Pull Together

Truly I tell, you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. In Nomine + What motivation lies behind acts of compassion?

The Church’s worship is based around the idea of the sacrament or sign, which points towards the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, and even more so here at St Thomas where, above the altar we actually see Christ the King!

As we share in bread and wine at the altar, we are given a foretaste of the heavenly banquet in our Father’s Kingdom; as we baptise children or adults in water at the font, we are given a glimpse of the Living Water, which both quenches our need and springs up into a well of eternal life.

Our previous bishop, Dr Graham Tomlin, was very keen on what he called Compassionate Communities.

Compassion lies at the heart of Jesus’ life, his teaching and the way of life he requires from his Church.

We are called to love and to care for one another, and to establish compassionate communities within and around our churches.

Yet Bishop Graham is keen to emphasise that such acts of witness should be precisely that: they must witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus.

“As we seek to become closer disciples or followers of Jesus, (he says) imitating him in acting out the compassion of God in our communities through our words and lives, we point people to the God in whom they can find true meaning and purpose.

“As people hear the invitation of the good news of the gospel and are able to see the goodness of God in acts of compassion, they are drawn both to belong to the Church and to participate in the Church’s mission.”

We saw a lot of this during the horrible years of the COVID-pandemic

We saw frontline medics, shopping volunteers, care home workers and family members putting their lives at risk for others.

Those whose businesses were closed or restricted re-imagined what they do to help the neediest in society, offering home-cooked meals for the hungry or for people working flat out in the NHS or other caring professions.

In a way we too, whether enforced or not, were part of a compassionate communities, by not seeing those we loved and, for an unforgivable amount of time, by being forced to abstain from the Blessed Sacrament.

All of these were, without doubt, acts of the deepest compassion and altruism.

They were been performed by people of all faiths or of none; by people who believe that we work best as a nation if we “pull together”, and who have deep wells of empathy for the suffering.

All such acts are to be admired and respected; their generosity appreciated and supported.

Yet, although many churches have shared in such enterprises, and many faithful Christians have played leading parts in establishing or maintaining such support networks, there is another element to the particular Christian compassion to which Christ calls us – the kind of compassion we hear described in today’s Gospel reading about the Day of Judgment.

Yes, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner and giving shelter to the homeless are all part of what we do as Christians, but what makes them unique is that we do them in the name of Christ Jesus, who gave his life in self-sacrifice for us.

If we don’t do it in the name of the Son of Man, we run the risk of simply becoming an organisation of social workers without a qualification.

Bishop Graham urges us to act compassionately in order to reveal Christ’s love and compassion for us.

Sometimes Christian faith and witness are can become subsumed in a desire simply to help others in all these ways, without making it clear that we do it in order to demonstrate something of the love of God.

As the bread and wine shared in community offers a glimpse of the marvellous banquet in Heaven, so acts of compassion here on earth can and should reveal to others just a tiny peek at the abundant and unconditional love of God.

Our Gospel reading may seem to be approaching this from another angle: Jesus reminds us that every practical kindness we show – or fail to show – to another human being is directed at him, as his image is found in every person on earth.

It tells us that without compassion for others, we will not be those who are blessed.

Yet our reading from the Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us that there is more to it than that:

“I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints… I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him.”

To love other people in practical ways is good, but it is not enough: our actions must come out of our love for Christ himself.

The specifically Christian calling is to come to know Christ, as the pattern of our compassion, the object of our worship and as the King of our hearts

Today we reach the end of the cycle of the Church’s liturgical year, with Christ the King enthroned upon his judgment seat – as we indeed see here behind me! In the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden (where I grew up), this Sunday is known as Judgement Sunday.

The image reflects a central part of our faith which we proclaim together every Sunday in the Creed:

“He will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead, and his Kingdom will have no end.”

These days many of us shy away from the notion of Judgment Day.

Yet the Bible definitely suggests that there will come a time when the light of Christ’s truth will be shone upon us, and we shall see ourselves as we truly are.

The extent to which we can live with what we see in that light is perhaps what is meant by Judgment.

As we enter the penitential season of Advent, when the Lord brings to light the purposes of the human heart, can we ensure that what we count as our acts of compassion, our good deeds, will be revealed above all as springing forth from our love for Christ, in order to reveal the love of Christ to others?

Truly I tell, you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. In Nomine +