A Different Kind of People
I remember seeing the classic Thornton Wilder play Our Town. The character Emily dies giving birth, is buried and becomes part of a group of dead souls buried in the local cemetery who can talk to each other. One day she asks the narrator, a deep-voiced Stage Manager character, if she can return to the earth for just one day. She receives permission, and she is struck by the immense beauty of the ordinary world...but is upset and despondent that the people who are alive don’t even notice all the beauty, they pay no attention to it. When she returns to the cemetery at the end of her day, she asks the Stage Manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” He thinks for a moment, then says “No. The saints and poets, maybe. They do some.”
Saints and poets. People who to a large degree keep their eyes focused on God, and people who to a large degree see things in the world and other people that many of us do not...and then paint them in word pictures. Saints and poets are a different kind of people.
In most eras, and certainly in current U.S. culture, for the most part saints and poets are seen as anomalies. They’re usually not celebrities, rarely wealthy and under most definitions possess very little power. The bottom of the influencer scale. They live quirky lives and hold to unpopular convictions because, as Wilder says, they may “realize life while they live it.” This might not be a bad definition of Jesus-followers, actually. A different kind of people.
Like many of you, I am way-past alarmed at things going on in our country. Authoritarian decrees, avoidance of legal processes, diminishing of anti-racism protections, abandonment of allies...all these things can alternatively depress or enrage me. I’m not just talking politics here, but a more fundamental issue–the treatment of people. The thing even more deeply concerning to me than what everyone is discussing in coffee shops or while holding protest signs on Saturday mornings is a growing lack of compassion.
Compassion is something that followers of Christ are supposed to major in. As we have received, so we give. As Jesus showers us with compassion, literally “suffering with,” we turn and live out a life similarly marked. Suffering-with is a whole person experience, involving our emotions, our empathy, our inconvenience, our bearing of real costs, our physical sacrifices, our prayers, our finances. Jesus stepped into all these things and more, suffering both for us and with us. The way Christians look at race and immigration, wealth and poverty, friendship and justice requires a lens of compassion. Christians are to be a different kind of people.
It is therefore utterly incongruent to think of genuine followers of Jesus holding to any kind of Me-First mentality, whether as individuals or a nation. It is an oxymoron to think of Christians circling the wagons to take care of Self first and let the chips fall where they may for people on the margins and around the world. People of faith cannot possibly think that, having received compassion from God, we can deny it to others. It just doesn’t work. We are to be a different kind of people.
Last year, Los Angeles Rabbi Sharon Brous wrote an essay for the New York Times. In it, she mentioned an ancient Jewish practice detailed in the Mishnah. One of the pilgrimage rituals saw hundreds of thousands of people journey to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish political and religious life. Pilgrims would mount the steps and enter the enormous Temple plaza, then turn right to circle the complex in counterclockwise fashion. However, those who were brokenhearted–in mourning, sick or lonely–would go left and circle clockwise, thus walking directly against the massive current of people. If someone encountered that person in pain, they would stop and look into their eyes and ask “Why does your heart ache? What happened?” The answer might be about someone dying, a relationship breaking, or someone who was ill. The listener then would offer a blessing: “May the Holy One comfort you, you are not alone.” Then the walking continued until someone else stopped the mourner. Though this was different than knowing someone personally, it was a way in which the community could practice compassion. You can imagine that over time, the effect could be enormous.
How does one cultivate compassion in our society? It’s not by mocking people losing jobs, nor shuttering our humanitarian legacy, nor cutting funding for medicine that literally keeps people alive in poor countries, nor turning our backs on allies. These actions, and importantly, the attitudes behind them, are actually diminishing our sensitivity to treating people with compassion. The place it gets really difficult, of course, is when we need to live out that compassion not just with people we like or choose, but with those who are difficult. Here, perhaps, we need...a poet. Kim Stafford once served as Poet Laureate of Oregon, and wrote this short piece:
Champion the Enemy’s Need
Ask about your enemy's wounds and scars.
Seek his hidden cause of trouble.
Feed your enemy's children.
Learn their word for home.
Repair their well.
Learn their sorrow's history.
Trace their lineage of the good.
Ask them for a song.
Make tea. Break bread.
I’m going to say it again–the actions and attitudes that threaten our compassion are not political so much as they are about how we treat people. That is a spiritual issue. Followers of Jesus are supposed to be different. Here’s how the Apostle Peter said it so beautifully:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (I Peter 2:9-10).
If we were to live into this description, even a little bit, we would be more compassionate people. A different kind of people. Maybe even saints. Or poets.
Peace of Christ,
Dan Baumgartner
Dan Baumgartner is the senior pastor at The Cove in Santa Rosa CA and formerly served as Secretary on The Fellowship Community Board.