St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church
3800 East Third Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47401
(812) 332-5252
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost (June 15, 2008)
Liturgical Color: Green
Reverend Doctor Lyle E. McKee
Living with Compassion
Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
I am not generally a fan of Stephen King. I find horror of his usual kind rather formulaic and boring most of the time. Still, I was grabbed by a re-play one of his movies that strikes me as presenting the gospel in a creative way.
It is "The Green Mile." I think this particular story can serve to open our minds and hearts to God in ways more powerful than we might expect.
It becomes increasingly apparent in "The Green Mile" that one of the characters is a messianic figure, though not exactly what we usually imagine in form or behavior. John Coffey, an enormous black man in the South, has been accused of murdering two small girls, and upon his arrest he is delivered to "the Green Mile"—death row in a southern prison.
We learn early in the film that John is almost entirely an innocent. He is sweet and what we might call "simple-minded." Despite his huge size, he's given to fits of weeping quietly and is afraid of the dark. He shows tenderness—a wonder for such a massive fellow; although he does some rather troubling things to those he discovers to be truly evil. After a couple of miraculous healings, there's no doubt exactly who Stephen King wants us to think of John Coffey as representing. He portrays the figure of Jesus.
In Matthew's Gospel today, we learn that "Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and sickness." Matthew continues: "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
Compassion. Com-passion. Feeling with. Suffering with. Feeling another's pain. Jesus "had compassion" for others. He felt with others, and calls us to do the same.
In "The Green Mile," one of the several troubling scenes depicts a gruesome execution, one in which a sadistic guard deliberately omits a step intended to make the death quicker and less painful. The victim, Edouard Delacroix, is a sympathetic character; it is horrible to watch. As Del screams and jerks, John Coffey, far from the scene in his death row cell, seems to experience some of Del's torture. The lights on the Green Mile dim, then burst, as he experiences vicarious pain.
After the execution is finally complete, the officer in charge of the Green Mile, Paul Edgecomb (played by Tom Hanks), returns to his block and walks to John's cell. Sweat pours from John's body; he is still trembling. He says to Edgecomb through clenched jaws, "Boss, Del, he the lucky one. He out of it now."
"Do you mean you heard that all the way down here, John?" asks Edgecomb.
"No, Boss. I felt it," John replies.
That's the phrase that sticks with me. "I felt it." John Coffey actually feels the pain of his friend. He experiences his torture, as though he had somehow been in the body of Edouard Delacroix. Interesting name, that, isn't it? De la croix—of the cross. King really wants us to get the point that this suffering is redemptive.
We learn as we move through the film that John also has a gift for healing. Like Jesus, his compassion is a healing compassion. With John, every time he heals a person, the experience drains him of energy. One thinks of the woman with the long-standing hemorrhage that appeared in last week's gospel. When John Coffey accomplished a healing, he was severely weakened. That huge hulking wall of a man nearly has to be carried back to his cell when he heals a woman with cancer. He tells Edgecomb, "I'm tired, boss. Dog tired," and he curls up to sleep.
Compassion. Feeling with. Suffering with. John Coffey represents Jesus in this odd story, and his compassion is deep. He lives as did our Lord, and can help us see what compassion looks like. When we know of the suffering of another, we too are asked to go beyond mere observing so that we might say, with John and Jesus, "I feel it."
Compassion. It is a hard thing to maintain in this world. We hear of "compassion fatigue" in days when crisis after crisis occurs. I remember well how the members of St. Thomas responded with gifts of significance after the tsunami struck Indonesia and nearby lands. Our connection with our sister synod in Sumatra helped us to be able to "feel with" them. Our response was immediate and generous.
I thought of that as I heard recently that responses to recent crises has not been as swift or as massive. On May 2nd, a cyclone wreaks incredible destruction in Myanmar. On May 12th, Sichuan China is rocked by earthquakes. Hundreds of thousands are killed and displaced. Fires rage in California. Floods affect many states, including our own. Even one of our pastors, Ed Boone, returned last week from the synod assembly to find his Columbus, Indiana home flooded.
How can we continue to feel all of this? What are the limits of compassion?
Last week at the synod assembly, I enjoyed running into some old friends. One was Thom Duval; he's pastor of Word of Hope Lutheran Church near Lexington, Kentucky. We worked together on the Synod Outreach Team for a number of years, and he even brought a youth group up to Indianapolis when I severed there. We provided urban experiences for such groups as a part of our work with the neighborhood.
