If we suppose that the essence of being compassionate is simply to have mushy feelings about somebody, we are dead wrong. If for us the word "compassion" suggests nothing more than feelings of sympathy and maybe the willingness to dole out a few dollars of welfare, then we’ve missed it. We’ve not understood what compassion is.
We’re going to be talking a lot about compassion this month. By the time August is over you will hear a dozen different ideas about compassion. But I believe that the best thing I can do to get us started is not to list abstractions but just to tell a story.
Young Esther had won what I guess you would have to call the "Miss Persia" beauty contest. When old King Ahasuerus found that his queen, Vashti, was too uppity, he sent out for all the beautiful young ladies of the Empire, and from among them chose Esther, not knowing and maybe not even caring that she was Jewish rather than Persian. Esther found herself living in a fantasy land, surrounded by more luxury and privilege than anyone could imagine. The Biblical text even describes a banquet that went on for six months without even an exercise break! Esther had it made, and, I would guess, if you had asked her why all this had happened, her answer would have been, "Just lucky, I guess."
But in other quarters of the palace trouble was brewing. A proud man named Haman had been promoted by King Ahasuerus to be the prime minister, wielding the king’s power over a wide variety of matters. But it wasn’t enough for Haman that he had the king’ s trust and favor. Haman had to have the trappings of power too. Haman wanted everyone -- and I mean everyone -- to bow down to him and flatter him. He expected you to kiss his ring, he wanted you to pay him compliments; I don’t suppose they had private jets and government limousines in those days, did they, but, if they had, Haman would have expected a free ride to New Hampshire!
Haman got what he wanted. Almost. Almost everyone played the game. Almost everyone knew which side their bread was buttered on. All, that is, except a man named Mordecai, who was one of the palace gatekeepers. Mordecai just absolutely refused to treat this Haman as if he were some little tin god. That ruined Haman’s day. Every time he went out that palace gate, here’s everybody bowing and scraping, and holding the door and grinning from ear to ear, except over in the corner is old Mordecai, with a grim look on his face and his arms folded in defiance. Haman couldn’t stand it. He had ninety-and-nine little sheep following him blindly, but he wanted that last one.
Well, the story has it that Haman jumped to a very big conclusion. He concluded that not only was Mordecai guilty of insubordination, but so was everybody like Mordecai. That is, so was every Jew. I can hear Haman now, can’t you? "These people are all like that. If you’ve seen one of these folk, you’ve seen them all." And so Haman did what brutal tyrants always do; Haman set out to destroy not just Mordecai, but the whole Jewish people. Massive overkill. It was not long before Haman had whipped up the king to set a date on which every Jewish family was to be destroyed.
There was just one thing that Haman failed to reckon with, however. His CIA, strangely enough, never told him that the abject of his hatred was the cousin of the Queen. And therefore, obviously, if every Jew is to be put in danger, that would include even the Queen. If you attack Mordecai, you are attacking Queen Esther. If you are attacking the Jews, you are attacking the king’s favorite.
And so Mordecai got word to the queen in a hurry. Mordecai informed the queen about the decree of destruction and then, as you might expect, asked her to use her influence with Ahasuerus to get the whole thing stopped. Let me read you Esther’s reply when this problem was placed in front of her, and then I want you to listen carefully to Mordecai’s challenge. I want to ask you to hear Mordecai’s challenge to his strategically placed young cousin as if it were a challenge to you and as if it were something that will instruct your sense of compassion:
Esther 4:11-16
Three key phrases: First, "If you keep silence at such a time as this"; second, "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"; and finally, the word of Esther, "If I perish, I perish."
I
First, I want you to see that compassion means owning a problem as our own. Compassion is not only knowing that there is a human need. Compassion is making that need our own. Compassion is recognizing that the human dilemma is our dilemma. Compassion is seeing that no man is an island, entire of itself, but that each of us is a part of one another. And authentic compassion begins when I know that whatever hurts someone else hurts me too.
