“The radicalism of our time is compassion…”The Dalai Lama
And the second: “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.” Jesus, Luke 6:36
Compassion is an intentional practice to enter the pain and suffering of others, hear their cries, and act to alleviate their pain. Compassion means to “suffer with,” and in the Hebrew language and the Bible, it is linked to the word “womb.” In the gospels, the word for womb is replaced with “bowels.” Compassion arises from deep within ourselves; the practice of compassion has three movements: 1) deepening our awareness of God’s compassionate connection to us, 2) a connection to the suffering and pain of another, 3) restoration from the suffering to the community of creation or God’s kin-dom. I would describe it as “living with caring connection.” In the gospels, Jesus embarks on a path of radical compassion, intending to implement God’s compassionate care. This path equips him for the work of God’s justice and restoration of both human and the more than human to well-being.
The story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) is one of the most loved parable. On one occasion, religious lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?
“What is written in the scriptures?” he replied. “How do you understand and lie it?”
He answered, ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ [c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“You have answered correctly but only partially” Jesus replied.
So he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In the 21st century, Jesus answers the question in a disturbing way for many.
“Who is my neighbor?” is a disturbing question that challenges us to reflect on whom we choose to be our’ neighbor.’ Jesus revolutionized the identity of ‘neighbor,’ restricted to tribe or ethnicity but now expanded to embrace all people, including those who were ethnic enemies of Judaism—the Samaritans and the Romans.
Let me first argue that we first understand as our neighbor in the parable, is he one mugged, abused, goods stolen, and left for dead. This neighbor is the Earth and its web of life in all the bioregions of the planet.
There was a time in when humans lived closely with the Earth and all life as partners, as kin or family. Earth and humankind were interconnected. Our story in Genesis 2 depicts that God made humans from the soil of the Earth. All plant, animal life, and humans lived with respect for each other and in partnership. We understood the land, water, air, and sky as divine gifts to us. When we shared our goods together in the wilderness of the Sinai, God taught us that there was always abundance. Or when Jesus went out into the wilderness, he reminded the 4,000 and the 5,000 who brought their own food that when he took the bread, blessed, and gave it to the crowds, he symbolized the miracle of God’s abundance in creation. He said, “Do this in memory of me.” They shared, remembering what God originally shared with them: the resources of the Earth, the air we breathe and interbreather with trees and flora. They embraced God as present in the Earth as gift, and the Earth and her resources as a gift of love, enfolding us as neighbor as well.
Do we really see Earth and all life as neighbors? Do we allow ourselves as neighbors to the Earth?
Our actions are not neighborly: here are some unneighborly human actions, carbon and plastic pollution, willful exploitation of resources, rampant consumerism of mining the resources of the planet, uncontrolled economic growth sparked by unbridled greed, the extinction of insects and birds who pollinate flowering plants and guarantee our food system, pollution of waters. We have changed the climate of the planet, and we, in Florida, are at the apogee of risk in the US for climate catastrophe. We are neither sustainably nor responsibly in using the pre-original gift of this planet bestowed upon us out of love.
Being ‘neighbor’ to the Earth is a challenge for every single person on the planet as well as all religious traditions. How might we be neighborly? Can we be neighborly to the Earth our neighbor?
The abused traveler on the side of the highway by the wayside in the parable of the Good Samaritan is the face of Amazon forest burned down and depleted for our addiction to beef, or the forests ravaged by apocalyptic fires, toxic chemical pollution and oil spills, species extinction, running pipelines of toxic oil sludge over sacred grounds of the Lakota Sioux at Standing Rock or pipeline three over indigenous lands and sacred waters in Minnesota. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change of the United Nations has just released a 3,000 plus page report how unneighborly to the Earth, its bioregions, and the web of life. We have 8 years to make dramatic changes to reduce our carbon footprint before the planet reaches a tipping point for severe damage.
