Compassionate Design
Isaiah 40: 21, 27-31
Mark 1: 29-39
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
Epworth United Methodist Church

There is a Native American story about a grandfather who was talking to his grandson about his feelings.  He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart.  One wolf is vengeful, angry, and violent.  The other wolf is loving and compassionate.”  The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?” The grandfather answered, “The one that I feed.”
 
There are two wolves fighting at the heart of our world as in our hearts.  
Which one will win?  The one we feed.
 
In the first chapter of Mark, as we learned last week, Jesus began his day teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.  He confronted and exorcized an unclean spirit in a fierce conversation.  Our reading this morning continues the story of that same day.  It begins, “As soon as they left the synagogue they entered the house of Simon and Andrew.” Jesus went to the home of his close friends and there he healed Simon’s mother-in-law.  Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her up.
 
Scripture continues, “That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed…And the whole city was gathered around the door.”
 
Have you ever felt that way?  Felt that the whole city was gathered around the door?  The whole family was counting on you?  The whole organization, the whole movement was depending on your action, your decision, AND that nothing you say, do, or know will ever be enough?  
 
A whole world of voices crying out for justice, for healing, for compassion, a whole city of voices of hurt and hope in our own souls crying out for compassion, until, finally, you turn off the news, turn on your Ipod, and pump up the volume; you close the newspaper and open People magazine, tune out reality and tune in reality television, toss the hundredth appeal for help and head for the mall.
 
It’s called “compassion fatigue.”
 
On that one day, when Jesus went from confronting demons to helping friends, to healing hundreds, how did he do it?  I know, he was Jesus.  But even Jesus grew weary!  Marks text gives us part of the answer, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, (Jesus) got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”
 
First thing, before light, Jesus needed solitude and silence, needed connection with the source of power, wisdom, the source of life and love, the source of his very being.  Jesus needed prayer.
 
The February issue of Sojourner magazine includes an article by Rose Marie Berger titled “Prayer: It Does a Body Good.”
 
According to the article, when someone asked the Dalai Lama last fall, in the context of war, tsunami, hurricanes and earthquakes, how he deals with “compassion fatigue,” he said, “Neurologically, we now understand that empathy is a spontaneous response in the immediate moment.  When we see someone else’s suffering, for an instant we perceive – our brain reacts – as if what the other is experiencing we are experiencing too.”
 
But as … a researcher said, “After about three weeks (of responding to the pain of another), … feelings of empathy begin to fade and the brain no longer responds to that particular stimulus… “It can be physically exhausting when we experience too much stimuli without the spiritual wisdom to understand our experience.”
 
Are we neurologically doomed to become numb of brain, hard of heart, let alone dead of spirit by the presence of pain we no longer are able or willing to bear?  The key is the difference between empathy and compassion.
 
According to Berger, in “both Buddhist and Christian traditions, a person’s ability to move from simple empathy to complex compassion is developed through intentional prayer disciplines, accumulated wisdom, and social practices.  The analysis of modern science now confirms that a person’s developed quality of compassion can have measured physical effects.”
 
Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at Harvard said,  ‘Virtuous qualities … can be developed through certain practices because of the plasticity of the brain. Prayer can literally change our brain.”  
 
“Complex compassion.”  It’s more than empathetic feelings that ebb and flow.  “Complex compassion” is connection actively cultivated in community.  God’s compassionate design is for a world in which pain is not endured alone.
 
Coretta Scott King, who died this week at the age of 78, wrote,
Prayer is how we open our hearts to God, how we make that vital connection that empowers us to overcome overwhelming obstacles and become instruments of God’s will.  Despite the pain and suffering that I have experienced and that comes to all of our lives, I am more convinced than ever before that prayer gives us strength and hope, a sense of divine companionship, as we struggle for justice and righteousness.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, after Simon’s mother-in-law was restored to health, “she ministered to them.”  That’s the miracle of God’s compassionate design … that those who are broken and healed become healers.
 
There are friends in this room who this month … this very week … have been shaken by death in families, and communities, by violent murder and poverty in neighborhoods.  
 
This week I have heard compassion in the accumulated wisdom of a grieving teenage member of this church.  
This week I have witnessed the compassionate joy of sustained social practice as three members of Epworth met with city leaders about brothers and sisters evacuated from Hurricanes who are still in hotels and still very alone.  
This week I have celebrated compassion in the intentional prayer disciplines of an elder of this church discerning difficult decisions.
This week I have witnessed communion at a dinner of grieving and gratitude.
 
God’s compassionate design promises presence and power in every challenge.  
 
In a Neighborhood Center in Washington, D.C. which feeds over 300 families every Saturday, one of the faithful workers is Mary Glover.  Every Saturday, before serving, Mary prays this prayer: We thank you, Lord, for our lying down last night and our rising up this morning.  … We thank you for the feet that are coming through this line for food today and the hands that are giving it out.  We know, Lord, that you’re coming through this line today, so help us to treat you right.  Yes, Lord, help us to treat you right.”* (*Joyce Hollyday)
 
Jesus needed prayer.
In community, at table, alone in deserted places, Jesus showed, long before neurological science, the necessity and nourishment of prayer.
 
In the words of the prophet Isaiah to a people in exile, “Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
 
We come to Christ’s table as those who have two wolves fighting within our hearts and within our world.  Which one will we feed?