Make God Real
Proper 6A-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). Jesus had a visceral reaction upon seeing the crowds. The Greek word for compassion, splagchnizomai, has the connotation of having one’s entrails “stirred up.” Immediately in response, Jesus sent the disciples out in mission.
He told them, “Go to those everywhere who have lost the way. Tell them to take heart, for in all the earth, across all borders, behind every fence, in spite of all the Caesars, the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 10:6-7). “For all the complexity of primitive Christianity, a startling idea runs through early records of faith: Christianity seems to have succeeded because it transformed the lives of people in a chaotic world.” During this time, Christianity was not so much about doctrines or eternal salvation, but about how to live a better life here and now, within the “reign of God.” Diana Butler Bass, A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009), 26.
They prevailed, not as conquering heroes, but because they were “like sheep into the midst of wolves” (Matt. 10:16). Their objective was not to dominate but to serve. For the sake of compassion, they carried nothing but compassion. The remembered Jesus taught them to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (v. 16). Christianity begins and ends with compassion. Compassion opens the door to the kingdom of God in our midst. Compassion brings heaven and earth together. Compassion makes God real. Compassion makes us fully human.
A young Jewish woman in her twenties living in in Amsterdam in the spring of 1941, knew how to come alive and to make God real (which amounts to the same thing). Her name was Etty Hillesum. From 1941 until 1943, Etty watched her world descend into nightmare when the Germans occupied Holland. Imprisoned in the transit camp at Westerbork (before being shipped to the gas chambers of Auschwitz), she became deeply aware of God’s hand on her life.
Etty kept a journal of those years that she saw as part of a “dialogue,” with what was deepest inside her, namely, God. Etty wrote: “There must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?” “Hatred of Germans poisons everyone’s mind,” she said. It is not that a response to evil should be half-hearted or that denouncing of horrendous wrong should be tame. “But indiscriminate hatred is the worst thing there is. It is a sickness of the soul” (Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life, p. 116).
The only way to truly fight war, she said, is “by releasing, each day, the love that is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live” (p. 116). “But it is all so terribly difficult. For the way of love calls us to look for the divine not only in ourselves but also within others, including our enemies. (p. 116).
Etty wrote, “If we were to save only our bodies and nothing more from the camps all over the world, that would not be enough. What matters is not whether we preserve our lives at any cost, but how we preserve them. If we have nothing to offer a desolate post-war world but our bodies saved at any cost, if we fail to draw new meaning from the deep wells of our distress and despair, then it will not be enough.” (An Interrupted Life, p. 305)
“Etty Hillesum is a messenger of meaning to us. She invites us to live and breathe through our souls to access the meaning of life in both its glory and agony. She inspires us to defend the dwelling place of the divine deep within us and all life, and to know in our hearts the strength of love to bear all things, hope all things, and endure all things.” (John Philip Newel, The Great Search, p. 162). Etty came alive making God real.
Like Etty, and the disciples we are commissioned to follow the same path of transformation and liberation through sharing the gift and power of compassion with the “harassed and helpless.” Jesus went on to offer some appalling operating instructions.
He told them to prioritize those who have nothing. Choose poverty, simplicity, and vulnerability. Carry no weapons. Stockpile no resources. Have no back-up. Abandon your egotism. Be pure of heart. Don’t revel in ignorance, or flatten reality, or mistake naïveté for faith. Make every effort to understand the evil happening beneath the surface.
And when you’ve done all this, when you get this compassion racket just right — expect to encounter resistance, sabotage and betrayal. Jesus places the disciples in a position of extreme vulnerability. He told them that if they don’t get killed, they will certainly be beaten. The disciples were sent among the helpless and harassed, and they themselves would become the helpless and harassed. This is what success looks like. Christian discipleship is not a program, not a political party. It is recipe for proximity. We become fully human God becomes real through radical compassionate solidarity. None of us is free, none of us are well, unless all of us are well and free.
Jesus’ reference to the judgement upon Sodom and Gomorrah has nothing to do with sexual impropriety (as we tend to think). Ezekiel 16:48-49 specifically names their sin. “She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
The path to becoming fully human, the way to make God real is compassion. Yet note Jesus doesn’t say to the disciples: go forth and create shelters and food pantries and hospitals (although no doubt Jesus’ followers from the beginning until now have done just that, and there are other passages we could point to for license). He says, “Go forth and be yourself without a home. Be yourself hungry. Be yourself at the mercy of other people’s hospitality—good or bad… We are to become what we seek to aid. God in Christ showed us how this is done. Jesus’ way is not to help others from a position of distance, superiority, and do-gooder-ism. Jesus’ way is to become poor instead.” (Amy Frykholm, “A Day in the Life of a Disciple,” Journey with Jesus, 6/7/26).
This is a much more difficult proposition. We tend to judge and dismiss people who follow such instructions, perhaps even people like Etty Hillesum. We prefer to keep our egos firmly in place as we decide how to steward our resources, and how to dispense them with good sense. In this way, today’s gospel suggests, we are not like Jesus’ disciples. It’s a bit shocking to recognize that the fundamental identity of the follower of Jesus is not “helper” but helped. Not welcomer but welcomed. Stranger, not host. Not savior but saved. If we heal, it is only because we have been healed. (Frykholm)
Discipleship will disorient and disrupt us. If our overriding priority as Christians is to secure our own comfort, then we cannot follow Jesus. But rather, Jesus’ instructions suggest that there will be times when our faith requires us to violate cultural norms, fight uphill battles, and speak dangerous truths to power. We must say to our siblings in faith ‘stop making my Father’s house a home for racist idolatry and Christian nationalism’; we say to our elected leaders, ‘grift, meanness, violence, and cage matches on the front lawn of the White House are a disgrace before God.’
“To make God believable here and now is to stand in the hot white center of the world’s pain. Not just to glance in the general direction of suffering and injustice, and then sidle away, but to dwell there. To identify ourselves wholly with those who are aching, weeping, and dying. In the case of America’s longstanding racial crisis [and exploitative economic systems,] making Christ credible means moving beyond denial, beyond willful ignorance, and beyond the Band-aid approach of “thoughts and prayers.” It means deciding, as grateful followers of a brown man who died at the hands of brutal law enforcement two thousand years ago, that we will not tolerate the demon of racism in our midst for one more generation.” (Thomas)
Make no mistake: this is a confrontational Gospel. This is the terrifying good news. This is gospel medicine to cure our brokenness, heal our malaise, end our boredom, and dispel our angst. This is how we become fully alive. This is how we make God real for others and for ourselves. Jesus knows that when we go out into the world in his name, healing what is diseased, resurrecting what is dead, and casting out what is evil, we participate in the transformation of our own souls. Listen. The very heart of God is stirring within us, deep calling to deep, the Spirit crying out on behalf of a world desperate for justice and mercy. The Spirit’s gifts empower us to do the work of ministry. (Thomas)