Here are some good neighbors to the Earth. Swedish young activist Greta Thunberg has repeated the urgency of climate change when she boldly proclaims, “our house is on fire!” to the United Nations, our Congress and world leaders. The house is naturally the Earth! Our youth across the planet are demanding a sustainable world without climate change. In 2015, 21 youth filled a lawsuit against the US government in a case Juliana vs the United States for the right to live and breathe in a carbon free world. They have won case after case, even to the Supreme Court, and the Justice Department and the children have reached an impasse on a settlement agreement. A nine-year old boy Miles in St. Petersburg, and founder of Kids Saving Oceans (https://www.kidssavingoceans.com/pages/about-miles). He says, “I believe a polluted, empty, lifeless ocean shouldn’t be my generation’s inheritance.” His goal is to fundraise one million dollars by age 18 to save life in the oceans. All these are good Eco-Samaritans.
Who are the passerby folks in the parable? Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring, appears to be the first person to use the parable to describe the passerbys.
Like the priest and the Levite in the biblical story, the control men in the state and federal governments and, of course, the chemical manufacturers—choose to pass by on the other side and to see nothing.
We may characterize the first passerby folks as those who can’t be bothered by climate change and/or those who can’t be bothered by what is happening on the planets. It does not affect me. Yet!
The second passerby consists of those who willfully know better but are passing by because they are greedy for short term profit over the welfare of humanity, all life, and the planet. Many humans see themselves as exceptional and above nature and view nature. as thing to be used for our sole benefit. It is commodity, an object, that was created for our use and abuse.
Our beautiful lawns, public and private, form an ecological wasteland, killing valuable insects and birds which are pollinators for our food production. Every Sunday at worship, I witness the young children go up to the front of the church for their Sunday lesson, and I am overcome with heart-breaking concern for our unneighborly behaviors toward the Earth. What kind of Earth, damaged by climate change, will they inherit?
How might Christians be neighborly to the Earth and all life? The answer is embedded in Jesus’s question to the lawyer at the end of the parable. “Who is the neighbor?” The religious lawyer responds, “The one who is compassionate.”
Biblical scholar Norman Habel cites Psalm 33:5, “The Earth is filled with the compassion of the Lord.” He observes, “compassion, whether understood as cooperation or caring, or empathy or nurture, is integral to to the nature of the living planet.” (Rainbow of Mysteries) He continues,
Healing is also dynamic dimension of natures a vital expression of compassion. We can discern healing in everything from the way injured animals care for each other to the way of denuded landscapes are restored by the wind carrying seeds, by the soi that renews fertility, and by the rain that activates life. (Rainbow)
Jesus speaks of God’s providential compassion care for the lilies of the field, and the birds of the air, to the feeding the crowds in the wilderness.
There are two mentors we can turn to assume compassionate care for the Earth. The Creator did not retire after creating the universe. The Creator God remains present and active through the Spirit and the Incarnation, where the Word took on living DNA into God’s self. Both the Spirit and the Incarnate one express God’s fierce compassion for lie and well-being of life. They teach us, encourage us, or provoke us to be compassion in action.
The first is the Holy Spirit, who was at the Big Bang and since then has been ever present in all the Earth processes and evolving life. She is called the “Sustainer of Life.” The Holy Spirit is never controlled by an institution or religion, she mischievously colors outside the lines and creates a divine mischief to move us to what John Lewis calls “good trouble.” In college, when I was part of the college “God Squad,” I would never wish anyone the peace of Christ but the “unrest of the Holy Spirit.” The unrest of the Spirit moves us to love and compassion, and to care for those who are suffering, both human and more than human life.
What does the Spirit ask of us? In Job, she states, “”But ask the animals and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you” (Job 12:7-8). Plants, animals, bioregions, rivers, mountains, storms, and the Earth have become the primary media from which the Spirit speaks to us. Take the time every to listen to the natural world and discover the Spirit in life. All the great religious prophets were enlightened within nature. They discovered God’s revelation there.
Both the prophets in the scripture and indigenous peoples have told us for thousands of years that nature has much to teach us if we take the time to listen attentively. When we slow down and take several moments to experience nature, to be attentive to the trees and birds, feel the sun and wind on our face, listen to the sounds of nature. We hear the first revelation of God through the Spirit. We practice Sabbath, resting and experience the delight and wonder of nature. We realize that we are like all other creatures and are a part of interconnected web of life. We are not above nature but participating creatures in nature. The Hebrew scriptures are full of contradictions asserting human dominion and yet humans are made from the same dirt of the Earth as the animals and plants. They, likewise, occupy a position of “beloved” of God who cares for all.
