The Promise of Compassion

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Well, welcome everyone. I'm Debbie Manning, and I'm part of the table team, one of the pastors here on staff. I always love to be able to preach during the Advent season. Here we are, already in the second week of Advent, in this season that invites us to live in the tension of the "already" and the "not yet." It’s a season where we sit with the messiness of life and hold onto the promise that is about to come.

I don't know if I'm hearing things, but as Cody said, we are in an Advent series based on Kate Bowler's The Weary World Rejoices. Maggie Keller kicked us off last week, and the series is focused on promises—God’s promises to His people. Maggie spoke about the Promise of Truth, drawing on the prophet Jeremiah from the Hebrew Scriptures. Jeremiah was a truth-teller who saw the world through his tears, yet also saw something beautiful and sacred shining through. Advent offers us permission to see the world as it truly is while still holding hope for the future—a future that every now and then we get glimpses of.

Tonight, we are talking about the promise of compassion, which is one of my favorite topics. In this Advent season, we anticipate God’s compassion most clearly revealed through Emmanuel, God with us. The root of the word compassion is in the Latin, meaning "to suffer with." It carries this deep idea of being with each other, God with us, seen through us. And I think whether we realize it or not, this happens all the time in our daily lives—God is with us, and He often works through us, even if we don’t always name it.

Here’s how I know that. As I was preparing this week and studying about compassion, I looked at my calendar and reflected on the week. I realized how God’s compassion has been visible all around me. My dad, 88 years old, fell right before Thanksgiving and broke his femur, so he’s been in a rehab center. All week, I’ve been going back and forth, taking my mom to visit him and attending patient care conferences. Over and over, even when my dad, who can’t hear well and sometimes gets a bit crabby, would say things that didn’t make sense, I saw compassion in the way people cared for him—people willing to be with him in his difficulty.

I also saw compassion in Andrea’s life this week. Andrea lost her husband, George, a few weeks ago. We met to plan the funeral, and her friend PK showed up to take notes and help with whatever was needed. Andrea shared how Ellen and others from the church had already organized to bring food and help with the details. Later in the week, Kathy Pope gathered a group of women here to sit with Andrea and offer support. This is compassion—God showing up through others, this desire to be in it with someone, to stand with them in their pain.

On Friday night, Gino, whose wife Lynn passed away a year ago, gathered a group of people who had helped care for her. There were about 30 people who showed up to remember Lynn, share stories, and express their gratitude for the care they had offered. Every person there had a story about what moved them to step up and say, "I’ll take care of Lynn." That’s compassion in action—standing together through difficult moments.

I’ve seen it in smaller moments too, like picking up my grandkids from school. One of them was struggling with her energy and emotions, and her teacher, Mr. Brian, was compassionate, telling me how well she’s doing and offering reassurance. This is compassion too—working with each other, being there for one another. So, it’s true—God’s compassion is seen all around us if we just pause and take a moment to look.

This week, we’re in the first chapter of the book of Luke. In this chapter, Luke prepares us for the birth of Jesus, starting with the story of Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. They were a faithful, devout couple, but they had no children because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both old. They had longed for a child and had prayed for one.

You may be familiar with this story. Before the angel Gabriel tells Mary about the child she will carry, he appears to Zechariah while he’s performing his priestly duties in the temple. Gabriel tells Zechariah that Elizabeth will have a son, and they are to name him John. This son, John, would become John the Baptist and prepare the way for Jesus.

However, Zechariah, understandably, is doubtful and fearful, so Gabriel renders him mute until the child is born. When the time comes for the child to be named, Elizabeth says his name will be John, even though it’s not a family name. Those gathered around are confused and turn to Zechariah. He writes on a tablet, "His name is John," and as soon as he does, his tongue is freed, and he begins to speak, praising God. This is the beginning of Zechariah's song of praise.

In this song, Zechariah speaks of God’s promises—how God has raised up a mighty Savior from the house of His servant David. He speaks of the mercy and faithfulness of God, and how the coming of this Savior will fulfill the promises made long ago. Zechariah says that this child, John, will prepare the way for the Lord and give His people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.

Zechariah praises God for the tender mercy of God, saying that the dawn from on high will break upon them and guide their feet in the way of peace. This is the fulfillment of God’s ancient promises, not just to Zechariah and Elizabeth, but to the whole world.

In this moment, Luke ties the ancient biblical promises to the present reality of what is happening. The centuries-old promises are finally being realized. The people of Israel, who had suffered under the oppression of one empire after another, are finally turning a corner. They are beginning to see the light after a long, dark night. God is about to fulfill His ancient promises.

To deliver his people, God is going to do that through Jesus. But here's what's so beautiful about Luke's story. It's the both-and, because what we see in Luke's writing is the nature of God, who cares about both the big picture and also the smaller, human stories. What we see in Luke is the personal hopes and fears of ordinary people, real people, hesitating between faith and doubt, who are called in just this moment, this particular moment, to trust God.

