Colours of Love – Orange… doing
(Wednesday Lent 5)
Trevor Burt
On Sunday we discovered that the central quality of God is compassion. And
a key command found in Luke’s Gospel is: be compassionate, as God is
compassionate.
I marvel at Mother Theresa and her followers. She had incredible passion
and compassion for the poor, the poorest of the poor. She got right in
there with these people and literally loved them to death. It didn’t
matter who they were, what religion they professed, she would be by their
side, giving them all that they wanted in the face of death, but
especially she gave them dignity, restoring their humanity.
During WW2 a soldier visited someone in hospital. He was an abusive man,
and shouted obscenities at one of the nurses, Sister Maria. Soon after the
soldier himself was admitted to hospital at the point of death, but was
turned away at the door as there was no room. But Sister Maria,
overhearing but also recognising the despicable man, quickly offered to
look after him and found a place to tend to him. Six days she tended his
condition, nursing him back to health. On the seventh day she failed to
turn up beside his bed. He pleaded with another nurse, “Where is my Sister
Maria?”, only to be told, she died last night of Cholera.
This kind of Christian doing is difficult. Unlike acts of mercy, which are
relatively easy, acts of compassion mean we have to get our feet wet and
our hands dirty. More than that, compassion is necessary because there are
needy people. And there are needy people because of injustice in the
world. And people in power don’t like compassionate people who challenge
injustices. So it is not just dirt we face, but trouble.
Mother Theresa not only tended the poor, but spoke out against injustices.
She refused government help so she could not be manipulated by people in
power. She would receive donations from generous people, but only for a
time, lest she become dependent on them and they make demands on her.
She spoke with a profound wisdom that made it clear that, for her, there
was only one humanity. People are what mattered for her. She once said:
Welfare is for a purpose, Christian love is for a person.
It is astounding that it is not wars that have changed the world, but acts
of compassion. When we look at the great leaders of the world who have
left a lasting change, they were deeply compassionate people. Jesus was
one of them.
Guns and bombs can never bring peace, because they fuel the very thing
that underlies all division: that is, hate. Acts of compassion destroy
hate. Acts of compassion bring down the dividing wall between people. Acts
of compassion fuel forgiveness and reconciliation and harmony and peace.
It is nearly impossible to hate someone who loves you unconditionally.
Another war story. A Christian soldier was invading a French village and
had to kill an opposing soldier. He found the mother’s address and wrote
to her saying: “Please forgive me. Your son is dead at my hands. I am a
Christian and I cannot help but seek your forgiveness, for although I had
little choice in the matter, I know what pain this news will bring to
you.”
In due course the soldier received a reply from the bereaved mother. “I
know how difficult it was for you to write your letter. But I too am a
Christian, and I forgive you for taking my son’s life. I hope that you
will visit me when this wretched war is over, and, for a time, take my
son’s place in my home.”
What does Christian love look like? Augustine of Hippo answered this way:
It has the hands to help others.
It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy.
It has the eyes to see misery and want.
It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men.
That is what love looks like.
For many of us, though, this kind of love and Christian action is very
difficult. No matter how hard we grit our teeth and try, we just cannot be
compassionate a little bit, let along be compassionate like God is
compassionate. We find it too difficult to give up our comforts, too
fearful to enter unknown territory, too demanding on out time and energy.
How can we become more compassionate?
I marvel at Richard Phillips. He has gone from our congregation to
Bangladesh to help villages find arsenic-free water. An astounding number
of wells have arsenic in them in this land where there are few flowing
streams. This poison is killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of
people. In this last year Richard has gone into the villages near the
boarder with India. No other helpers will go there because of the civil
unrest and boarder terrorism, let alone the risk from life threatening
diseases and pests. But Richard has been working there, working amongst
the poor people who live on less than a dollar a day. Why does he do it?
How does it do it, placing his life at risk and leaving behind all the
security and comforts you could want here in WA?
He does it because he fails to see a difference between us and them. They
are human beings, like us. To him there is no “us and them”. We are one
humanity, we are all equal, we are all the same.
I once asked an Aboriginal group in Kalgoorlie what I could do for them.
They rejected my offer of help. I didn’t understand at the time. They were
needy – I could help, what was the problem! Now I do understand. I was
offering welfare, an act of mercy. But that very act set us apart, as a
superior offering mercy to an inferior. I was reinforcing a division
between the haves and the have nots. What they wanted was to be known.
They wanted me to be beside them, to get to know them, to understand them,
to befriend them. They wanted an act of compassion.
To my shame I did not meet their real need. I could not be compassionate.
I know what to do now. I hope that soon I will find a way to make time for
acts of compassion. I hope that as a church we find ways of doing that.
Then, and only then, will we make a lasting difference in the community in
which we live.
Revised webmaster
Wednesday, 16 June 2004