Compassion

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
January 17, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Next in this sermons series on our church’s religious values, Rev. Chris explores what our religious value of compassion looks like inside our church walls and beyond them.

Call to Worship Litany

Now let us worship together.
Now let us celebrate our highest values.

Transcendence
To connect with wonder and awe of the unity of life

Community
To connect with joy, sorrow and service with those whose lives we touch

Compassion
To treat ourselves and others with love

Courage
To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty

Transformation
To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world

Now we raise up that which we hold as ultimate and larger than ourselves.
Now we worship, together.

Reading

Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. “Where do We Go From Here?,” Delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention, Aug 1967, Atlanta, Ga.

I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. I’ve seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want to hate, myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities, and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love.

Sermon

When I was in high school, we read a non-fiction story written by a guy who had fought in Vietnam. He told of being on patrol one night with a group of fellow soldiers, outside the perimeter and relative safety of their encampment. They were almost done with their patrol when suddenly gunfire and explosions erupted all around them, and they found themselves in a firefight. He describes the sound of the rapid gunfire and explosions as so loud and so deafening that it became almost like a form of silence – it was all there was.

In a flash of sudden bright light, he saw that one of his buddies, a friend he had known since their school days, had been hit. He ran to him, but there was nothing that could be done. The wounds were too great. He held his friend as the life flowed out of him. He describes holding his friend while the friend died as only the first sacred moment that evening.

He didn’t want to leave his friends body there. He wanted to try to get the body safely back to the encampment, so that his friend could be sent home for burial. He knew the family, and he could not bear the thought of leaving the body there in the jungle. So, he picked his friend up and began dragging him toward the camp, which he estimated couldn’t be more than a few hundred yards away.

And then he saw the North Vietnamese soldier staring straight at him, standing only a few feet to his side, rifle raised and pointed at him. They locked eyes. He realized that holding his friend’s body as he was, he was completely vulnerable. There was no way he could let go and get to his own weapon in time. He thought he was about to die too.

And then, the North Vietnamese soldier looked down and saw that he was holding the blood soaked body in his arms. The writer describes actually being able to see the North Vietnamese soldier figure out that he was trying to get his friend’s body out of there.

The North Vietnamese soldier looked him in the eyes again, but there was something different in the stare, and then slowly began backing away, rifle still pointed directly at them, until he disappeared into the darkness of the night.

The writer of that story describes this as the second sacred moment of that evening – the moment when two combatants suddenly recognized their shared fragility – that they both bled like the other, that they both grieved the death of those that they loved, that they both had friendships so strong that they would risk the ultimate sacrifice for them.

And for one brief moment, between two people in the middle of a firefight, a war was halted through embracing shared vulnerability – shared fragility – shared humanity and interconnectedness. These are the roots of empathy, and empathy acted upon becomes compassion.

So, at a time when there seems to be so much violence both here at home and throughout our world lately, perhaps it is appropriate that today we examine the third of our church’s religious values – compassion – to treat ourselves and others with love.

It is likely that empathy and compassion were necessary among early humans because our earliest ancestors needed cooperation to survive. After all, we were and still are relatively fragile creatures in comparison to say, oh, lions, wolves, bears or stampeding elephants. There is a theory that concepts like Gods and deities are how we capture such ancient and vital values that go so deep inside of us because we have no words that truly, adequately can express them.

It is important then, that we pay attention to what God or Gods we worship. If we worship, for instance Gods or deities that are angry and vengeful, then the values we will begin to live by can too easily become hatred, bigotry and violence.

So bear with me for just a bit then, as we examine how this value, compassion, is so integral to the very foundations of several of the world’s faith and wisdom traditions. We Unitarian Universalists after all are a religious people who draw from all of these sources.

In Islam, compassion is the most frequently occurring word in the Quran. It is rooted in the principle of the oneness or unity of all things – God, Allah, is in all and the God of all things. All but one of the chapters of the Quran begin with the invocation “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful”. The Quran expresses a focus on acting with compassion toward those who suffer injustice and poverty, just as the bible does.

Confucianism bases its ethics on five virtues, the first of which is ren, which refers to altruism, compassion, human-heartedness.

Daoism speaks of the three treasures, the very first of which is compassion. Many if not most pagan and earth centered traditions derive compassion from a strong sense of interconnectedness – the sacredness of the natural world – and have developed an ethic of doing no harm.

Despite the punitive interpretations of Christianity that have sometimes been practiced, compassion has been at the core of Christianity since its earliest beginnings. Love your neighbor; love your enemies; judge not lest you be judged; the story of the Good Samaritan showing compassion to the stranger: these are all examples of teachings attributed to Jesus.

Hindus see the sacred mystery within all human beings. Hinduism and other Eastern religions embrace Ahimsa- love, genuine care, and compassion toward all living beings – as a cardinal virtue. Non-violence and doing no harm in thought, word or deed are central to Hinduism.

Compassion is also central within Judaism’s Talmud, including a story attributed the great sage, Hillel, thought to be an older contemporary of Jesus. A non-believer approached Hillel and promised to convert to Judaism if Hillel could recite the entirety of the Jewish Scriptures while standing on one leg. Hillel responded, “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to others” – a sort of reverse take on the golden rule.

Finally, Buddhism also holds compassion as an essential element. In the story of Buddha, he put off his own final state of nirvana out of compassion for others so that he could stay and help others also seek enlightenment. Buddhists teach compassion for the suffering of others. Their ideal of letting go of attachment to self can create a profound sense of interconnectedness. Scientific studies have shown that meditation like the loving kindness meditation we did together earlier can increase empathy and reduce racial prejudice.

So, compassion plays a fundamental role in all of these faith traditions. Now, to avoid oversimplification, I have to also mention that the sacred texts of many of these traditions describe some very bad, very mean and petty behavior by both humans and their deities. But that’s OK. As Unitarian Universalists who draw from many sources, we do not have hold up harmful values or worship any God who’s behaving like a jackass.

Empathy, then, arises out of recognizing both our common human fragility and the vastness and complexity of our interconnectedness. It allows us to engage in perspective taking – the ability to relate on a deep and emotional level with what our fellow humans are experiencing.

Empathy alone is not enough though. It is a feeling. Compassion is when the feeling is strong enough that we act on it. Compassion requires empathy in action – to treat ourselves and others with love.

That action can look very different, depending upon the circumstances:

Sometimes it may mean just staying with someone through a really difficult time, not trying to fix anything and just feeling the rough stuff along with them
Sometimes it may mean providing some type of much needed assistance.
Other times, it may mean hearing someone who is hurting when they tell us they just need a little time alone.
Sometimes, compassion means speaking difficult truths.

I think we struggle with this one in our churches. Too often, I hear about congregations where we tolerate unacceptable behavior because, “Well, that’s just how so-and-so is.” The things is, I think that is misplaced empathy. Compassion demands having a difficult conversation with that so and so, because not doing so harms everyone. Anxiety and resentments linger and build. In challenging situations, compassion may also require us to test the story we are telling ourselves in comparison with what other folks may be telling themselves.

Here are a couple of examples of that, taken from a composite of situations I have actually witnessed around the theistic – humanistic differences in what folks believe within our denomination.

If I am a theist, then compassion may mean saying, “Hey, after that adult spirituality class we both attended a few days ago, when I was describing my concept of the divine, and you went (clucks tongue and role eyes), the story I have been telling myself is that you think I have to be stupid to think such a thing.”

And then I have to listen and be willing to accept their story, which may be that they loved what I had said and had actually been irritated by another person who had been playing with their iPhone the whole time. Likewise, if I am a humanist, I may have to say, “Last Sunday, after that guest preacher talked all about Jesus the whole time, I overhead you asking some folks in the fellowship hall afterwards, ‘Wonder what our cranky old Humanists thought about that one?’ I’m a Humanist and that hurt my feelings.”