It's called a song, a poem, a Benedictus. But Zechariah’s song celebrates God's faithfulness. God is acting at last. He sings of God's faithfulness both through the gift of the child that he and Elizabeth have had, but also through this child who will prepare the way for all of God’s people.

The reason for God’s faithfulness is in the tender mercy of our God, because of which the dawn from on high will break upon us. That, my friends, is the promise of compassion. And it leads me to think about what the compassionate life looks like. I think we know it best in Jesus. He became flesh and blood and dwelt among us. As Maggie mentioned last week, I love the message translation: "The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood."

Jesus is God with us, so he could be God’s compassion for us both in word and indeed. When Jesus saw someone suffering, he wept with them. He stood with them, he came to their aid, he talked with the excluded and the marginalized. He ate with the outcasts. There was nothing—no illness, no status, nothing—that made anyone unapproachable or untouchable to Jesus.

This is a kind of radical compassion that says, "I’m not just here helping you, I am with you." It’s the kind of radical compassion that, as human beings, we are called to as we do life together. You know how compassion can sometimes feel like something in your gut—a feeling where you have a reaction that’s actually kind of physical, like your stomach might be churning or your adrenaline is flowing? There’s something about it. Sometimes it even feels a little painful.

But what we know about Jesus is that that compassion, that thing that moves us, is exactly supposed to do that. It’s supposed to move us because it’s not just a feeling; it’s something we do. What Jesus had to show his followers is that part of being a follower is living that kind of compassionate life. It’s an urge, something that moves us toward wholeness, toward community, toward belonging, toward unity. It hits you in the gut and sends you into motion for another’s sake. That gut feeling always causes you to go outside of yourself. 

That happened to my friend Kathy Nielsen. Many of you might be familiar with Kathy because for the last few years, she and her mission ministry, Lions Fire Pizza, have provided our pizza on Welcome Back Sunday. But Kathy and her husband Chris, who is no longer with us, have quite a story. They lived in Edina where they raised their four children. Meanwhile, she and Chris had become involved with Young Life in North Minneapolis. They began to build relationships and see the inequity in the community. They saw the lack of opportunity and began to notice the difference between the kids in North Minneapolis and their own children in Edina. This moved them. It moved them into compassion that led them to action.

When Kathy and Chris sent their last child off to college, they sold their house in Edina and bought a home in North Minneapolis. They remodeled it and kept the whole top floor for young Black men in the North community who were part of the Young Life ministry. They stepped into those places because they felt moved by compassion. They felt called to be in it with others, to partner, to come alongside, to do life together, and to help be part of moving people—including themselves, it's always reciprocal—into wholeness.

Well, from there, you know, Kathy was a D1 volleyball player at Iowa State. And so she decided that, you know, they didn't have much of a volleyball team at North High. They barely had a net and she decided she was gonna go there and, uh, see if anyone was interested in it. And over the last five years, she has built this team that barely had enough to, to supply a, a varsity team. And now they have, I think Varsity JV sophomore and an A & B team. They actually have, they actually have nets. But so much of what Kathy has done is far bigger than volleyball. It is about, um, building leaders last year for the first time one of the girls went to college.

But out of that, out of that and being in it with them and the compassion and action that she felt, um, they started a few years ago that Lions fire pizza in us because those girls couldn't come to practice 'cause they couldn't afford to not work because many of them were supporting themselves, um, living with relatives. Their circumstances were that of, um, generational trauma, sometimes generational violence, generational poverty. And so out of that came this lion's fire pizza where she can employ these girls and, um, at above, uh, living wages. I know if that's the right way to say that, and, um, allowed them to actually play volleyball and to be part of something to belong, to actually have the opportunity to grow.

That's what compassion acting on compassion can do. And here's the thing, my friend Kathy, what inspired the whole thing is when she read, um, Father Gregory Boyle's book, Tattoos on the Heart, and I love like the subtitle, the Power of Boundless Compassion. She was moved by that book and moved to act outta the compassion that she was experiencing.

So Father Greg Boyle, if you're not familiar with him, he does a lot of, he, his work is among gang members in Los Angeles. And the whole part of his ministry is to reconnect them to wholeness. And it's through training and employment and multiple supports. And this rehab program is like worldwide, internationally known. And here's what Father Boyle says: All we're asked to do is to be in the world who God is certainly compassion was the wallpaper of Jesus's soul, the contour of his heart. It was who he was. I heard someone say once, just assume the answer to every question is compassion.

Father Boyle, when he started his ministry years and years ago, he witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called decade of death that began in the late eighties and peaked at a thousand gang related, uh, deaths, killings in 1992. And what he saw was the criminal justice policies, uh, suppression and mass incarceration is the means to end gang violence. He saw this broken system and moved by compassion. He and his parish and community, they adopted what was a radical approach at the time, and here was their approach. They were gonna treat gang members as human beings.

