Compassion is actively putting ourselves in another person’s
place. It is listening to personal
stories with full attention and awareness.
It is allowing ourselves to be touched by the emotions, the joy and
pain, of someone else, accompanying that person on his/her journey.
Yet
accompanying someone can mean walking into unknown and troubling spaces. It is one thing to express compassion when
someone experiences a personal tragedy.
It is another thing to live compassionately when that person is
suffering because of who she/he is and how society treats a person like
her/him. This is where compassion can
lead to advocacy and seeking justice.
Sometimes
it is not enough to provide comfort and emotional care. Sometimes we are called to expose and
confront the systems of society that cause suffering in the first place. This idea is not always comfortable for
mainline Christians who want their experience of church to be happy and
nice. Why should Christians “cause
trouble” and protest? Why should
Christians march for equality, social justice or environmental causes?
First,
at least in my tradition, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, we have
to acknowledge that we have benefited from white privilege. Many of our congregations established in the
suburbs in the 1960s took advantage of white flight from the cities in that era,
unable to handle changing demographics.
We have become one of the least diverse religious bodies in the United
States. While we may pass statements on
racial justice and celebrate diversity, the lived experience of much of the
church is very white. This should lead
us to self-examination and self-reflection about our own failure to connect
more deeply with people who are not of the traditional German or Scandinavian
Lutheran heritage in a changing population.
As we
begin to examine the log in our own eye, we may begin to have a better
understanding about the forces that keep us separate and divide us. We may begin to see that a cry of “Black Lives
Matter” is not a call for special treatment but a call for equal treatment. We may begin to see that, while success in
life may be in part a product of good choices, systemic poverty limits the
choices of many people. We may begin to
see that paying women less for the same job is simply unfair, creating a
unofficial penalty for being female. We
may begin to see that expecting conformity from the rainbow of humanity that
makes up the United States is not only a burden, but is simply ridiculous.
We may
begin to see that protest, advocacy and seeking justice can be acts of
discipleship. Writing letters and making
phone calls to work to change the system can be acts of discipleship. Some may read this and think it sounds like a
liberal pastor being liberal, but I hope that I am writing in the tradition of
Jesus who touched those whom society deemed unclean (Matthew 8:1-4), who
brought good news for and identified with the poor (Luke 4:16-21, Matthew 25:35-36), who welcomed those who were
different (Matthew 5:46-48), who treated women with respect in a society
treated them as less important (John 4:1-42).
While
we may love that Jesus is our friend and our savior, we must not forget that
Jesus also provides a prophetic vision where “the last will be first and the
first will be last.” Jesus doesn’t just
welcome us into the reign of God at some point in the future; he challenges us
to establish the reign of God where we are here and now. True compassion pushes the church toward
justice, freedom and equality for all people.
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