That trip comes to mind in this context of talking about compassion, because part of any such trip is intended to develop greater understanding of and compassion for the people who struggle in troubled urban areas.
I remember the week was full. We had arranged for the young people (and the supervising adults) to work in a number of settings—our summer program and drop-in center at the church, a soup kitchen, a food pantry, a homeless mission, and the local community development corporation. They weeded, assembled a pool table, put together a work-out room, assisted with setting up the computer center for the neighborhood kids to use, painted walls in the church and in local homes, and cleaned up a local park. It was a long and very productive week or working with and learning about the community.
There were, of course, bumps along the way. Some who had requested help from the young folks apparently didn't realize how quickly they could work. They had to find jobs at the last minute. One day, the crew working at Wheeler Mission was asked to do things they later complained about—cleaning the restrooms and picking up cigarette butts in the terrace. Those who did those jobs weren't very happy about doing such menial things, and they had thought they might talk with the men at the mission. Even the regular work kept them in the kitchen, helping to prepare meals, and didn't permit any interaction with those being served. The young people—and the adults—felt cheated and were upset.
I remember the conversation the next day as Pastor Duval addressed the gripes. His approach had two thrusts.
First, he acknowledged the situation: "If folks at Wheeler Mission are doing what I think they're doing, they're gambling on the long haul—that they'll have enough time with these folks to have some impact of their lives. Change takes time. If they asked the people who use the place to clean up their cigarette butts or clean the restrooms, they'd be as likely to just ell them to forget it and leave, in words considerably less gentle than that."
The second provided the needed perspective: "Hey," he said, "you're here to serve. This is what service is all about. We don't get to choose what we will do when we give our lives to service. Further, folks in Indianapolis can't interrupt their important relationships with the people they work with in order to compromise the service they provide. If you (remember, Pastor Duval was addressing both youth and adults) want to get to know homeless people and their plight, here's what you can do. When you get back to Lexington, volunteer at one of our local missions—once a week for the rest of your life."
Now I remember that he was a bit put out, but his points are well taken. Be spoke with a deep understanding of what Jesus is trying to get his disciples and us to understand today. It is about the nature of suffering with others, of feeling their pain, of knowing them in a way that effectively provides for the salvation that comes in Christ as we share our humanity with others. It is not about a single encounter; it is about a life-long commitment to being in community with other people. Not being exclusive, or selective, or judgmental. Just sticking it out and loving the way we are loved. Always. Unflinchingly. Unfailingly. It about getting close enough to feel.
Real compassion—the kind that Jesus invites us into this morning—implies community and perseverance. It is not a one-shot deal or a superficial thing. It involves nurturing and caring for relationships. I think that's why we responded so well when our friends in Indonesia were affected by the tsunami and perhaps less fully to the crises that occurred with folks with whom we feel less of a connection.
"Freely you have received, freely give," Jesus tells the twelve as he sends them out to preach and heal those for whom Jesus has such great compassion. We might overhear him saying something like this to us: "Heal every disease and sickness. Cast out evil spirits. Take the message of the Kingdom to those who live down the street and on death row every day of their lives. Help me care for them. Have compassion on them. Feel with them. I can't do it all by myself. the task is too great to be done alone, even by me. And it's not God's purpose that it all be done by me. You're in this, too. We can't do it without you. You're going to be my Body on earth, so you are invited to get out there and start learning what that means."
So the followers of Jesus-the disciples, the ones who had left fishing nets and families to follow and learn from this young man—these twelve poorly-prepared ones were called to take their first steps as apostles—as "sent-ones" for the sake of the hurting people of the world.
And now we step into their shoes to do the work of compassion and service, engaging those with whom we are connected to the extent that we are called and able.
Mind you, this is not about Christ telling us to go out and be do-gooders in the name of the church. Jesus is sending us out to do the work that springs from a heart filled with compassion, with empathy, with doing our best to experience another's pain and then do what we can to alleviate it. Ultimately, it is the pain of our Lord, who is compassionate towards all. And our shared calling is to do what we are able, with God's help, to be vehicles for Christ's healing touch, saving grace, and word of hope.
The harvest is plentiful, and we are the laborers today in a field filled with weeds and hungry for the harvest. In a twist on the image in the gospel, may we shake the dust from our shoes and get going; dusty shoes are shoes that sit unused. Christ calls us to get up, move as the Spirit moves, and be about the work given us to do—for the sake of the world and for the sake of our souls, filled to overflowing with grace and gratitude. Amen.
