The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
June 15, 2008

Proper 6-A
Exodus 19:2-8a
Romans 5:6-11
Matthew 9:35 ––10:10

Some of you know that my favorite comic strip of all time is “Calvin and Hobbes” and that I have been out of sorts ever since Bill Watterson stopped writing it in 1995. But a thoughtful friend gave me a copy of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, so I am still able to enjoy all those times when six-year-old Calvin was imprisoned in school on a beautiful day when he’d rather have been outside exploring the universe with Hobbes...

...like the day that Calvin’s teacher, Miss Wormwood, said, “If there are no questions, we’ll move on to the next chapter.” “I have a question,” insisted Calvin, shooting his hand up in the air. “Certainly, Calvin. What is it?” “What’s the point of human existence?” Calvin demanded. “I meant any questions about the subject at hand,” replied Miss Wormwood. “Oh,” Calvin pouted, and then mumbled glumly into his book, “Frankly, I’d like to have the issue resolved before I spend any more energy on this stuff.”

Calvin’s question exasperates many an adult, especially when we’re in the middle of trying to teach him arithmetic or geography or how to clean up his room. We may even think his question impertinent.

But Calvin’s question, though not always so obviously up front, is on the mind of every six-year-old. And perhaps that’s because it is an important question, the first question of life, in fact, a question that must be seriously addressed before arithmetic or geography or room cleaning, or any other subject, ultimately makes any difference to us.

What is it all about, this experience we call life? It’s even, in a little different form, the very first question in the Catechism, and John Calvin, the great Reformation theologian for whom little comic-strip Calvin was named, reminds us that just as people with poor eyesight need “spectacles” to “read print distinctly,” so those who are dim of sight for the wretched and the poor of the world need the Scriptures to help them gain a spiritual sight that can cultivate compassion. Life is not all about us, John Calvin insists, and learning this truth is a function of spiritual vision, which we can obtain by reading the Bible.

“Well, where do you start?” someone might ask. Which reminds me of the conversation between James Boswell and Samuel Johnson about the education of children. “We talked of the education of children,” wrote Boswell, “and I asked [Johnson] what he thought was best to teach children first. ‘Sir,’ replied Johnson, ‘it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which [leg] is best to put in first, but in the meantime your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them both.’”

So, as John Calvin recommends, the Bible is a good place to start. Today’s Gospel reading, like the Bible as a whole, is about spiritual vision. Today we find Jesus going from town to town, teaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every kind of illness and infirmity. Jesus is tired, and the crowds press in on him, and he looks at all the people around him. And Matthew says that he “had compassion on them, because they were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.”

The Greek word that’s translated “compassion” here is a tongue-twister of a word that means that Jesus poured out his guts for them. Or as we might put it in contemporary English, the sight of the harassed and dejected crowds was gut-wrenching to Jesus. Our English word “compassion” means the same thing. It tells us that Jesus suffered with the crowds. He identified with them, and with their dejection. His compassion moved him outside himself and made them the center of his concern and interest. That’s what compassion does to a person.

Karl Barth says that “the fact that [Jesus] was moved with compassion means that He could not and would not close his mind to the existence and situation of the multitude, nor hold himself aloof from it, but that it affected him, that it went right to his heart, that he made [their situation] his own, that he could not but identify with them. Only he could do this with the breadth with which he did so,” adds Barth, ”but his community cannot follow any other line. Solidarity with the world means that those who are genuinely [followers of Jesus do the same. And solidarity with Jesus means that] those who are genuinely righteous are not ashamed to sit down with unrighteous friends,” just as we saw Jesus sitting down to dinner with tax-collectors and other sinners last week. It means “that those who are genuinely wise do not hesitate to seem to be fools among fools, and that those who are genuinely holy are not too good to go down ‘into hell’” for the sake of those Jesus loves. (The Doctrine of Reconciliation, IV, 3, 2)

Jesus had compassion on those who were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And Jesus called his disciples and sent them to do the same. He charged them to go out among the crowds with no more in their pockets than a dead man can carry to his grave. “Take no money with you,” he said. “No bag for the road, no second coat, no sandals, no walking stick. Rely only upon the hospitality of those you go to serve. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, drive out demons. You received without cost to you. Give without expecting repayment.”

That’s you and me and six-year-old Calvin Jesus is talking to. “Freely you have received; freely give, just as you have received freely. Die to self. Give without expecting repayment.” In other words, change the center of your universe.

It’s not all about me, this experience we call life, says Jesus. It’s about God, and about others, and about my relationship with them.

Perhaps it starts small, this caring and compassion. Perhaps it starts, as Mother Teresa suggested, by caring first just for the one person right in front of you. Then you might advance to serving two or three who need your care, then to your doing works of compassion for a small group, for a family perhaps. Gradually you may even reach “graduate-level” compassion, with a heart like the heart of Jesus, a heart big enough to care for a multitude.