Robin Hall Kimmerer, an Anishinaabe professor of ethno-botany, speaks of indigenous people as understanding generosity learned from the land.
Generosity is simultaneously a moral and material imperative, especially among people who live close to the land and know its wave of plenty and scarcity. When the well-being of one is linked to the well-being of all. Wealth among traditional people is measured by having enough to give away. Hoarding the gift, we become constipated with wealth, bloated with possessions, too heavy to join the dance.
This is similar to Jesus’ comment to his disciples. “Freely received, freely give.” Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness and learned we are part of the community of the ground soil, a community of original gift and grace, and we must recover our heritage of grounding our roots in the soil community or we become lost. The Spirit through indigenous peoples and the prophets and the Christ teach us to be neighborly to the land, the earth from which we arise.
The second is Jesus the Christ. Theologian Mark Wallace writes,
One of the best ways to rehabilitate Christianity’s earth identity is through a nature-based retrieval of Jesus as the green face of God. Recovering the Gospel narratives through environmental optics opens up Jesus’ ministry as a celebration of the beauty of the Earth and committed search for justice for all the denizens of the good creation. Jesus is a green prophet; he ministered to the poor and forgotten members of society and criticized extreme wealth based on a disregard of one’s neighbor and the exploitation of the gifts of creation
We proclaim that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” (Jn. 1:14) God became flesh means that God became a Earth creature, became a complex creature with DNA, linking God to all life with DNA. We often neglect the fact that the DNA, the fleshliness assumed by Jesus the Christ. Connects himself with not only humanity, but all biological life, all material reality to it roots. This has bee call deep Incarnation or the cosmic Christ. Jesus becomes interconnected with all physical/spirit realities. Christ’s Incarnation, his life, death, and resurrection express God’s solidarity with or fierce compassionate with all life.
When Jesus comes out of his wilderness vision quest, he links his mission to a holistic dream of God for us. “The time (kairos) has come: the kin-dom, not kingdom, of God is near.” I use kin-dom because it inclusive of human and all created life on Earth, and Earth herself as a living being. In the wilderness, Jesus understood that Abba God was not only compassionate, but fiercely compassionate. Marcus Borg, the late Jesus scholar observes, “The word Jesus most often identifies the quality of God is compassion.” (Jesus: A New Vision) Jesus instructs his disciples to love your neighbor as yourself. He broke the interpretative ethnic limitations on the commandment to love your neighbor that the lawyer was looking for. He included love of enemies, love of Samaritans, Gentiles, outcasts, sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and so on.
When I hear his response to the synagogue leader who criticizes the healing a woman with an illness on the Sabbath, Jesus responds, “Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead the animal away to give water?” (Mt. 13:15) Here we see in Jesus extending the warrant of neighborly compassion to animals. Becoming compassionate, Jesus feels the pain of people, moved to tears at their suffering, and acts to alleviate their pain, sorrow, and suffering. And his compassion is extended to all life, even God’s creation suffering and oppressed. John Philip Newell, claims, “when Jesus commands us to love our neighbors, he does not only mean our human neighbors; he means all the animals and birds, insects and plants, amongst whom we live.” (Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul)
Brian Patrick asks,
Who is our neighbor? The Samaritan? The outcast, the enemy? Yes, yes, of course. But it is also the whale, the dolphin, and the rain forest. Our neighbor is the entire community of life, the entire universe. We must love it all as our self because in fact it is our self. The universe is the primary subject. Earth Spirit)
For Jesus, neighborly love in the Good Samaritan is not about restriction and limitation of God’s compassion but an opportunity to realize the infinite expansiveness of that divine compassion. Extending compassion to God’s Earth and all life demonstrates our capabilities to live caring connected to all that God loves and realize that neighborly love has no limits.
Being ‘neighborly and loving’ to the Earth and more than human life creation is a profound recognition of God’s kin-dom, we see ourselves interrelated and interdependent with animate life, the bioregions of the planet, and Earth herself. Whatever diminishes and destroys life is ecological vandalism, the mugging of Earth or Earth creature that God views as loveable. We are neighbors when we see compassionately life around us and remember Jesus’s words, “when you do to theleast of my family, you do it to me.” Showing compassion for our neighbor the Earth and the web of life are Eco-Samaritans, Earth Keepers, and Water Protectors.