the quote at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Awareness on 7/14/2011.
[4] Sharon Salzberg, from The Kindness Handbook (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, Incorporated,2008).