Choosing compassion: Suffering with others

Reynoso ("Formed through suffering" in The Kingdom Life) repeatedly talks about how while suffering can be redeemed by God, it is not something we ask for, except for in one instance: we are called to bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2).

Now this seems like a choice; I could choose not to enter into another person's suffering, I could look away. But in I Corinthians 12, Paul writes about the community of believers being the many parts of one body. And "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it...(vs 26)." Looking away doesn't mean I escape the effects.

And Jesus did not look away. Mark 6:34 says, "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things." He arrived, he saw, he had compassion. The Latin roots of the word compassion mean to suffer with or to suffer together.

Here are some thoughts on having Jesus' compassion:

Presence
Jesus sees the crowd, he is moved by them, and then he walks among them.

Just as knowing that God is near us and not indifferent to us is a consolation to us in our times of suffering, we need to choose to enter the suffering of others with our presence. I think we shirk this role because it seems like not doing anything. It's just being around. It's being around without a chore to complete, without the right words to say, without anything but being there. It'll probably be awkward, but that's ok.

Provision
While he is with the crowd, Jesus teaches them. That's what his compassion moves him to. With our limited abilities, I think we have a limited capacity to provide tangible help in suffering, but we still can try and should respond to opportunities to do so. In fact Paul's encouragement is to "...not become weary in doing good...as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers (Galatians 6:9-10)."

When we are able to push back against the suffering of others, we are participating with God in bringing goodness to the world and extending the reign and rule of God's kingdom.

Sometimes this means a material response, food, shelter, clothing, etc. Sometimes this means using our influence or knowledge. Middle-class Americans have tremendously more influence and knowledge and most people across the globe. Sometimes it's an act of service, picking up medication, volunteering childcare, fixing a broken toilet.

Prayer
Jesus got so into teaching the crowd that they were together through several meal times and in the middle of nowhere (Mark 6:35). They had a spiritual need, and now the crowd had a physical need, they were hungry. This is the five loaves and two fish story. I think we always tend to focus on how this small amount of food miraculously feeds five thousand. We miss the part where Jesus holds on to not enough food, looks up to heaven and gives thanks (vs 41).

In suffering with others, we pray. We pray with what we know is not enough. We trust the Holy Spirit to perfect the prayers we cannot form (Romans 8:26-27).

Perseverance
Suffering people frequently suck. They make choices that hurt themselves or others more. They say awkward things or don't say anything at all. They can be ungrateful. And even if they suffer in a saintly way, sometimes the suffering just keeps on coming and it doesn't end soon, or soon enough.

Welp, as members of one body there's no get-out-of-jail-free card. In fact, in John 17, Jesus says that our oneness, unity, ability to be one body, is evidence to the world of the love of Jesus (see John 17:20-23, The Message).

We must continue to be present for one another, to provide for one another, to pray for one another. We press on even when the miracle healing doesn't come, or the promised "better" doesn't arrive, especially then because our God is a God who perseveres, who does not wait for us to be pretty before he comes to us and loves us.

As we celebrate Easter, we celebrate a risen King, who came to earth as a baby and was here with humanity on earth, experienced the joys and discomforts of our lives while living in perfect unity with God the Father. He died on the cross, was buried, and on the third day beat death and rises again. The perfect, Creator God of the universe fully suffered humanity's death sentence. In doing so, death lost its sting. In Jesus, there is life. We can choose to follow him as our King, a King who knows our every pain, our every heartache, a King who promises us rest.

Alleluia! He is risen!

 

Suffering: Taking up our cross

And [Jesus] said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. ~Luke 9:23

We're wrapping up Good Friday when we remember Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary where he was nailed to it and upon which he died though he was innocent in every way. So it is fitting that we consider the sufferings that come from taking up our own cross as we obey and imitate Christ.

For the past several posts, I have not addressed the sufferings that come from our choices. Sometimes, as mentioned here talking about the roots of suffering, we make sinful choices which have consequences. But sometimes we make the right choice, and there's pain. We choose Jesus over our own way and instead of glory there is suffering. That's a really bitter pill to swallow.