Esther could have played this one cool. Esther had it made. She could have spent the rest of her days dining on pheasant under glass and practicing her beauty exercises. She even pointed out to Mordecai that there was a danger involved in going to the king, because the rules of the court were such that if you went to the king uninvited, he might just decide to dispatch you to death, and that was that. Esther had no way to know what might happen. And it would have been easy to have said, "This is not my fight. Let somebody else take it on."
But the words of the queen’s cousin penetrate every one of us who can read the newspapers about drug dealers on the streets and can say, "Too bad, but not my fight." The words of the queen’s cousin indict every one of us who is tempted to lock his doors and draw his blinds and pretend not to see the pain of the family next door. The words of Mordecai haunt every one of us who can dismiss the victims of racism or of poverty of or crime and can say, "I’ve got all I can do to take good care of myself." Listen to Mordecai: "If you keep silence at such a time as this … you and your father’s house will perish" If you keep silence at such a time as this, Esther, you will forfeit your integrity. If you keep silence at such a time as this, Esther, you will deny your own humanity. This is your problem too.
There are times, Christian people, when we cannot keep silent. There are times, and I believe that this is one of them, when we cannot sit on our hands and stay out of the game. The agony of family life in the homes of this community demands that we own that problem. The pain of illness, both physical and mental, is so deep that we cannot help but feel it. These things demand a response from us, or else we lose our humanness.
I think it’ s instructive that in this story it is the queen’s cousin, it is her blood relative, who presents the problem. Maybe she would have shrugged it off if it had been about some nameless nobody out there. But when the problem became not just a theory, not just an issue, but it became a person, then Esther had to respond. You see, I may be able to turn off my TV set when it is telling me about the starving thousands of Ethiopia, but I cannot turn off the man who rings my doorbell and asks for food. I may be full of theories about welfare cheats and acceptable levels of unemployment, but to the person who lives in the back alley off of Georgia Avenue and whom I see every day, I cannot be indifferent.
You and I may have all kinds of political and social opinions, but when we find out that the person doing the hurting is our brother or our sister, that changes the picture. And we respond. If they hurt, they hurt, and, "If you keep silence at such a time as this …” how can we live with ourselves?
Compassion, then, is, first of all, feeling a human need, and feeling it with urgency, feeling it with power, feeling some human need as if it were our own. Compassion begins when we see some need and say not only, "That could be me", but also "That is me. That’s my problem. I own that problem."
II
But compassion is more than that. Compassion is also discovering that you and I have the resources to meet that need. Compassion is discovering that what you thought was blind circumstance or coincidence or just dumb luck isn’t that at all. Compassion is discovering that the living God, who knows our abilities, has put us in exactly the right place at the right time with the right resources to do what is needed.
What in the world is a little Jewish girl doing winning the "Miss Persia" contest? How do you explain Mordecai at the gate and his cousin Esther at the right hand of the king? And what do you say about a frail young woman able to catch the king’s ear at exactly the right time? Do you call that luck or coincidence?
Well, I prefer what Mordecai said to Esther, "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther, it is no accident that you are here. It is not just dumb luck that put you in this place at this time. And it is certainly not your own hard work and achievement. Esther, can’t you see? It is God who has put you here. This is your moment, Esther. This is the moment you have been waiting for. This is the defining moment for you, Esther. Act now. Act now. You were meant for such a time as this.
Compassion is discovering that, strange as it may seem, you are in the cockpit. You are in the prime place. And you do have something to give, you do have something to say, you can make a difference. The problem is, of course, that a lot of us are standing around wringing our hands and saying, "I can’t change anything. I can’t do anything. I’m useless."
But I beg of you, do not count God out. Do not forget that our God makes no mistakes, and if He has saved you, He has called you. Do you agree with that? If He has saved you, He has also called you. And more, if He has called you, He has equipped you and placed you in the right place and at the right time. I am convinced that God never calls anyone to a position or a responsibility for which He does not also equip them. And so, "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" This can be your one great shining moment.
