And in light of tonight’s gospel, one other title comes to mind. It’s one I heard several years ago: Jesus, the Compassion of God. Jesus, the Compassion of God.
Years ago, when I was a grad student, I spent a summer traveling and studying in Peru. Along the way I visited a town high in the Andes Mountains called Yungay. It had once been a booming town surrounded by beautiful, high, snow-covered peaks on all sides. In the middle of town was a lovely plaza surrounded by palm trees, with a fountain in the center, the cathedral at one end. Each day, while the men were out working in the fields around the town, the women would come to the plaza to sell the things they had made at home--colorful and warm fabrics, and breads, and goat cheese--and together they would keep an eye all the little kids.
At one end of the town, at the top of a small hill, the people built a huge statue of Jesus, his arms outstretched over the town in blessing. He stands there strong and beautiful, poised and powerful.
In 1970, an enormous earthquake hit Yungay. Boulders from the mountaintops came crashing down at the speed of 250 miles per hour. There was no time to escape. Within a few minutes, almost the entire town was buried alive. Out of 20,000 people, only 92 survived. Of those who did survive, many suffered severe mental and emotional illnesses from the trauma.
On the day I visited Yungay, all I could see of the former town was the huge statue of Jesus. Because it was built at the top of a nearby hill, the crashing boulders simply bounced off the sides of the hill, leaving the statue untouched. So today, the beautiful, powerful statue of Jesus stands there with his arms outstretched over what has now become a mass grave. A sad and sobering thing to see.
I spoke with an old man from the town. When he was younger he had helped build that statue of Jesus up on the hill. He said, “We put Jesus up there to bless and protect our homes and our families and our kids. But when the earthquake came, all he did was protect himself.”
A man of simple faith, carrying an unbearable pain in his heart. I had no idea what to say to ease his pain.
His words stayed with me for several weeks. In fact, they became for me what the Buddhists might call a koan, a paradox that you simply can’t figure out through reason.
Then, a few months later, I read this evening’s gospel about a beautiful and poor young Jewish couple, pregnant and about to give birth, making their way to Bethlehem. No one would welcome them, so their child was born in a stable. This is how God enters the world, not with power and grandeur and magnificence, but vulnerable and fragile, like a small child, like the people of Yungay, like each one of us.
That’s when it finally occurred to me that the Jesus we meet in the gospels does not stand powerful and aloof on a serene mountaintop while everything falls apart below. He is at the bottom of the hill. He’s with the people of Yungay.
With those who were buried alive in the earthquake. He was buried alive with them.
He’s with those few who survived. He shares the trauma they went through.
And he continues, even after all these years, to struggle at their side, to rebuild their lives and their families and their beautiful village.
Jesus, the Compassion of God. This is the one our scriptures speak about:
Who doesn't cling to his divine power but becomes a fragile child, gazing up with unspeakable trust into the face of his mother;
Jesus, the Compassion of God, who later says, "Blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;
The one who touches the lame, the crippled, and the blind;
Who speaks words of forgiveness and encouragement;
Who dies alone, rejected and despised;
Jesus at the bottom of the hill. Jesus, the Compassion of God.
In Jesus’ day there was a social grouping of people who felt wholly unacceptable, maybe like some of us here feel at times. The world had deemed them disgraceful and shameful. They took this toxic shame inside, internalized it, and became outcasts.
Jesus’ strategy with them is a simple one: He eats with them. Precisely to those paralyzed in this toxic shame, Jesus says, “I will eat with you.” He goes where love has not yet arrived, and by eating with these despised outcasts, and reminding them of their own loveliness, he renders them acceptable.
How do we explain this everlasting God becoming an immigrant, crossing the border into our history, our moments of love and laughter, our pleasures and delights, our pains and disappointments, the ups and downs of our days? How to explain this migration of God?
How to explain that we are freed by someone who became powerless, that we are lifted up and strengthened by someone who became weak, that we find new hope from someone who divested himself of all distinctions, and that we find a leader in someone who became a servant?
This downward movement of God runs so completely counter to the logic of the world, the logic of Wall Street and national defense programs, the logic that urges us to climb to the top at all costs, acquire more power, more money, more respect and fame.
How do we explain the logic behind the downward movement of God on this Holy Night?
The answer, of course, is simply Love. Love does such things. The One who loves us wants to be with us, through thick and thin, and so draws near, experiencing with us all that we go through, sharing our lot. Love does this.
And if we are to be followers of this Jesus, then we, too, go where he goes. Sometimes that might mean going to the bottom of the hill, to those places of fragility and weakness.
First of all, to those weakest places in our own hearts, in those places where we feel most broken, most insecure, most in agony and afraid.
Why there? Because there, our familiar ways of controlling our world are being stripped away. All the struggles perhaps of coming to terms with an addiction, healing a broken relationship, keeping hope alive when you’re without job, coming to terms with a scary medical diagnosis--in these moments we are often called to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency.
And in these moments, where we are weakest and most vulnerable, at the bottom of the hill, Jesus, the Compassion of God, comes to dwell with us, makes his home with us, brings comfort and hope, labors at our side to create a fuller, more abundant life.
We find this Jesus here in this parish family, with all our struggles and uncertainties and idiosyncrasies, where we gather week after week to break the bread and tell the stories--not only the Story of Jesus, but our own stories as well. Sometimes we just talk of cabbages and kings and the small, ordinary stuff of our lives. At other times we talk about things that keep us awake at night.
Here, with each other, perhaps to our surprise, we sometimes get a glimpse the face of Jesus, the Compassion of God.
And seeing him here in our own midst gives us the eyes to recognize him in other places as well, places we never would have imagined.
Several of us have gone on nightwalks along some of the more violent streets of our neighborhood, pausing at times to pray for those killed by gun violence and to call for peace.
Some of us have come here on Saturday mornings to the Julian Pantry to help with all the chores of food distribution and hospitality to people struggling to feed their families.
Many of us have literally stood with immigrants threatened with having their families torn apart by deportation, demanding with them a change in our nation’s unjust immigration laws.
The list goes on: working with El Porvenir to bring fresh water to poor villages in Nicaragua, standing silently for peace each Thursday noon at the Federal Building, working for a more secure and dignified future for our elders.
In each place and moment, in our own personal lives, the life of this faith community, and in the larger world, sometimes at the bottom of the hill…
and perhaps to our surprise, we discover
The fragile child born in a manger
The one the scriptures on this Holy Night call Emmanuel, God with us
Jesus, the Compassion of God.
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