Core Values: Caring and Compassionate

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Colossians 3:12-17:

One of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day, and I watch it at least once a year on February 2, Groundhog Day, a moment where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather. And of course it’s sort of ironic that I do the same thing every year on Groundhog Day, because what the movie is about is Phil Connors, a weatherman, played brilliantly by Bill Murray who has to relive the same day over and over and over again. Every day is Groundhog Day. And when he starts out realizing that there is not tomorrow, Phil gives into a hedonistic lifestyle. But what he finds out is that this lifestyle doesn’t bring him satisfaction or true joy. In fact, it leads to him being miserable, which is probably best summed up by an exchange with his producer, played by Andie McDowell, whom he thinks he loves, or at least lusts for, and she says “I could never love you, because you’ll never love anyone but yourself,” to which Phil responds, “I don’t even like myself.” Not being satisfied, he then tries to end the endless cycle of being in the same day, which also doesn’t work, and finally there is a change and he begins to improve himself, not to impress others, but to make himself better, which also leads him start helping others.

At the beginning of the film he keeps walking past a homeless man asking for money, and he pretends that he doesn’t have anything, until eventually he is buying him meals and trying to help him survive through the night. Every day he goes to the same spot to save a young boy falling out of a tree, and performing the Heimlich maneuver, so that he endless repeat of the same day is helping people all day long. In many ways, the movie is a metaphor for Christian conversion. Moving from the ways of the world, to the ways of God. Moving from being self-centered and thinking only about ourselves, to becoming caring and compassionate towards the world, giving of ourselves for the needs of others. I think it’s a great metaphor for the core value that we look at today that we have identified as a congregation, and that is being compassionate and caring.

Roy Disney, brother of Walt, said “When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” Because when your values are clear you know where you stand and what you stand for, and so we have been talking about our core values not just so we know what they are, which is important, but also what they mean, or a portion of what they mean for us. And so, once again, let’s say what our core values are together. We are Christ-centered, prayerful, inclusive, growing spiritually, compassionate and caring and in service and mission. If you have missed any of those we have done before, I would encourage you to go back and listen to them and they are available on our YouTube channel or on Facebook, and soon will be on our website, which we are also working on redesigning. And today is the penultimate message.

We began by talking about being Christ-centered and talking about our baptism and what that meant for us in being reborn and centered in Christ. And when we talked about being inclusive, we heard from Paul’s letter to the Galatians that we are all one in Christ Jesus because when put on the clothes of Christ when we are baptized, that the social distinctions that the world puts forward and says are important, get washed away in baptism and we are made new in Christ. In the passage from heard today from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, although it’s possible and maybe likely that Paul didn’t actually write this letter, that it may have been written by Timothy, which it says at the beginning, or it’s possible that it was written by someone else in Paul’s name. But regardless, the letter instructs the church to remember their baptism and what it means to be made a new creation in Christ, and he says, “Clothe yourselves” remembering the new clothes of baptism, “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”

Notice that compassion is first on that list. And then we move to kindness, and so when we think about being compassionate and caring, while we might think they are same, they are different, like compassionate and kindness and different. A definition of caring is showing kindness or concern for others, or helping those who are unable to take care of themselves. That is different from compassion. In two weeks we begin the season of lent, which culminates in Holy Week with the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus, which we also call the passion story. Passion in this sense does not mean “overmastering feeling or conviction” as Webster’s defines it, but instead what they list as an obsolete definition, which is that of suffering. We call it the passion story because of Jesus’ suffering, and so when you add the prefix com to passion, it literally means to suffer with or to suffer together. So while caring is showing kindness and doing things for others, compassion doesn’t merely recognize the pain of others, but it takes that pain on for itself, not literally, but emotionally. It’s to say that when you hurt, we hurt as well. When you suffer, we suffer with you.

