Compassion - The Grace of Presence

Our oldest grandson, Max age eleven, was attending a party of matriculating middle school kids recently. The evening at his new middle school was jammed full of games, lots of pizza, introduction to new teachers, and to a new environment of learning. The goal of the gathering was to alleviate fear in the heart of incoming fifth graders.

Unfortunately for Max’s friend, Simon, who is a bit on the heavy side the evening went south almost from the beginning. Other kids began to make fun of Simon, calling him names that focused attention on his size. Simon was mortified. Ashamed and in tears he called his parents begging them to pick him up.

While Simon, dejected and rejected sat waiting of his parents to come, Max left the others to sit with his friend. Such is compassion. Compassion literally means to be with the suffering one.

It happened many years ago, but I will never forget it.  Wir were a young married couple with two small children and had moved into a rental home in a suburb of Frankfurt.  After the move there were still lots of boxes lying around waiting to be unpacked.  My wife went upstairs to do something, and our three-year-old son Erich (Max’s father) remained in the living room.  I came in from a quick trip to the hardware store, and I knew immediately that something was not right.  As soon as I came in the door, I smelled something burning.  While my wife was upstairs, Erich had found the steam iron, plugged it into the outlet and was happily emblazoning a new “iron” pattern into the relatively new carpet.  As soon as I walked into the living room, Erich knew that he had done wrong and that his mom and I were not going to be happy.  I turned to him and asked in a calm voice, “Eric, which would you prefer from me – justice or mercy?”  He didn’t understand the terms, of course, and so he asked, “Papa, what is justice?”  I said, “Erich, justice means that you will get a spanking, and that you will have to pay for a new carpet with the money from your piggy bank.”   He thought for a minute and then asked, “What is mercy?”  I replied, “Mercy means that you won’t get a spanking, and I will pay for the new carpet.”  He reflected for just a moment before he said, “I want mercy, Papa.”  And mercy is what he received.

God responded to the misdeeds of Adam and Eve with mercy.  He didn’t want to give them what they deserved.  It’s true that they were punished (distance as a consequence of their guilt).  That is just.  But God didn’t stop with the punishment of justice.  He travelled the path of mercy in Jesus.  And Jesus announced his primary purpose: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).  By approaching others who are far from God with this same empathy and mercy, we are embodying the compassion of our Lord.

Interestingly, tolerance or indifference sounds the deathknell for every trace of compassion.  The English detective writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) wrote not only best-selling novels but also profoundly thoughtful Christian essays.  Sayers waged a war of words against the sin of laziness when she wrote: “In the world, laziness calls itself tolerance; but in Hell, she is called despair.  She is both the accomplice of other sins and at the same time their worst punishment.  She is the sin that doesn’t believe in anything, makes no effort, doesn’t seek to learn, doesn’t get involved, loves nothing, hates nothing, sees no meaning anywhere, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing she would die for.  We have known her all too well.  Perhaps the only thing we haven’t known is that she is a fatal sin.” Tolerance and laziness are the opposite of compassion.  Compassion empathizes and gets involved.  That’s how God is, and that’s how His children should be as well.

Max has already learned the great lesson of compassion: being present to those diminished by others is God-like.

Call to action

Break the power of tolerance and apathy in your life this week. Purposefully, prayerfully look for those around you that have been marginalized, diminished. Draw near to them. Be with them. Be Christ to them.

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