Compassion?

I’m rethinking what the word compassion actually means.  Ive always thought that compassion was something that we do around the holidays for people that are “disadvantaged”.  However, I’ve changed my mind.  Now, if you feel tempted to throw a stone or a rock at me, please continue to read before you do.  I promise to be nice!  I still believe in being compassionate around the holidays but I think it means something more…

The word compassion is quite idiosyncratic.  In Hebrew, this word is usually associated with  a singular noun form which means the “womb”.  The etymology and word picture carries this sense that compassion is similar to what a mother feels for her children.  It is deep, visceral, and instinctive. This rather bizarre association between compassion and the womb insinuates, I think, a deeper meaning:  compassion is more than an act; it is an event that happens deep inside of us.

This compassion was also an essential characteristic that fueled the eschatological, messianic, religious, social, and political vision of Jesus. Compassion wasn’t something that Jesus did around the Jewish calendar; it was a dominant motif that shaped His ministry. In other words, compassion was the heart, the essence of His movement.  It was compassion, ironically, that got Him into trouble with the religious elites.  The scandal that erupted during the brief ministry of Jesus was over how to interpret the Torah.  It was, among other things, a  hermeneutical battle that got nasty really quick.  This battle, which was apart of a deeper theological quarrel, was extremely nuanced and came down to this:  Jesus was moved by compassion;  the Pharisees and the Essenes, two Jewish renewal groups in first century Palestine, were moved by ritualistic purity.  And as we read the Gospel story it doesn’t take long to see that Jesus was subverting the dominant kingdom, social, and political vision of these groups.  Jesus welcomed, invited, and healed those who were categorized as impure; those who were excluded from the religious community because of defect(s). The Pharisees and the Essenes rejected and ostracized…

The storyline of the Gospels captures this “religious” war and hints why some of the religious leaders were so upset.  Mark 5 records three healing scenarios that are connected to the “impure”:  A Greek demonized man living in a cemetery, a women that was hemorrhaging, and a little girl’s funeral.  While, Jesus healed all three( you also have to wonder if the fearful response of the hemorrhaging women was somehow tied to her guilt and awareness of being “impure”) something else was going on.  Jesus was attacking the religious system that had bought into a misguided view of purity and was also critiquing the excessive demands that were dominant during this time.  For example, the Essenes had a very demanding “purity” exam.  They would not “allow the blind, or the lame, or the deaf, or the mute, or anyone with a blemish into their community”.  There were many reasons for this but the point was clear:  according to them, only the strong were called of God.  But Jesus subverted the whole purity system of the Pharisees and the Essenes and turned it upside down through His intentional welcoming of all those who were systematically ostracized.  In short, Jesus was clearly redefining the theological rasion d’etre of the Kingdom.  More importantly, the popular kingdom theology of that day, which was leading Israel in the wrong direction, was being exposed as a sham.  I want to add that I do believe that Jesus was more than a moral reformer, he was not like a social prophet pointing out the problems within Judaism.  This  movement was  messianic and eschatological. However,  compassion was also a fundamental expression within the paradigm of Jesus that it became a dominant characteristic of the Gospels.  The point is that compassion is what clearly drove Jesus to heal the leper, send out the disciples to the surrounding villages, and I would argue what fueled His Passion.  I just don’t think compassion was meant to be a virtue that we just happen to do around the holidays.  The womb metaphor implies and I think evokes a sense that compassion was/is more than doing something very nice for people.  Rather, it was/is a feeling that lies beneath the surface, deep within the interiority of the heart.  It is intrinsically connected to everything that we are and do. Just like a mother who loves her children from her womb, so God loves His world. This is what Jesus embodied in His life and ministry.  One scholar noted that compassion means “to feel with”; that compassion is “associated with feeling the suffering of somebody else and being moved by that suffering to do something.  I have many theological disagreements with this scholar but I agree emphatically with this point.  Compassion is one of those few characteristics that  is foundational to this first century movement, not just a nice little trimming on the side .  This was unquestionably the focus of  Jesus.  It was the sine qua non of His mission. It is also ours. I believe the task that is in front of us today is to somehow embody this kind of compassion to our world!!!  Not a compassion that happens once a year at a soup kitchen or at a turkey drive.  All of these are wonderful and essential but they do not fully express the powerful semantic character of the word compassion.  What we need is a compassion that becomes the dominant trait of our religious paradigm.  What do you think?