Do Unto Others: "The Safety Dance" - September 8th, 2024

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Not Christmas, silly-goose, ELECTION SEASON! In all seriousness, this is far from the most wonderful time of the year for many of us. Our world seems to be consumed with division-often typified by the colors red and blue. Rather than stay in our monochromatic silos, Jesus challenges us to "Do Unto Others" as we engage in conversation and seek to create whatever common good we can with our relatives, friends, and neighbors who we might consider to be on the "other side" politically and ideologically. When we "Do Unto Others" the way Jesus models for us, the idea is not that we are obliterating either one or trying to change each other. Instead, we discover the beauty that can be created when we work together to make the world a fairer place. This "purple space" is where we cultivate kindness, compassion, humility, respect, and love for one another and the good of all the world, no matter what.
This week, we are exploring "Compassion" to better understand and live out what Jesus means by "Do Unto Others." First, we need to clarify some terms. Kindness is being friendly, generous, and considerate toward others, often through small gestures or behaviors that show care. Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person's feelings, essentially putting oneself in their shoes to feel what they are experiencing. Compassion involves not only understanding someone's suffering but also feeling motivated to take action to alleviate their pain or distress.
To drive home the point, compassion literally means "to suffer together." Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when one is confronted with another's suffering and feels motivated to relieve that suffering.
This is fully displayed in Isaiah 11: 6-9, where Isaiah paints a very odd scene.
The wolf will romp with the lamb, the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill on my holy mountain.
Yeah... it's odd. I mean....
Wolves eat lambs, and leopards eat goats
Calves are food for lions
Bears graze on cows and their kids most CERTAINLY don't play together
Lions do not eat straw
Don't get me started about babies crawling over snake holes...NOPE
In fact, there is no hunting or killing AT ALL
It's an odd scene that begs the question. WHY are things like this? Isaiah tells us why...
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.
Okay... that's WHY, but a better question is HOW? Just before this passage, Isaiah shares the HOW (or the WHO) in Isaiah 11:1-5.
Isaiah is talking about Jesus...and precisely two things about Jesus.
First, Isaiah discusses Jesus' radical teachings: "His words will bring everyone to awed attention." Jesus taught some attention-grabbing things, such as the last will be first and that one must lose one's life to find one's life. This was more than counter-intuitive...this was an upside-down way to live life in the world as we know it. Second, Isaiah discusses how Jesus will do way more than teach; He will do it because "each morning he'll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots, and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land." Jesus actually lived out the way He taught. He put himself last so others could be first. He lost His life so we could find ours. Jesus was not afraid of sacrifice or suffering. Isaiah tells us this is the WHY, HOW, and WHO of this odd scene he described.
When it comes to compassion for one another, especially the people we consider more "other" than "one".....
Sacrificing Together Leads to Security Forever
Here's the thing: everybody wants to feel secure, safe, comfortable, cared for, and validated. The trouble is that we think our needs are more important than others, and then we force our needs upon others. We can come up with a million reasons why this is okay. We fail to notice that this way never brings actual security, safety, comfort, relief, and validation to anyone. Through Isaiah, Jesus shows us that we all must sacrifice something to be truly secure. This begs the question, what are we willing to do to bring real and permanent security to our lives and the world?