"Compassion Revisited"
The church as a community.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Text: John 3:11-19
There is a very profound Friesian folktale told by the philosopher Lewis Smedes. In his book on generosity, World Vision Canada President Dave Toycen picks up on the same story which is where I first got a glimpse of its power. It's the story of a man named Fopke. He's a miserable man. Nobody in the community likes him or respects him and he has isolated himself from the entire community because of his meanness, rudeness and self-centredness.
One day, because of the isolation and rejection of the community, he becomes so depressed he decides to take his own life. He goes into his study and places one bullet in a revolver, but before he actually shoots himself he has a drink of Dutch gin, hoping it will cause him to slump over after he shoots himself and die facedown, therefore retaining some dignity. But the gin puts him to sleep, and he dreams of being taken to another world, a world with human-like characters, but who are all kind and loving and generous and sincere.
This is a society that has no animosity, that lives in perfect harmony, so much so that all the doors of the houses are left unlocked and people care for each other and no one is in need. Fopke enters this community and the people start to ask him questions about where he is from. In return, he asks them questions, one of which is whether they understand what goodness is, because they seem to be practising it.
They say they have no knowledge of goodness. And so, using the Socratic method, Fopke questions them about violence and hatred and evil, so that they might understand what their goodness really represents. But by talking about this evil - the rape and pillage and murder and theft - they are introduced to ideas they had never conceived of before. Quite taken by this new man in their midst, they decide to experiment with evil, hatred and unkindness.
Suddenly, this perfect society spirals downwards into hatred. Fopke tells the people to stop doing this, that he never intended to introduce them to these bad things. He realizes that goodness is not something that one talks about; goodness is something that one lives. You can argue about what goodness is, but contrasting it with evil in order that you may define it does not enlighten anybody if people don't live in goodness and compassion.
Fopke finally arises out of his deep sleep and looks at the revolver in his hand and decides that, rather than shooting himself, he must live this goodness in the world. And so, asking forgiveness of those he had wronged, being kind to those who had ostracized him, Fopke re-enters society, but this time with a loving and compassionate disposition. He reiterates at the end of this folktale, “Goodness is not something one talks about as if it is an ideal, it is something that is to be lived.” When Fopke dies on his gravestone it says, “Here was a pretty good fellow.”
I've thought about that folktale a lot, as well as the words of Samuel Shulman, one of America's most famous rabbis, who in the 1930s in New York founded the Association of Reform Rabbis and was responsible for translating the Hebrew Bible into a Jewish Bible that could be read by everyone here in North America. In looking at the state of New York in the 1930s, he said: “In a civilized society we are more and more in danger of losing our sympathy.”
In other words, high civilization, profound knowledge of what constitutes “the good,” arguments for what is right and just, in and of themselves do not make people sympathetic or empathetic or loving. All the right reasoning in the world does not produce the sympathy that we desire. I look at the state of the world with its growing population - we now have some 6.4 billion people on this earth. When I look at the great cities of the world I see there are now some 15 million living in each of Mumbai, Jakarta, Tokyo, Mexico City and New York. In these megalopolises, these vast and growing cities, I think the problem of dealing with civilization and sympathy is all the more difficult.
Even in our own beloved Toronto we are seeing such a rapid rise in our population that at times we don't know quite how to deal with it. But how easy it is for us simply to talk about sympathy and empathy and fellow-feeling, but still not actually live it. This is exacerbated, I feel, by three trends.
The first trend is the information explosion in the media. We know more about the world in all its corners and all the vagaries of human life, and we are bombarded daily by the problems that beset the human race. But at times it is as if we're sitting back watching it happen on a screen. It's as if our communication technology has made us one step removed from the problems that exist.
For example, I was looking recently at a statistic that said 842 million people on earth are hungry. And we all know that. But right here in Canada, do you know that in any given month 841 thousand people use food banks? In other words, we in our civilized world might be aware of more and more of the problems around us, but we are one step removed. It's as if we are watching a play on a stage rather than participating in it.