Encouraging such spiritual vision and commitment is what the Bible is doing to us on this Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. It calls us to enlarge our spiritual horizons. It calls us to look beyond ourselves, to look at the world around us to see what is out there. It calls us to recognize that the Lord God had compassion on us when we were harassed and helpless, and has brought us on eagle’s wings out of our misery in Egypt. The Bible calls us to see, as St. Paul puts it, that God’s love and grace anticipate our need, that they are “prevenient,” as the theologians say it. The Scriptures call us to see that Jesus died for us while we were still powerless, that he reached out to lift us up when we were like sheep without a shepherd, and brought us to himself, not because we deserved it or were worthy of it, but because he made us the center of his concern and love.

But just as God blessed Abraham so that Abraham could be a blessing to generations to come, so we are not brought to the Promised Land of Jesus in order to sit on our own blessedness. Our purpose in life is not to hoard the blessing of God’s love for us. As one of you noted recently, God’s Church is not a bank. God’s prevenient grace, his anticipatory love we find in Jesus, delivers us from our need in order that we might offer the same deliverance and grace and love to others. We were chosen, delivered on eagles’ wings from our misery and slavery in Egypt and led to the Promised Land, not to sit on our good fortune here, but to be Jesus’ love and compassion to the world in our day, by making a home and a life for the stranger and the alien and the poor among us, remembering that it was the Lord God who did the same for us. Someone needs to teach six-year-old Calvin the Bible.

We are called by Jesus, as his first disciples were called, not only to tell the world about God, but to see the world as God sees it – to identify with it; to make ourselves at one with the harassed and dejected and helpless of the world; to go out with no more than we can carry to the grave; to go out, that is, as the poor among the poor, as the needy among the needy, to heal, to comfort, to raise up others on the wings of eagles. Do this, Jesus says, because the same, and more, has been done for you. We are sent out into the world to spend our lives as the Body of the One who spent his life for us. “Freely you have received; freely give.” Change the center of your world. Someone needs to tell six-year-old Calvin about Jesus.

“[Compassion] is not natural to man,” Johnson continued in his conversation with Boswell. “Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. [Compassion] is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason,” acquired and improved by my behaving “to a nobleman as I should expect he would behave to me, were I a nobleman and he Sam Johnson.” Which is reasoning as Johnson first learned it from the Bible, of course: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Can that be done? Can that be done today? Or is the Bible just a book of spiritual truths for olden times? Back in Jesus’ day the crowds were surely smaller by comparison. Maybe it wasn’t such a big job then. But what about today, with the crowds in need of compassionate help as large as they are now? Can it be done in our day with the world in the mess it’s in now?

But the world of my immediate horizon is not large. The world of my immediate horizon holds only those right in front of me, like the horizon of the man Rabbi Howard Weiss tells about in Los Angeles. “I was outside Schwartz’s bakery on Fairfax Avenue when I first saw him do it,” writes Rabbi Weiss. “I was waiting in my car for my wife, watching the crowd go by, when my attention was drawn to a poorly dressed young woman pushing an old grocery store cart filled with bundles of rags, paper bags, and the other things that go into living hand to mouth. A small child sat cushioned in the cart, and another walked alongside her, passengers in poverty.

“Coming from the opposite direction was a man I recognized. As he passed the woman, he turned around suddenly and called out something to get her attention. I didn’t hear what, but when she turned, he pretended to be picking up some money from the sidewalk. Green it was; how much wasn’t for me to know. He motioned that she had dropped it, and then quickly put it in the child’s lap, and was gone.

“It was less than a month later, while I waited at the checkout counter at Safeway, that I saw the man again. He was standing behind an obviously poor person who was counting out her pennies to pay for her milk and bread. He didn’t see me, but I saw him as he bent down and came up holding a twenty in his hand, all the while saying that she must have dropped it. She said, ‘No, it wasn’t hers,’ but everyone in the line urged her to take it, and finally she did.”

“The powerful thing for me,” said Rabbi Weiss, “is that I had never liked that man until then.”

What’s it all about, this experience we call life? Well, it all depends. Someone needs to tell six-year-old Calvin about Jesus. It all depends on what we see in the checkout line at Safeway. Do we just see someone on the horizon of our experience who is holding us up with her stack of coupons? Or do we see a fellow passenger in poverty who is at the center of God’s world and concern?

Jesus called his disciples and charged them to go out to serve their fellow passengers in poverty. Go out with no more than a dead man can carry to his grave. “Take no money with you,” he said. “No bag for the road, no second coat, no sandals, no walking stick. Rely only upon the hospitality of those you go to serve. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, drive out demons. You received without cost; give without charge.” Change the center of your world.

That’s the charge Jesus gives his disciples and us and Calvin today. It’s the very same charge he gave us last week when he took his dinner “with many bad characters, tax collectors and sinners.” And have you noticed that it’s also the very same charge you and I pray for at the end of every Eucharist:

“Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou has prepared for us to walk in, through Jesus Christ our Lord....” (Rite I)

“Almighty and everliving God, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the Body of your Son, and heirs of your eternal kingdom. And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.” (Rite II)

Do you see it? “Freely give, just as you have received freely.” Open yourself to a change in your spiritual horizon, and live accordingly. It makes no difference where you start, any more than it matters what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Jesus just calls us to get spiritually dressed for working the crowds out there.

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.