Compassion Comments

Compassion Comments

Matthew 5:1-12
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
February 4, 2002
Ronald J. Allen

Johnny Wray rightly and biblically reminds us that compassion is not a week but a way of life. In the Bible a range of Hebrew and Greek words are translated “compassion,” “mercy” or “pity.” These words share the idea that compassion is not simply an emotion of sorrow for others, but feeling the depth of the experience of others. Compassion is integral to God’s nature. When the Bible says that God has compassion, it means that God feels human anguish and suffering, and responds out of God’s own depths of love and identification to help the human family experience fullness of life as God intended in Genesis 1-2: abundance, love, community, mutuality, justice, peace, purpose, and fulfillment. When human beings have biblical compassion for one another, we deeply feel the situations of others, and respond out of shared experience that leads to a desire to see their pain end, and to join with them, in practical steps, in moving towards the life God wants.

From this perspective, a contribution to the Week of Compassion is not just a handout or even a gift, but is a confession of faith, an expression of solidarity with God’s purposes and with other members of the human and natural worlds. Compassion in this sense, as Johnny teaches us, is a way of life. God is compassionate towards us every moment of every day. The divine compassion stirs a responsive compassion in us towards others.

My initial impulse when preparing these remarks was to focus on the biblical readings assigned for each Sunday that contain obvious Week of Compassion themes. For instance, Micah 6:1-8 (?What does [God] require of you??) is assigned for February 4. However, thinking of compassion as a way of life prompted another approach that would not let me go. What would happen if I began the study of each gospel lesson (regardless of whether it has obvious Week of Compassion motifs with the question, ?How might an encounter with this text enlarge my understanding of God’s compassion for the world and human expressions of compassion for one another??

I am aware, of course, of the dangers of eisegesis (bypassing the otherness of the text and imposing my pre-existing ideas onto it). But the fact is that a preacher never comes to a text as a blank slate on which the text can pristinely and objectively write its message. We always interpret a text from the standpoints of our social and theological locations. I am simply being explicit (in a critical way, I hope) about the location from which I begin the explorations of biblical texts these next four weeks. Since I believe compassion is at the heart of God’s identity, it stands to reason that many biblical texts could deepen our understanding of the divine compassion for the world and our compassion for one another. Of course, I must be open to the possibility that a text may not intersect in a meaningful way with the theme of compassion.

Against this background, we turn to Matthew 5:1-12. Can these beatitudes enlarge our understanding of divine compassion for us, and our solidarity in compassion with one another?

The sermon on the mount presumes the main theme of the gospel of Matthew, announced in 4:17: through Jesus, God is moving towards the final manifestation of the realm of heaven (NRSV: kingdom of heaven). The expression ?realm of heaven? is the Matthean equivalent to ?realm of God.? Many Jewish writers at the time of Matthew thought that when God made the universe, everything was the way God intended (per our remarks about Genesis 1-2 above). However, Genesis 3 reveals that the world is fallen, i.e., it is no longer completely the way God intended. Under the influence of Satan and the demons (Satan’s assistants) the world is now broken by idolatry, impoverishment, repression, illness, social chaos and violence, and death. God, however, feels compassion for the world and intends to restore the world to its original purpose. To do so, God plans an apocalypse in which God and the angels come from heaven to wipe out of Satan and to set in place the ?realm of heaven,? a world of love, abundance, mutuality, justice, freedom, robust health, meaning, and eternal life. In the years before the apocalypse, the world will be in a state of tribulation—intense suffering as Satan and the demons try to make life so distressing that people will turn away from God.

In the broad sense, the realm of heaven is an expression of God’s compassion for the whole world. Human acts of compassion witness to that aim.

I imagine that relatively few readers of this website share Matthew’s apocalyptic worldview. I do not, for instance, anticipate that God will interrupt history in the way that Matthew and other apocalyptic writers assume. However, apocalypticism reminds us that the world as it is, is not fully the world that God intended, and that we should never give in to the temptation to think that brokenness is “just the way things are.” The world can be better than it is. From the standpoint of process theology, God is ever present in the world, compassionately feeling the world, and moving through historical process to try to lead the world towards the vision of the restored world envisioned by the realm of heaven. God does not bring the divine realm unilaterally but works with people and other elements of creation to jointly move towards that realm. Participating in the Week of Compassion is a way of saying, “I do not believe that the brokenness of the old age is God’s highest hope for the creation. I want to participate with God in helping the world become a realm of abundance, love, peace, health, and life.” Indeed, acts of compassion minister to God. For just as God feels the pain of the whole world, so God feels every act that relieves pain.

The beatitudes help the church discern how to live as community of compassion in a world of idolatry, impoverishment, repression, illness, social chaos, violence, and death. The sermon on the mount is directed primarily to the disciples. The first gospel uses the disciples to represent the church. We hear the beatitudes as addressed to us.

In the Bible, the word “blessed” often includes material security (e.g., food, clothing, water, home, land, identity, peace) and the positive experience of community. Even when life goes sour, however, many biblical writers can speak of a sense of “blessing.” In the midst of difficulty, people can be blessed by recognizing that God is present with them and that God intends to make their situation right. They do not have to give in to despair and hopelessness. By the time of Matthew, the term “blessed” came to describe those who, in the midst of the suffering of the present, recognize they will be included in the divine realm. They are blessed because they recognize the realm of God working through their circumstances or promising to transform their situations. A contribution to the Week of Compassion provides material resources that are signs of God’s will to bless all.

