The Price of Compassion

Proper 21C; Amos 6:4-6; Luke 16:19-31 St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC 9/25/2016

Jim Melnyk: “The Price of Compassion”

As we all know by now, earlier this week a gasoline pipeline break in Alabama caused gas shortages over much of the southeast.  Gas stations with their pumps covered with plastic bags, indicating the station was out of gas, was a common site early through mid-week – even this morning.  A state of emergency was declared in several southeastern states, including North Carolina, designed to reduce restrictions on tanker truck size and inspections to allow more gasoline deliveries to the region until the pipeline could be repaired. 

But, the state of emergency declared wasn’t just about gasoline delivery. It was also supposed to help the state hold down price gouging by some who saw a unique, if not brief opportunity, to cash in on the shortage.  Within days the cost of gas went up 25-35 cents per gallon in our area, and there were reports of station owners and companies subpoenaed for price gouging – with some reports of prices going up to $2.99, $3.99, and even $9.99 a gallon in the state along with thousands of complaints filed. 

All this reminded me of an editorial cartoon I saw many, many years ago in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo; a storm which devastated the South Carolina coast and made its way up into the Charlotte area - a cartoon I have kept close by ever since.  The cartoon is fitting in light of today’s Gospel parable.

It showed a brick building standing in the midst of the wreckage following Hugo.  Across the top of the building there was a huge sign which read, “Hugo’s Hardware.”  There was also a sign covering the front window with a list of available items needed in the wake of the storm. “Ice: $10.00 per bag, Chainsaws: $600.00, Flashlights: $50.00, Batteries: $30.00,Compassion: $100.00.”  Compassion: $100.  Sounds a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it?

I guess it also sounds a bit cynical in light of a mere 15% bump in gas prices – a bump most certainly modified based on the anti-gouging laws enacted in part as a result of what went on following Hugo in 1989.  What happens to a community – what happens to society – when compassion becomes just one more commodity on the market?

Today’s parable also reminds me of a movie I’ve seen several times over the years called “The Name of the Rose.”  The story told in the movie is a murder mystery that takes place in an Italian monastery during the middle ages.  The main character is a medieval Sherlock Holmes of sorts named William of Baskerville.  One scene shows several monks in the nearby village coercing rather harshly tithes of money, produce, and livestock from the poor villagers. 

Several scenes later William and his young assistant are down in the village when a gate in the monastery wall high above the village is opened.  A flood of the monks’ leftover food scraps and garbage is dumped down the hill. The poverty-stricken villagers, who have had so much of their sustenance taken from them, rush to the hillside to scavenge among the scraps – fighting one another among the refuse to find something edible.

Watching the scene unfold, William comments, rather sarcastically, to his assistant, “Such is the never-ending charity of Mother Church in action.”  In the monastery atop the mountain the monks practiced perfect liturgy, copied beautiful manuscripts, ate sumptuously, and reached for heightened levels of spirituality.  They took from the peasants of the village and gave back scraps of food in return, all the while trying to identify a murderer in their midst.  Compassion, my friends, $100.

Of course we all know that compassion that costs the receiver an exorbitant amount is not compassion at all.  During an emergency any attempt to make a financial killing off the hardship of others isn’t compassion.  And a state of emergency shouldn’t have to be declared in order for human beings to treat one another fairly.

Today’s Gospel lesson raises the question: “Why do we fail to see the discomfort around us – or perhaps, seeing the discomfort, why are we not moved by it to act?”  The parable Jesus tells a group of critical Pharisees also begs the question, “What will it take to get certain unseeing people to act with compassion?”  And Jesus tells us that for some, even a messenger who returns from the dead will not be enough to soften a hardened heart.

Today’s parable is not a lesson in economics, nor is it a commentary on a social problem.  It’s a story about compassion. 

It’s a story about a certain rich man and his brothers who, though faced every day with the reality of human need in the person of Lazarus, choose not to see or act.  The man and his brothers, it seems, are quite comfortable on their beds of ivory, eating sumptuously, and grieving not at all over the ruin of Lazarus and anyone like him.  In the parable it becomes obvious that the rich man knows enough about Lazarus to recognize him later in the story standing alongside Abraham; who symbolizes the fullness of God’s covenant with God’s people.  In fact, as the story unfolds, even after death the rich man sees Lazarus as nothing more than a servant who should bring him cool water or warn his brothers.  The rich man sees Lazarus day after day with his eyes, but he never sees him with his heart.  There is no mercy – there is no compassion – for Lazarus.  Luke’s gospel, we learn, is hard stuff.  Luke’s Jesus gets right in our grills, as we’ve seen all summer.

Time and again our Lord Jesus calls us to a transformed life – to become not just transformed people, but transformed communities as well – that means a transformed Church and a transformed society. The kind of transformation Jesus calls us each to experience begins with a renewed sense of compassion – or as St. Augustine put it, “Heartfelt sympathy for [other’s] distress, impelling us to help [them] if we can.”  Compassion – a gift of care – most certainly not a commodity – given freely out of love.

To paraphrase the late Henri Nouwen, “Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and [humanity is humanity,] but also that our neighbor is really our fellow [human being].”  Nouwen goes on to say, “Compassion has nothing of distance and nothing of exclusiveness about it.”  This means compassion cannot cost the one in need – it cannot cost money, it cannot cost identity, it cannot cost human dignity.  Compassion that costs the receiver is not compassion. 

It means that compassion cannot be refused a person because they are either rich or poor; black or white; male or female; old or young; republican or democrat; protester or supporter; Christian or non-Christian. 

Compassion must be offered freely for it to be compassion, and it comes when we recognize we are all in this world together – that each and every human being is created in the image and likeness of God.  Compassion does, however, cost the one who gives. 

Compassion cost God a Son.  Compassion cost Jesus the cross and his life.  Nouwen reminds us, “Risks are involved [with compassion].  For [having] compassion means to lay down a bridge over to the other without knowing whether [that person] wants to be reached.”  Another word Jesus uses for this gift of compassion is servanthood – as will be proclaimed in the offertory anthem later today (and printed in your bulletin): “Brother (and sister), let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you; pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.”

Compassion is risky.  Offering compassion, like offering forgiveness and love, can result in rejection, pain, loss – even death.  Most of us, I suspect, face that sort of risk with some trepidation.  But with the risk that comes from being compassionate people, there also comes the promise of resurrection.  And it is through an understanding of love and mercy that the resurrection becomes real in our lives and we become a transformed people.

Compassion led Jesus to the cross and allowed him to embrace its hard wood.  The compassion of God raised Jesus from the dead.  And it is through our compassion for one another – and through our compassion for the Other as well – that Jesus is made incarnate again and again in our hearts, and even more so, Jesus is made incarnate once again in the life of this world.

Dead Enought To Raise

Proper 20C: Luke 16:1-13 St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 9/18/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Dead Enough to Raise”

What in the world do we do with a parable about a crook who is made out by Jesus to be a vehicle of grace?  Nobody seems to know for sure – and it’s hard to find people who agree with one another wholeheartedly on how to read this parable of the Unjust Manager.  Yet Robert Farrar Capon, a modern day scholar on the parables, does just that – he calls it a parable of grace.

We start with a manager who allegedly squanders his master’s money – the Greek implies he is falsely accused.  It’s not just bad business decisions we’re talking about here.  The word Luke uses to describe the man’s business skills is the same word used by Luke to describe the reckless actions of the prodigal son in an earlier story.  Someone apparently is out to get him, and the boss, without any double checking, gives the manager his notice. 

But before the guy clears out his desk, he goes to a couple of company debtors and cuts a sweet deal with them in an attempt to assure himself of a job in the days to come.

To one debtor the manager says, “Take your bill for one hundred jugs of olive oil (that’s about 900 gallons) and change it to fifty.”  To another he says, “Take your bill for one hundred containers of wheat (that’s at least 1,000 bushels) and change it to eighty.”

As far as we can tell, the master of the business has been double-crossed by his manager, and yet – believe it or not – the master commends the manager for his cunning action.  Perhaps the master realizes he messed up in the way he treated his employee, and he has to laugh at himself when his actions come back on him.  Nearly two thousand years later we’re still trying to figure out exactly what it is Jesus is trying to tell us! 

We could speculate, as many scholars do, that the owner may have been dishonest himself, pushing his manager to cook the books – overcharging his clients, or possibly charging exorbitant interest rates – something that would have gone against the teachings of Torah: sort of like those challenged centuries before by the prophet Amos – merchants who used false weights or kept a finger on the scale to increase their profit and feed their greed. 

 We don’t know if the debtors were deadbeats, far behind in their payments – in which case getting eighty percent, or even fifty percent, on the dollar beat dealing with bankruptcy claims – and would have made the boss happy.  We don’t know if they were honest businessmen trying to deal with books that had been fixed, and the manager was compensating for the owner’s greed.  We don’t know if everything was on the up-and-up and they had every intention of paying the agreed upon price – and then made out like bandits thanks to the actions of the manager.

All we know is that the manager was seen as shrewd by his boss in revising the accounts.  Perhaps he was he simply cutting out his share of the profits, figuring it might secure him a job in spite of his loss, and therefore the master admired his strategy? Was he cutting out illegal interest rates in an attempt to make his master look good in hopes of keeping his job?  Or, was he taking one last shot at his boss for getting fired?  We just don’t know anything for sure – at least at first glance.

We do know, however, that Jesus liked to use outsiders, outcasts, and anti-heroes to prove a point.  Many of his parables were scandalous in who they portrayed as unfaithful to the Covenant and who ended up as faithful witnesses to God.  Remember Jesus breaking bread with tax collectors and sinners last week? 

Remember the prodigal son?  He squanders family, friends and wealth – remember that he’s described in the same way as this reckless manager?  The prodigal becomes a vehicle for repentance and reconciliation.  His actions become the stage upon which the unconditional love of his father is acted out.  His story calls attention to the older brothers’ struggle with his own faithfulness and love, and therefore reminds us of our own struggles as well.

The story of the Good Samaritan uses a heretical, enemy-turned-hero to draw attention to the actions of a priest and a Levite who ignored the greater teachings of Torah in leaving a wounded man to die along the roadside.  Jesus’ portrayal of the Samaritan underscores his teaching to love not only our neighbors, but the sojourner or alien in the land, and our enemies as well.

Even the wider faith tradition followed by Jesus reveled in the same storyline.  Consider Jacob, who deceived his father and stole his brother’s birthright.  He took both Laban’s daughters as wives, then stole most of Laban’s flock.  In the end, God named a people for him – Israel.

And then there’s this dishonest manager, who sees his life falling apart before his eyes until he comes up with a plan that captures his master’s attention even as he helps out those who owe his boss money.  Today’s parable reminds us that while God’s grace is always present – always available to us – perhaps “grace works [best] on those it finds dead enough to raise” (Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of Grace); and certainly the manager in our story sees his comfortable life dying before his eyes. 

Capon basically sees this parable as a story about a con man told by someone who was treated by many as a con man and criminal himself.  Like Jesus, the manager “dies and rises.”  “Like Jesus…by his death and resurrection [the manager] raises others” – especially those in debt to his master].  But…most important of all,” according to Capon, “the unjust manager is [a] Christ-figure [because he is held in contempt] like Jesus” (ibid), and grace comes to us via brokenness rather than respectability.

Theologian and author Dallas Willard once wrote, “The Gospel is less about how to get into the kingdom of heaven after [we] die, and more about how to live in the kingdom of heaven [while we’re still alive],” and today’s story is about that struggle to be faithful in the now rather than the later.

The dishonest or shrewd manager turns out to be yet another anti-hero of the parables – one who in this instance helps Jesus remind his followers, and the Pharisees who are listening in on the story, how real the allure of status, possessions and wealth can be – and how real a struggle to be faithful to God can be for those who are caught in the grasp of their own wealth.  The manager – for all his alleged squandering and his cunning glory – reminds us how “our relationship to [wealth] tests our faithfulness [to God]” (Christian Century). 

Our anti-hero challenges us to look at the resources – the blessings – we have, and decide how we might use them to build relationships rather than hurt or destroy them – challenges us to consider how we might help others rather than hinder them.  How we might look to live into the kingdom of heaven today rather than worry about how we’ll get in to the kingdom after we die.  And only we can make those decisions for our own lives. 

We are all unjust managers or masters at some point in our lives – but Jesus is still there for us – still invites us to live into the kingdom.  As my former New Testament professor reflected just the other day, “The end of our story, like the end of the [manager’s] story, is not, thank God, either our righteousness or our wickedness.  It is the Master’s creative and redeeming Word” (christopherbyranonline.com, 9/17/2016).

As stewards of God’s many blessings ourselves, our first call – our chief duty – is to be faithful in our response to God, and then faithful in how we love and serve our neighbor.  How we use the many gifts we have from God “is a clear and accurate indicator of our priorities” – of what we find most important about our lives and our faith (Christian Century).  The parable of the Dishonest Manager, with all its strong-worded morals tagging along, calls us to pay attention to our faith – and to our commitment to serve one another in God’s love.  It calls for us to use our gifts wisely and faithfully rather than be used by them. 

Indeed it is a challenging call to answer, but we have the strength and the grace to make it happen.  After all, we follow the greatest anti-hero of them all – Jesus the Christ.