I remember at one point in my singleness being super mad at God. "I'm doing my best to live in a way that pleases you, God, and I'm out of my mind lonely." Others in following Jesus suffer small indignities and large. Some are looked down on, seen as foolish, aren't hired, aren't promoted, get reassigned. Others lose friends, lose livelihoods, lose their freedom, lose their life. And it's not fair, and it's no surprise. Such is what we are promised as followers. Love cost Christ his life. We are called to love, and it will require no less of us. And that's frankly scary.

Reynoso ("Formed through suffering" in The Kingdom Life) has this encouragement:

Because we know that obeying God and living by kingdom values will cause us to pay a price, sometimes we choose to avoid suffering and settle for less than God has intended for us. In doing so, we miss out on experiencing the powerful reality of Paul's words, "that I may know Him...and the fellowship of His sufferings" (Philippians 3:10, NASB).

In the garden of Eden, we see a perfect relationship between God and Adam and Eve. One of the main threads of the whole Bible is God's work through history to bring reconciliation between himself and his people, to make the relationship whole. On this side of heaven, while we still live in the fallout of sin, everything that brings us nearer to God has a sweetness to it. So sharing in the suffering of Christ has a promised sweetness in the midst of the pain.

Unfailing

I came across this saying in Proverbs as if for the first time:

What a person desires is unfailing love (Proverbs, chpt 19)

As our neighborhood shepherds one of our own through spousal abandonment, this notion of unfailing love has clanged around in my heart and head for the past several weeks.

I think about the life-shattering pain of having a friend and partner of 25+ years walk out, and I think about the contrast with unfailing love. I think about my relationship with my parents and my kids. While my parents have loved me well, I'm coming to terms with the fact that they are in the last leg of their race, nearing their finish line. Death with bring their love to an end (in many ways, but not all perhaps.) When I look at my kids, I wonder if they know that I want to love them despite what they do because Jesus loves me despite what I do? I'm not very good at it, mine is a very much failing love.

Upon reflection, so many things in life remind me of this thirst for unfailing love, an insatiable thirst. Except in Jesus. Now that I've been meditating on unfailing love, I'm finding that the Bible refers to the unfailing love of God all the time. The Jesus Storybook Bible calls it something like God's "never failing, never giving up, always and forever love".

Anyways, I'll keep writing on this periodically, I think. It's been a very fruitful couple weeks thinking about this.

That's ugly

Somehow in the awesomeness of Christmas, the part where Herod kills all the baby boys in Bethlehem has never really hit home with me,

¹⁶ When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. ¹⁷Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

¹⁸ “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”

~The good news according to Matthew, chapter 2

My son is in the two-and-under age range and I know many families with young sons. I cannot fathom how devastating it would be for all of us to lose our sons on the basis of such a decree. Just the thought of it brings a deep ache.

When I first read this yesterday, I felt how can the loving gift of baby Jesus sit in the context of so much senseless death and weeping?

Our church community is in the midst of a venue change as we handle the needs of a numerical growth. At the same time, we have suffered the early passing of several members from disease.

It is very hard for me to accept goodness in the midst of death and suffering. I want good to be good and darkness to be absent. I want answers and I want justice.

And I don't get what I want.

So today, as I continue to process goodness and, let's call it what it is, evil, the only thing I can say is that sin is ugly. Evil is really evil. Herod was wrong. Disease is something God is going to banish when his ultimate victory and reign in the world come to be. Let that day come soon!

In the meantime, I realize that I tend to want to let sin slide. Or at least, the sin in my life. It's not that bad. But it is. It is a gross, disgusting affront to God when I am not kind and gentle with my children, when I don't watch what I say and what my tone is. And that's true no matter how tired I might be or how honestly annoying they are. Thank God, that he is bigger than my tongue and with his strength I can do differently.

Lenten reading

Here is part of the Daily Office from the BCP for today:

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying,

“I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

And again,

“I will put my trust in him.”

And again,

“Behold, I and the children God has given me.”

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
~A Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2

The urgent long view

My current conundrum is that we don't know how many days on earth we get. I was remembering my friend Brian this morning. He has no more days; I have no more days with him. I still find that deeply saddening.