High school English teachers would point out that the beatitudes are not imperatives (commands of things we should do). The beatitudes are indicative statements, that is, expressions of the way things already are. These beatitudes are statements of fact. They alert the community to the presence of the compassionate God, and possibilities for interpreting life from the perspective of God’s eschatological compassion for all.
My partner in teaching Second Testament at Christian Theological Seminary, Holly Hearon, called my attention to the fact that the only truly equivalent phrase to ?poor in spirit? in Jewish literature in the ancient world is in the Dead Sea Scrolls where the poor in spirit are those who are crushed by repression and need (1 QM 14:7). They are blessed not because they are happy right now, but because they can know that God aims to regenerate their worlds.

People in Jewish antiquity mourned at the time of death. However, the expression “mourning” came to have a more particular meaning: grieving the facts of idolatry, repression, impoverishment, and other aspects of the brokenness of the old age. People mourned as a part of repentance—the dynamic action of turning away from the old world and turning towards God and the heavenly realm. People are blessed when they mourn idolatry, injustice, and other diminutions of life in the present and when they repent in preparation for a new world. From this perspective, participating in the Week of Compassion is an act of mourning in that it refuses to settle for life as it is but seeks to help bring about a fuller world, especially for those who are currently denied.

The backdrop of the saying about the meek is Psalm 37:8-11. In Psalm 37, rich people have confiscated the land of the poor (the meek). The Psalm confirms that the land of the meek will be returned to them, and that the wealthy will lose their capacity to oppress. By the time of Matthew, much of Palestine was in the hands of idolatrous Rome and persons complicit with Rome. In the tradition of the Psalm, the beatitude asserts that in the realm of heaven, God will return the land to the community so that the land itself can be a source of blessing for all. When efforts from the Week of Compassion reinforce land reform, they make eschatological witnesses.

We come to obvious Week of Compassion motifs when we encounter “hungering and thirsting after righteousness.” These visceral images often appear in Jewish literature of persons who are dispossessed. In this setting, righteousness refers to God making things right for the dispossessed. Similarly, persons who are righteous are those who align with God’s aim to restore the fortunes of the disposed.

The statement ?they will be filled? is an echo of the eschatological banquet. Many Jewish people in antiquity believed that after the apocalypse, when the realm of God was fully in place, God would put on a huge banquet to celebrate the new world. The text confirms that all who hunger and thirst for righteousness will have a place setting at the eschatological banquet table. Some interpreters think that this material resonates with the Lord’s Supper. The loaf and the cup celebrate the events that end the hunger and thirst for righteousness. Those who drink the cup and eat the bread commit themselves to a life of compassion.

Earlier we got a preview of the meaning of the term ?mercy.? The Septuagint (the translation of the First Testament from Hebrew into Greek) uses eleos and eleo? (which appear in Matthew 5:7 as ?mercy? and ?receive mercy?) to render the Hebrew hesed. Hesed is a key word that speaks of God’s compassion, steadfast love, and especially covenantal loyalty. God’s hesed for Israel is also the inspiration and model for the life of the covenantal community. This quality is also at the heart of the realm of heaven: it is a world of hesed. When the church (represented by the disciples) displays compassion, we demonstrate the new age

Jewish literature regards the heart as the center of thinking, willing, and feeling. Matthew’s phrase ?pure in heart? recalls the Hebrew idea of a ?divided (or evil) heart.? The pure, undivided, heart has but one purpose: to be faithful to God and to live covenantally in community. A divided heart brings judgment on the self and disrupts community (e.g. Matthew 7:21-27). The pure heart is a compassionate heart in that wills for all in the community to experience covenantal blessing.

As is well known, in Hebrew thought, shalom (peace) is not just the absence of conflict, but also the presence of the full range of things necessary for well being in community. The realm of heaven is a realm of peace, and its citizens are sometimes known as children of God. Peacemaking is a quality of persons who witness to the realm of heaven.

Jewish literature pictures the prophets frequently being rejected. ?Those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake? are witnesses to the realm of God who encounter resistance to their message. When Matthew changes the address of the last beatitude from the third person to the second (?you?), many interpreters think that Matthew is speaking directly to a persecuted congregation. The divine promise to those in the purviews of the ninth and tenth beatitudes is the same: God will receive them into the final manifestation of heavenly realm.

The last beatitudes perform an important pastoral function. Matthew warns the community that many people resist their testimony and demonstrations of the heavenly realm, with the result that such witnesses suffer. These beatitudes prepare people to suffer by reminding them that ultimately they will be a part of the divine realm. An irony comes into view: witnessing to God’s compassion for the world (especially when that witness challenges persons, institutions and structures who are greedy or exploitative or that maintain power by violence) may incur the kind of discomfort that compassionate witness is supposed to alleviate.

I began these explorations testing whether considering the beatitudes could enrich our understanding of compassion. I end them by thinking that a preacher could easily develop a series of sermons on the beatitudes for that very purpose.

Subsequent editions of “Compassion Comments” for February 10, 17, and 14 will not be as long as this one. However they will be even more challenging from the perspective of exploring how the assigned gospel lesson for each Sunday might prompt our thinking about compassion: the transfiguration of Jesus, temptation of Jesus, and the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus.