The Grace of Compassion.

We do not desire any more pain in the world. We simply want, and need, to share the pain that is there, in order to lighten the load for all of us. We want to be more and more a part of humanity's march, with its suffering, its hope, and its joy.

-Dean Brackley, from The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times (178)

This morning in adult forum we spent some time talking about grace and our experience of it in Holy Communion. None of us were quite sure how to define what we experience in Holy Communion. Most of us were not quite satisfied with "forgiveness" as a sufficient description. For the pastor and the intern, "grace" seemed like a better word, in part simply because it was a "bigger" word, with more space inside of it, capable of including lots of different blessings inside. We left with things more or less unresolved - though I think we did think through some important things together, all the same.

Our Prayer of the Day in worship this morning described addressed God as "God of compassion." That word - "compassion" - might be another word that fits inside grace, especially the grace that happens at Holy Communion.

We usually use "compassion" to mean something like "to care" - as in: She is compassionate; she cares for people.

But it literally means something even more specific. The Latin roots of "com" (with, or to share) and "passion" (an intense emotion, originally referring to suffering) lead us to a meaning that literally means "to suffer together with." To say someone is compassionate means that that person shares others' burdens.

Is this what Christ was doing, on his way to the cross? Is this what he invites us to do? Not to suffer, mind you, but to share in the burdens of others? And is this part of what God is doing to us when God gathers, and especially when God gathers us for the meal of Holy Communion, making us into a community - a body - that exists not just for its own sake but to share the burdens of others, that is, to be com-passionate? Does this happen, as Brackley suggests, so that the load might be lightened for all of us, and that we might be able to share in each other's suffering, hope, and joy?

If so, then Holy Communion - and this holy community - may well be more than we bargained for.

It would be all the more confirmation, I think, of the quote from Annie Dillard that Pastor Carol used in the March newsletter. Annie Dillard writes:

Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. (Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)

Draw us out, O Lord - wherever you might lead. Amen.