When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil…

This weekend I watched the movie “Rachel Getting Married,” the heartbreaking story of Kym, who has spent the past nine months in rehab and is released for the weekend to attend her sister’s wedding. The family is close and affectionate, but at the same time, dysfunctional. Underlying the family's dynamic is a tragedy that occurred many years previously and for which Kym is held by some to be responsible, the accidental death of Kym and Rachel’s little brother Ethan.

This is a conversation that takes place between the sisters when the painful and tender emotions come to the surface.

Rachel: Kym, you took Ethan for granted. Okay? You were high for his life. You were not present. Okay? You were high.
Kym: [Whispering] Yes.
Rachel: And you drove him off a bridge... and now he's dead.
Kym: Yes, I was. Yes, I was stoned out of my mind. Who do I have to be now? I mean, I could be Mother Teresa and it wouldn't make a difference, what I did. Did I sacrifice every bit of... love I'm allowed for this life because I killed our little brother?

In her book A Place to Pray: Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer, Roberta Bondi writes about the gift of temptation. “[A]s Christians, we can never honestly set ourselves self-righteously apart from any other human being, saying, ‘The sins of this person are so unimaginable that he or she has forfeited any claim to my love or to God’s.’… [N]one of us can ever look at someone else’s crime and say, ‘I would never do anything like that!’… The implication here is that if we are to learn compassion – a fundamental disposition if we are to love our neighbor – then we must be able to see, not how we differ from others from whom we would separate ourselves, but how we are similar. It is our temptations that let us see this.” (p 122)

“There but for the grace of God go I,” is sometimes what I say to myself in order to remember to have compassion for the people that I might tend to separate myself from, that I might tend to judge. I pray that I am spared from temptation and evil, but I also acknowledge that I am imperfect, fallible, a sinner who has been redeemed only by God’s grace. I thank God that Jesus has compassion for me, harassed and helpless as I am, and I pray for the strength and wisdom to show that compassion for others, no matter what.

Prayer for today

Compassionate God, you did not choose who you would save - you came to save the whole world. Help us to remember that we cannot choose upon whom to have compassion if we follow your example, but that we must have compassion for the whole world. We pray with the example and in the name of the great compassionate one, Jesus. Amen.