And so, more than likely, we are not going to be compassionate with everyone, at least not from that understanding of compassion. Because we care we are hosting our mobile food pantry. We are doing something to help those who are in need because we care for them, and we want to help them, and we want to offer Christ’s love to them be being of service. But with most of them we are not suffering because we don’t know them. It’s more likely that we are offering compassion to those we know, although not always. There can be a national tragedy, or an incident of injustice, in which we can be compassionate as well. But, again normally, compassion comes in friendship and intimacy, because compassion often comes with touch. We have the healing story of Peter’s mother-in-law from Mark this morning, and how does Jesus’ heal her? He touches her. While not universal throughout all the healing stories, it is found in the vast majority, and even stories of people being healed by touching Jesus. Touching is a hallmark of Jesus’ healings, and also in compassion and caring, and it is to Jesus we should be looking as we clothe ourselves in Christ.

And that means that being compassionate and caring are things we have to work at. While they are a part of who we are as humans, so too are selfishness and self-interest, or of being concerned only for our own tribe, rather than seeking the welfare of others. And so, just as Phil Connors makes that transition, so too do we have to make that transition. If it was easy and everyone did it, then we would not have to be told to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. We would not have to be told to bear with one another and forgive one another because we would already be doing it. And let’s face it this is some hard work, and it takes practice and it takes patience. But this list is not just what it means to be a follower of Christ, to be clothed with Christ, but it’s a list of how the people of God should, and hopefully will, be known. Paul lines out earlier in chapter 3 what the actions of the world look like, anger, wrath and speaking ill of others, and he says that’s not who we are as Christians, we are to put on Christ, to let Christ dwell in us.

In Matthew we hear a story of Jesus encountering a crowd, and they are said to be like sheep without a shepherd, and what happens? Jesus has compassion for them. He suffers with them, and as we now know he suffers for them, he suffered for us. This table is a recognition of that. This table is a reminder of God’s love for us. Of Christ pouring himself out for the world. And because of that we then called to go out into the world offering compassion and caring, offering healing and wholeness, offering the God, who in the words of Isaiah that is part of the readings for today, gives power to the faint and the weary and the exhausted and the powerless. That is what we offer to the world and so we aren’t compassionate and caring on our own, but with the power of the Holy Spirit we offer this up so that those who need compassion and caring will have their strength renewed and “shall mount up with wings like eagles.” And being compassionate and caring is something that can only be done in community, it can only be done in relationship with other people, it can only be done because clothe ourselves with love and look for the needs of others rather than our own.

And yet, we also have to look towards ourselves as well, because we can only offer love to others when we learn to love ourselves. That’s what Jesus says, love others as you love yourself, and there are lots of people, as Phil Connors says, who don’t even like themselves. But you know who loves you? God loves you. God loves you more than you can even imagine, and so if we are going to love our neighbors, if we are going to be compassionate and caring to others, we have to do the same thing to ourselves. And so for those who give yourselves negative self-talk, that is not the voice of God talking to you. And would you say the things you say to yourself to your neighbor? Probably not, so why say it to yourself? Offer yourselves some compassion and caring just as you do for others. Because to love others and even to love God, requires accepting the love that God first offers to us. We love because God first loved us. We are compassionate because God was first compassionate to us. We care because God was first caring to us. And we forgive because God first forgave us.

Rev. Nicky Gumbel, said “If we knew what people had been through, their sorrow and suffering, we would not be so quick to judge.” When we learn to live in compassion and care, which also means living in forgiveness, then we will learn not only to see beyond the surface of who people present themselves, but to see their whole self, wounded and broken, just as we are, and learn to see them as God sees them, and then it becomes so much easier to do what we are called to do. And so as a congregation who is compassionate and caring, and seeks to put on those clothes of Christ, may we be a place where people can come to learn of God’s love for them, so that they might learn to love themselves, so that they might in turn then learn to love the world, offering compassion and care because of what they have received from God and what we have received from each other. I pray that we will become to be known in this community, and beyond, as a congregation that is compassionate and caring. May it be so my sisters and brothers. Amen.