Father Boyle asked this question, I love this so much: How do we create and imagine a circle of compassion that nobody is standing on the outside of that circle. He's got a great answer. We inch our way into the margin so that we stand with the poor, the powerless, the voiceless. We stand with those who dignity, whose dignity has been denied. And with those whose burdens are too heavy to carry.

It's that compassion that has us standing with each other. It's not a surface gesture, it's not a hallmark emotion, but it's a full bodied empathy. It's with the arms and legs. And the thing about compassion is it doesn't judge, it listens and then it gets busy meeting the needs. Here's the thing about compassion, and this is maybe why we don't always step into those nudges, is it takes time. It takes time. And sometimes it's uncomfortable and I promise you that it's costly. But boy, the rewards are far greater than the cost. Compassion is suffering with the person that's right in front of us. And for anyone who's gone through anything serious, the kind of compassion, it's like magic that goes straight to your head and to your heart. And it transforms both the receiver and the giver. It's life changing. 

On the second Sunday of Advent, I think Zacharia's song is very much our own song. Because here's the thing, we glimpse that light, right? We get these glimpses of light in that horizon, and as we're waiting for the full light of God to come through Jesus. And we find ourselves in that in between that standing in the moment of already and not yet the light has dawned. And yet it doesn't seem that it's reached the deepest, darkest inside and around us. But this is what's important, and this is where I think compassion comes in, that those glimpses of light, and trust me, that compassion are the glimpses of life. The glimpses of light is what sustains us. It's what carries us through whatever dark night we might be walking through. And it's in our waiting and it's in our living. And sometimes that waiting seems way too long, but it is God's compassion that keeps all of us in the game. And sometimes we don't even know it until we look back and we're in awe of how God has showed up over and over and over again. 

I think the question is like, so what moves you? What moves you to compassion? And when that happens, what is your response to that? Because I think the best part of compassion is that it can look a whole lot of different ways. I think it can be unique to our own wiring and gifting. And I think it's when we lean into that and we step into it, that it's just such a beautiful thing. It can be big and it can be small. 

When my dad broke his leg, um, you know, he, he and my mom, we moved him here from Colorado, um, over a little over a year ago. And so they moved here because they have seven great-grandchildren here. And they call my mom and dad—their names are Bob and Connie—they call him Bobo and Coco. And so when the grandkids found out that Bobo broke his leg, of course little Sammy Schmiesing that you see a quarterly up on the screen. 'cause I usually use some kind of video from her who has a tender heart. She said to her dad, oh, I wanna tell Bobo, I'm so sorry. So he videotaped Sammy and she, how does compassion that wanting to be with him in this, um, she sent him this video: 

“Bobo, I'm sorry that you hurt your leg. We're thinking about you and we love you. Can I sing you a song? Okay. All my memories gather 'round her, Miner's lady, stranger to blue water, Dark and dusty, painted on the sky, Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye. Country roads, take home, to the place I belong.” 

Um, That, that's too good not to share, I'm sorry. But here's what I'll tell you in seriousness. That's a small thing, isn't it? But I was with my dad, this chokes me up. My dad is not so much of a feeler as he as a thinker. And as he laid in his hospital bed with his broken femur, the second one in two years, um, and was a little discouraged, I showed him that video sent to me to show him. And he teared up and for just a moment he got a little glimpse of something really lovely and beautiful and good. And he lit up with a big smile. And I could see that he was all of a sudden hopeful, just a little bit hopeful. 

So here's our invitation in this advent season, just two things I wanna say. Sit, sit in the wonder and delight at what God has done and is still doing in your life. And it does. It takes a moment to pause and look around, look at your calendar like I did. Think about the things that you'd been involved in and how people might have showed up, whether it's meals or a card or a call or a text or a song. It's pretty amazing because when we actually pause, we see, and then we're moved both in our heart, in our mind. And I think the second invitation in this season, when you are moved, act on it. Step into it. 'cause I promise you, no matter what it is you feel moved to do or step into or show up, it matters. It really matters. So I think Sammy might be a little right in her video.

Maybe it's not the country road that takes us home, but compassion, maybe compassion is that road that takes us home where we are one and We belong and we're reminded we belong to God and we belong to one another. Let me pray. Holy and gracious God, it is so hard to slow down sometimes. Sometimes it feels like life just keeps coming at us. But in the midst of it all, we are so grateful that we have this community in this space on Sunday nights and this moment to be reminded that you actually call us to pause and slow down. That you are a God of compassion. And as followers of you, we are called to live a compassionate life too. To step into things, to link arms, to be with one another and for one another. And we're grateful that that can look all sorts of different ways and different seasons of our life. We thank you God for who you are, how you call us to live and love one another. And we pray it in the name of Jesus. Amen.