We also have a breakdown in community through the erosion of moral values and morality as a whole. I think a breakdown of morality is all the more obvious particularly in urban settings, because people can live in anonymity. The effects of what they do are not immediately seen by their neighbours or their friends as they would be in rural communities where there are consequences to actions. In a metropolis you can simply do whatever you want to do and hardly anyone will know. You can get lost in a metropolis, and morality and values and compassion can evaporate because you are simply doing your own thing.
In smaller communities that is not the case, as a church elder told me when I moved to a community of 500 people after I had left Cape Town, a city of one-and-a-half million. He said, “Just remember, Andrew, it's difficult to sin when you live in a fishbowl because everybody sees what you're doing.” In the metropolis one gets lost and your values can also get lost. There are no consequences to your actions - or so you might think.
But there is the isolation from your neighbour. In the growing metropolises of the world, neighbourhoods shrink and people go into their little urban cocoons. They isolate themselves from the mad rush of the city and one hand does not know what the other is doing. So it is easy for people, particularly the poor and vulnerable, to get lost in this quagmire.
In a metropolis people live in isolation. For years we have tried to separate people in order not to have to deal with their problems. In the 20th century we had the Bamboo Curtain and the Iron Curtain, we had apartheid and now in the Middle East we have a wall being built to keep people apart. But in so doing we separate ourselves from our neighbours and we have a breakdown in community and a breakdown in compassion.
Do not misunderstand me. I'm not trying to romanticize rural and small town life. I don't want us to go back to being Bedouins or living like the Kalahari bushmen - I'm not suggesting that. What I am saying is how easy it is for those who live in the metropolis, in a civilized world as Shulman said, to lose our sympathy. I believe that there are people who genuinely in their hearts want to find a community of compassion in the midst of all this.
One outstanding feature of the early church was that it grew in the cities, in Antioch and Jerusalem and Corinth and Ephesus. Christianity spread in the great metropolises of the east and Asia Minor. One reason that the Christian faith took such a hold in the cities was that in the midst of the often evil Roman empire that dominated, Christians revealed something different.
The Greek writer Lucian put it as follows: “It is incredible to see the fervour with which the people of that religion held each other. In their wants they spare nothing. Their first legislator, Jesus, has put into their heads the notion that they are brethren.” That's what caused the great growth and rise of the Christian faith in the city. The degree of community that they had was founded on what we see in today's passage from the Gospel of John. It's a very simple message: “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.”
The very gift of Christ to the world by the Father, that self-giving love by the Father, was the ultimate expression of God's compassion and love. the earliest Christians wanted to live like that in their daily existence and in their walk with one another. And when they did, their influence on Rome and Antioch was considerable, because their neighbours saw that the brother and sisterhood that the Christians experienced in their communities was a manifestation of the love of God that we see in Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” That was at the core of their belief.
Sadly, when people see Christians and other religious leaders from a distance they are anything but drawn to them; in some cases they are frightened of them. This was humourously expressed to me in the story of a man named Herb who dies and goes to heaven. God greets him and says, “Look, Herb, I'm just about to go on vacation and I would like you to be responsible for letting people into heaven.”
Herb says, “What a horrendous thing for me to do. I've only just arrived.”
God says, “I trust you. Just go ahead and do it. What I want you to do is give a test to everyone.”
So a man arrives and Herb greets him, saying, “Look, I'm sorry but before I can let you in I have to ask you a test question.”
“Fine,” the new arrival responds.
“I want you to spell the word ”˜love.'”
The man responds, “L-O-V-E.”
“That's great. You're in,” says Herb.
Seconds later a woman arrives. Herb looks at her and says, “I'm sorry, ma'am, but before I let you in you're going to have to answer a question. Is that all right?”
She says, “No problem.”
And so he says, “Will you please spell the word ”˜love?'”
She responds, “L-O-V-E.”
Herb says, “Wow, this is easy, in you come.”
Suddenly, his minister arrives on the next cloud. Herb thinks, “Oh, no.” and says, “Minister, I'm sorry but I'm responsible for letting people into heaven.”
“You?” said the minister.
