“From Compassion to Conviction”
Matthew 22:34-40; Matt
Jesus is tricky.
He gets
you nodding with the obvious.
He
gets you agreeing with him when it seems reasonable.
What’s the greatest commandment?...
To love
God (seems reasonable) and
Love
your neighbor (seems practical).
After all, Jesus was merely quoting the Shema in Deuteronomy
that every Jewish
child would have learned and
putting it
together with Leviticus 19:18:
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge
against any of your people,
but you shall love
your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”
This seems like good advice to keep the
community happy
And
if the commandment seems difficult then
Don’t
do it because you actually like your neighbor
But
do it because you are obeying God.
It’s not our compassion that will save
the world or reconcile
The world to God but rather the compassion of Christ.
I
did my whole doctoral thesis on this topic
“the compassion of Christ” with the thesis that
behind all the good work in the world
is not “our compassion” but Christ’s.
It
was Christ’s compassion that fed 5000 hungry people
And not the
compassion of the disciples who
Wanted to
send the people to their homes to eat;
It
was the compassion of the Loving father (God)
And
not the elder son that welcomed the
Prodigal
son home and restored his sonship;
It
was the compassion of the Samaritan (Jesus figure)
And
not the compassion of the religious authorities
That
bound up the injured man and put him
On
the donkey and took him to the inn.
Any compassion we share,
And
grace we offer,
And
mercy we extend
Comes
first from God to us
and only then
through us.
William Barclay says “Only the grace of
Jesus Christ can enable
a man to have
this unconquerable benevolence…
we need Christ
to enable us to obey Christ’s command.”
It is a good first lesson today.
Whenever
we talk about grace, we need the adjective
The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ;
Whenever
we talk about love (agape) we need the adjective
The
love of God;
Whenever
we talk about real fellowship that cannot be
Broken
by hurt feelings and misunderstanding
We
are talking about
the Fellowship of the
Holy Spirit.
That would probably be enough of a learning for one sermon
But
Jesus knew that we needed more
To
move us from compassion (feeling another’s pain)
To conviction (doing something with that feeling).
As we are nodding our head in agreement
with this notion
Of
loving God and loving our neighbor,
We
are reminded that Jesus not only told us to
Love
our neighbor but also to love our enemies.
This
is as Biblical scholar Douglass Hare says
the radicalization of Jesus message.
Jesus
even says it:
“Anyone can love people who love you…
but you must be
perfect as you Father is perfect.”
That’s radical and that
shifts that stakes.
Jesus calls us to a radical discipleship
that changes our lives.
That’s the shift from compassion to
conviction.
I
saw that in some of the people I visited in the
Last
week.
Specifically
I saw it in the Rabbi for Human Rights
Rabbi
Arik.
Now
one Rabbi I met was offended by the name
“Rabbi
for Human Rights”
because he said
that the implication was that
other rabbis were
not for human rights.
I think we would agree that all
religious leaders are
For
human rights but in Rabbi Arik that compassion
Shifted to conviction.
When
he heard of a bulldozer pulling up to a Palestinian home he was
there standing in front of the bulldozer;
When
he heard of a young boy who was scared and he stood
With
the young boy so that he would know
That a tall Jewish man in a kepa came to
my rescue.
When
a settler was beating up a photographer the Rabbi
Came to the aid of the photographer.
As we listened to him speak he didn’t
just feel compassion
He
acted on his conviction- so much that he actually was
Convicted
of breaking the law when he stood in front
Of
the bulldozer that was ready to demolish
the Palestinian
home.
That is the radicalness
of the faith that Jesus talked about
In
the Gospel of Matthew and we see it here lived out
By
a Jewish Rabbi who took seriously the call of Micah
“To love kindness, seek justice and walk
humbly
With your God.”
While I was on the trip one of my
Christian friends
Took
me aside and asked- how can our Jewish friends
Not
believe in Jesus with all the evidence we see
My response was to suggest that
not to believe
that God became human;
And not to believe that someone died
and was raised
from the dead was
a more reasonable than to believe
that it actually happened.
But if …we believe that God became
incarnate in a human being- and
that in Jesus God walked with us for a time in
And that this Jesus was
killed because of his radical teaching of love
And that this Jesus was raised from the dead by God.
Then there should be no mountain too
high,
And
no conflict to deep and no barrier too wide
To
keep us from living out the love of God
Revealed in Jesus Christ.
Even if that means loving our enemies.