Our church needs desperately to seize a moment such as this. If we are surrounded by spiritual need and physical need and emotional need, we cannot keep on doing church the same old way. We are in this place for such a time as this, and our God is calling us to authentic compassion.
We have responded before in our history when there was a special moment: when we found ourselves in a racially changing neighborhood, we responded for such a time as that with an open door policy. When we found ourselves among young people who were not doing well enough in school, we responded for such a time as that with a tutorial program. When we found ourselves among persons recovering from mental illness, we responded for such a time as that with the Wednesday Club. If now our leadership brings us to the brink of working with troubled youth, who knows whether we have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? If someone is focusing us on single parents and their needs, who knows whether we have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
Great God, to seize the day as Esther did! To be in the center of God’s will, knowing that we are where we ought to be doing what we ought to do, empowered by His Spirit – I can think of nothing more fulfilling!
So compassion is not only owning a human need and making it our own; compassion is discovering that God has placed us in the right spot to serve that need with the right equipment.
III
But I would be derelict indeed if I did not go on to say that compassion also means that we take risks. Compassion means laying it right on the line. Compassion means selecting a strategy to serve a need, even though you know that strategy is going to be costly. It will involve a risk.
Esther had already told Mordecai what the rules of court were. Suppose old Ahasuerus had had a bad dinner or couldn’t sleep the night before. Suppose on just any old whim he decided not to welcome her when she went to his chamber uninvited. What then? She could have died. He had that absolute right.
But Mordecai had presented his case. And Esther had owned the problem as her own. The plight of her people was now her plight. Then Mordecai had pressed the point home, reminding Esther that this was the very moment and purpose for which God had put her at the King’s side. Esther’s response comes ringing down through the years. It shows us the awesome power of a confident heart: "Go … hold a fast on my behalf … I will go to the king; and if I perish, I perish. " "If I perish, I perish."
Being compassionate in any meaningful way is going to be costly. If we are going to serve this community, it is going to cost us something. It will cost us time, and carving time out of a busy life is tough.
Something else may have to give. It will cost us money; I spoke as vigorously as I know how about that last week, but I must say again, if we care about the ministry of our God through this church, we’ll do better than nickel-and-dime giving. We’ll do more than tip God as if He were the waiter at the restaurant. We’ll tithe, we’ll make costly sacrifices. Compassion will cost money.
Further, if we’re going to serve and to save this community, it will even cost us emotionally. We’ll have to confront our fears. We’ll have to face the fact that we as a church may not be quite as middle-class and orderly as we have been. We’ll have to confront the fear that other folk we don’t know will run some of the life and program of our church. We’ll have to deal with the fear that the building won’t look the same and the preacher won’t sound the same and the things we do out there might get us into some trouble. We’ll have to swallow awfully hard to learn to say with Queen Esther, "If I perish, I perish."
For I tell you, the older I get, the more I know I want my life to have some meaning. I know that whenever my life shall end, be it tomorrow or fifty years from now, I’ll want to have made a difference to somebody, somewhere, somehow. And if I perish, I perish. If my life has meaning for someone, then what does it matter if I am used up? What does it matter if I am spent? A thousand times better to burn out than to rust out.
Compassion is selecting a strategy to deal with the needs of others, even if it means risking everything. If I perish, I perish.
You see, you and I today look beyond the Queen of Persia. We look beyond the young and lovely Jewish princess. We look beyond a brave young woman who sat at the side of the king in Susa. We look beyond a young woman whose thought on the brink of decision was, "If I perish, I perish."
Instead, we look today at the young prince of glory. We look at a beautiful savior. We look at one who said, "The hour has come. My time is fulfilled … Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and die, it remains alone. But if it die -- it perishes -- it bears much fruit."
We look beyond Queen Esther to the compassion of King Jesus. Behold, he did perish, but He is alive. Forever alive.