“Yes, me, but I'm afraid I've got to put you to a test before you are allowed entry.”
The minister says, “Okay, son, go ahead and give me this test.”
So Herb says, “How do you spell ”˜anaphylactic?'”
But on a serious note, a couple of weeks ago I was having my picture taken down on Bay Street in preparation for a magazine article coming out at the end of the month. I had to be down there at the crack of dawn with my robe and clerical shirt on. I arrived as the light was just beginning to shine and dawn was breaking. This man who was clearly a drifter saw me from a distance, and it was very obvious that he was terrified by what he saw. He saw a man who represents the church and he was frightened. Now, I don't know what was in that man's background, I don't know what he'd gone through, but this I do know: he looked at me and saw a symbol of religious authority, and he wanted to walk away.
I went after him to speak to him and try to put him at his ease. I told him, “I don't normally dress like this. I'm having a photograph taken and you've nothing to fear. In fact, my wife won't let me dress like this because it is embarrassing when we go to the coffee shop.”
He laughed and the fear and pain left his face. But the first moment this man (who I found had come from a native reserve in Saskatchewan) looked at me, he was terrified. I thought, “My God, how far have we come in the minds of so many people from John 3:16!” Surely the essential ingredient of our church and faith is: “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” And the church as a community of believers in the metropolis must surely ultimately be a sign and a symbol, not only in words but also in who we are and how we live and approach the world.
There is one other thing. It is all very well to have a community that is compassionate, but you can't have a compassionate community unless you know its origins. Not long ago I saw the remains of a house in my neighbourhood that had been demolished. A group of workers were standing around this great, big, muddy hole looking bemused. I said hello and was chatting with them as I waited for them to move dirt across the sidewalk. I asked them what they were looking for and they said they were looking for a wall.
I said, “I've got bad news for you. You've just knocked down all the walls.”
They said, “No. Underneath all this mud there is the wall that is actually the foundation of the basemen. The rules in this community say that if there are no existing walls, you are not allowed to build a house. You must build on the original foundation. I think we've lost the wall somewhere.”
I looked down into this mud and thought, “You know, this is just like humanity. We have a mess on our hands, but if we've lost the wall - the foundation - then, on what do we build? How do we move from here?”
The wall that is abundantly clear in John's Gospel is the love of God in Jesus Christ for the world. That's the wall. Compassion is the foundation of what God has already done in Jesus Christ. Building on it is what you and I must do, but when we lose the foundation wall, we can't build. It seems to me that in this world, with its anonymity and isolation of individuals, many people do not believe that they are valuable in the sight of a loving God.
There's a true story of a gem collector who goes to Tucson, Arizona to a gathering that is selling minerals and rocks and stones. This gemologist looks into a pile in a box and sees this blue rock that has hardly any shape to it and is about the size of a potato. He approaches the vendor and says, “How much is this rock?”
The vendor says, “Oh, that's $15.”
The man says, “Well, that's a bit much. I'll give you $10 for it.”
The vendor says, “Sure. Take it.”
So he takes the dirty blue stone out of the box and walks away. He looks more closely at this rock and suspects something. It is later found out (and this is a true story) that that rock was actually 1,905 carats of natural sapphire worth $2.8 million. But the only one who knew its value was the one who had the eyes to see it properly, who could look at it and see what it was really worth.
I think God looks at people in the city and the metropolises of the world and sees that in this messy, muddy box are stones that seem to be of little or no value at a superficial glance but through the eyes of the Creator are worth an infinite amount. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is simply this: that God in his Son comes into the midst of the box of dirty rocks, and God so loves those dirty rocks that he lifts them out of the box and says, “Through my Son, you are precious in my eyes.” And the church's message is not to argue and debate about points of good and bad or right and wrong. The message of the church is to be a redeemed community that shows the love of the very God who in Christ picks up that stone and says, “I love you.”
And so, may we as those who are followers of this God in our midst revisit that compassion every day, and may people look at the church and see a community of rough stones, but rough stones that live the compassion of the God who pulls us out of the box. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.