Because I am NOT cranky. Or old! OK, maybe not those last parts.

And again, then I have to listen and be willing to accept that their story may be, “Oh, I am so sorry. I actually consider myself a Humanist also. That’s an inside joke with my Humanist friends I was talking with – we overheard humanists referred to in that way at our Unitarian Universalist General Assembly one time.

Often, the compassionate act is to give ourselves the chance to discover the very different stories different people are telling themselves about the same situation.

And that brings me to this – tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. I have been reading Dr. King’s last book, written shortly before he was assassinated. I was struck by how many of his themes related to just what we have been discussing today: empathy, interdependence, compassion, love.

But Dr. King also described how after the voting rights act was passed, many white folks in the U.S. began telling themselves a very different story than the lived reality of African Americans, who continued to struggle for true equality. Once the extreme cruelty perpetrated on civil rights activists was no longer being displayed on their televisions, many white folks returned to the comfort of their own lives – returned to the status quo, thinking the Voting Rights Act was enough.

So I want to close with how this inequality continues in our time. How compassion is calling us into action in our present day world. I was devastated when over the holidays, a grand jury failed to indict the Clevelend, Ohio police officers who shot and killed 12 year old Tamir Rice. This despite the fact that there is a video showing one of the officers firing upon him as soon as that officer opened the door of the police car – even though the gun Tamir was holding turned out to be a toy pellet gun – even though Ohio is an open carry state.

If Tamir had been white, I have to wonder if he would still be alive today. I have to wonder, at the very least, if the grand jury result might have been very different. Having followed the reports on it for several months, it seems to me that the prosecutor in the case gave the grand jury a story designed to get exactly this outcome – no indictment.

Like with Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.
Like with John Crawford in Dayton, OH
Like with Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY.

Like with so many other unarmed African Americans killed by police in 2015. A recent study found that police in the U.S. killed at least 1,152 people in 2015, but that number is probably way too low because reporting is so shoddy. Fourteen of the largest U.S. police departments killed African American people exclusively. Police in the U.S. are 4 to 8 times more likely to kill black people than whites.

The contrast between what happens to young African Americans holding toy guns and a group of white people armed to the teeth with very real weapons who take over a federal facility in Oregon could not be more glaring.

And so once again, empathy alone is not enough. Compassion calls us to do more than, like me, sit at home and yell at the television news – to do more than fill our Facebook and twitter feeds with outrage – to do more than talk about it here at church, though doing that is important.

Compassion calls us into action, because we cannot allow the Gods of vengeance and oppression to rule; because our media may well lose interest in these police killings, and, if those of us who are white have had empathy but no action, we risk falling back into the status quo, just like the folks Dr. King described during his time.

And yet the killings will still continue.

And the racism that study after study shows is systemic within our educational structure, and our immigration system, our housing system, our economic systems, our voting systems, our banking system and on and on and on will still continue. Racism threatens to diminish the spark of the divine within all of us.

Compassion in action is how we kindle it and shine it brightly so that we may all know the ultimate richness of our humanity – a richness we can only know when we, all of us, are allowed to reach for our full human potential. Racial justice is the focus of Unitarian Universalist Standing on the Side of Love, 30 Days of Love Campaign that started yesterday.

Now that’s a mouthful, but in the gallery after the service today, you can visit a table where folks from our UU People of Color group and our White Allies for Racial Equity group will be happy to help you find out the many different ways you can learn more and get involved.

“Compassion – to treat ourselves and others with love.” It seems so simple, yet it can be surprisingly difficult to live out. Nurtured by the wisdom of so many ancient traditions, moved into action by an ever increasing understanding of our shared fragility and our immense interconnectedness, may compassion be the divine light we choose to spread into our world. Amen.

Benediction

Go out now with hearts filled with compassion: a compassion that nourishes your soul and moves you toward action for justice.

Go in peace. Go with love. May the spirit of this religious community and the bond we share be with you until next we gather again.

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Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 16 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.