By Mark Azzara
My Dear Friend,
When I was slugged recently by a soup kitchen guest I didn’t get angry and retaliate as I would have at one point in my life. I am quite familiar with the desire for vengeance but now I am seeing real signs that it’s dying, thanks to the process that has brought me to the point where I could stay calm and begin to pray for my assailant because he didn’t know what he was doing (Luke 23:34).
Note the word “process.”
When a flood of refugees is at your door, as is the case in Europe, there is a sense of urgency mixed with panic as you try to help those in need while not making yourself poor in the process. Once again, note the word “process.”
Going from fear to love is, in God’s view, what life is all about. It’s a process.
In Luke 18:18-23 a “ruler” tells Jesus he has met all the requirements of the Jewish law and then asks what else he must do. I suspect this man wanted Jesus to praise him for having completed the process of becoming devout. But Jesus answers, “Sell everything you have, give the proceeds to the poor, then come and follow me.”
Jesus, in effect, tells the man he has accomplished nothing. Jesus confronted this man’s pride to help him see that while he may have met the law’s requirements he hadn’t met God’s because he didn’t yet understand compassion and didn’t yet embrace sacrifice.
Compassion is rooted in Latin words that mean “to share in suffering.” This is what Jesus displayed throughout his earthly ministry. Demonstrating compassion requires sacrifice, a word derived from the Latin for “holy work.” Jesus exemplified sacrifice. Everything he did was holy. We mere mortals, on the other hand, severely limit how compassionate and sacrificial we are.
How do we get beyond those limits? The simple answer is: We don’t. God isn’t asking us to make ourselves compassionate and sacrificial. On the contrary, he is saying that he must do it for us. It’s a process. Or, more correctly, it’s THE process, one that only he can and must lead us through.
When we refrain from helping others out of fear we will end up poor we confess we are spiritually destitute. We admit we’re like that ruler because we haven’t yet received the gift of love for others that will drive that fear away (1 John 4:18).
Before we can address anyone else’s poverty God must deal with ours. He must alleviate that spiritual destitution because we can’t do it on our own. He must address the roots of our anger, fear, guilt, greed, laziness and pride, among other things. I’m not suggesting that God wants us to become materially poor. On the contrary, God’s process often includes resolving the material poverty we endure.
The compassion we show to others grows out of the ongoing compassion God shows us. And God is always the first one to show compassion. He always initiates the process. “We love others because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Only when he has helped us — when he has shown that he always has our backs – can we truly show compassion for others. It’s a process — one that will last our entire lives.
True compassion and true sacrifice for others require that we surrender to God’s influence over us, which will sustain us when our cheap human versions of those words fail us and we are tempted to put up the barricades and scream, “No more!”
The ruler gave in to that temptation when he “went away sad because he was very rich.” He turned his back on Jesus rather than surrender to the process. Will we?
All God’s blessings – Mark