If I knew I had only 30 more days in my life, I would feel a deep sense of urgency to call some of my best friends and tell them, "I have 30 more days and beyond that my hope is in Jesus Christ, beyond that I believe I will experience beauty and majesty that we only get a taste of in this life, beyond that I will be in eternity with God. You too can experience hope, beauty, and majesty in this life and the next because of who Jesus is and what he has done."

But I don't know that. I may well have 30 + 30 years left in my life. And how sweet would be it be to have all those years with these friends and new friends? When I take the long view, I feel I mustn't force my hand, mustn't try and run ahead, mustn't try and rush things. Instead, I should live and enjoy each moment for what it is. Not rushing relationships to me means being a normal friend, not being a weird religious freak who is acquainted with someone. But that means that it might be year 8 in a relationship before someone says, "Will you pray for me and my family;" something that happened just last week. Year 8! In the urgent world, who has time for year 8? But in light of eternity, what is 8 years? Nothing.

In any event, I feel kind of stuck. So there it is, the problem of the urgent long view.

Remembering Brian Ellis, 1978-2010

A graduate school trench-mate died this past weekend in a tragic accident.

I first encountered Brian in 2004 in a class on the neurobiology of sociality. He was an anthropology student at the time. I don't know that I actually met him, but he was the tall guy with a long blonde pony tail and eventually, I matched him to interesting questions on our class discussion board.

In 2005, we met finally in Alan Fiske's office as we were presented an opportunity to collect some interesting research observations in families coping with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). That summer Brian, Lisa, and I faced the byzantine labyrinth that is the UCLA IRB process so that we would have institutional approval to conduct this research. Brian did most of the heavy lifting, and then he left grad school to go to France.

When he came back about a year later, he joined my department, applied linguistics and also returned to the FTD project. Alan asked Lisa and I if we were okay with his return. I guess the thought was that so much work had been done in his absence would we be willing to share those results with him. For me, it would have been impossible to think of denying him a position on the team. The IRB process was brutal and he took on so much of that; I always felt like I owed him alot. In fact, as the editors of Lang, Int, and FTD were discussing who to invite to contribute chapters, Brian was an immediate, easy pick. (He ultimately decided to pursue other interests.) Shortly after he came back to the program, I began the being-on--campus-less-and-less phase, and I saw him less and less until my last year when we met again on a schizophrenia project.

One of the best things about Brian is that he had his passions. Rock climbing and the outdoors was a huge passion for him. He made it a priority to be out and about and enjoy what he enjoyed. I remember visiting his apartment years ago and it had a piano in it. I always liked that he made the effort to have that in his life since I too played the piano and never bothered. Intellectually, if he got interested in something, he read deeply and thought deeply. As a friend and colleague, Brian's priorities could cause intense frustration when they didn't match my own. After he came back from France, he seemed to have a chronic inability to stay on top of emails and show up on time to scheduled meetings. And rock climbing trips on weekends made him inaccessible when the rest of us were slaving away and might want his input on something. But honestly, you've got to admit that flickering computer screens don't hold a candle to the sweeping vistas of California national parks.

The Byrd's song Turn, Turn, Turn is taken from the book of wisdom, Ecclesiates, attributed to King Solomon. Taking up from where the song ends, the author continues by saying "[God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men." When I think of all the beauty that Brian encountered in his life, I think he understood eternity. One thing Brian always brought to our research was the persistent reminder of the humanity of our subjects. The nature of our work brought us face to face with the little everyday tragedies of living with a diseased mind. Whenever we put up too much defensive distance, Brian would call us back to people as people. In this too, I think he was sensitive to the eternal in each of us.

But this notion of eternity is also what makes his death feel unacceptable. There are no more days for Brian. He's not going to pet his bunnies, climb another pitch, love on his girl, or tickle and teach the kids he never had. Death thumbs its nose at eternity. Our hearts cry out and say, "There is more to life than what we can see and hold." And death says, "Oh yea?"

I don't have any grand finale conclusion about things. I had hoped to hear of many more Brian adventures over the years. Mostly, I think I'm just in shock still. I'll just leave off with the rest of that bit from Ecclesiastes.

9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
~Ecclesiastes, chpt 3

Source material for the Byrd's song