THE VIRTUE OF COMPASSION

SCRIPTURE TEXT JOB 15:1 TO 16:4

RESPONSIVE READING: PG 614 FORTY-SIXTH SUNDAY SECONDREADING CONFIDENCE IN GOD

The book of job is in the main a conversation between Job and three of his friends known as Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhit, and Zophar the Naamathite. Job the hero of the book is not an Israelite, but and Edomite sheil from the land of UZ, which was located in the southern part of Palestine around Edom. The book of Job has been considered the greatest moment of wisdom literature in the Old Testament. Thomas Carlyle said, "I call the book of Job, apaprt from all theories about it, the grandest thing ever written by pen." The prologue chapters 1 to 2:13 and the epilogue chapters 42:7-17 are written in prose. The remained is written in poetic form.

The prologue presents a man named Job, famous for his rightness of principle and piety, he was wealthy, with a large and happy family. The epilogue finds Yahweh rebuking Job's three friends for not having spoken rightly of him as Job had done. He orders them to offer sacrifice and have Job pray for them that they might be forgiven, Yahweh now restores Job's fortunes, giving him twice as much property as he had lost. After this he lives 140 years 4 sons to beautiful daughters and sees grandchildren to the fourth generation. He dies in contented old age. This piety of character, this portraying of a man who patiently and serenly suffered "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes" without losing faith, hold true only in the prologue and epilogue. The main part of the book some, 30 chapters, is in poetic form, and here Job is anything but a paragon of patience. He begins by cursing the day of his birth, and his spirit gathers the fury of a tempest as he hurls his protest to God.

Let me quickly set a thumb nail sketch of the Job story that we might better understand our lesson for this morning. The narrative tells the story of Job, a man renowned for his piety and blessed with divine favor that accompanied his righteousness. But Job's sincerity was suspect to one of the members of the Heavenly Council--the Satan--who in the prologue is an angel in goos standing, who's special function is to investigate affairs on Earth.

When Yahweh boasted the the Council about his servant Job, the "Satan angel" suspecting Job's service to Yahweh was motivated by self interest, cynically asked, "Does Job fear God for nought?" Thereupon he made a wager with Yahweh that if Job's prosperity and family were taken away his faith would be destroyed. These losses did not shake Job's faith, however, for in his sorrow he patiently murmured: "Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away; blessed be the name of Yahweh." So the "Satan proposed a more severe test. Job was stricken with loathsome sores from head to foot, making it necessary for him to sit alone in the city refuse dump. Job's wife advises him to curse God and die. Ignoring his wife's advise, he still refuses to "sin with his lips" by cursing God. Then his three friends--Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar-- came to comfort him in his plight. This brings us to the scripture verse that will consider this morning--16:4 were Job says to his three so-called friends--"I also could speak as ye do; if your soul were in my soul's stead." Job made these three friends the butt of his anger--"Miserable comforters", he called them. He was never polite to them, nor patient with them, nor even fair to them. It says a good deal for their self restraint that they kept on listening to him so long.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that they were rather irritating. They were saying the correct thing in a complacent and orthodox way. They were not Pharisaical nor were they insincere, but they were thoroughly conventional. They had no real feeling for Job's problem. The difficulty would seem to be this. They were trying to help a man in trouble, when they had never been in trouble themselves.

This whole long first part of the book of Job is like certain conversations in which we often found ourselves involved. It is not that we are talking at cross-purposes with someone else, but rather that we are talking to no purpose at all. Our minds never really meet because we have no common ground for experience on which to stand not premises on which we agree. Thus in the words of the text, Job put his finger on what is the real difficulty in such a situation. "I also could speak as you do, if your soul were in my soul's stead." In other words, if you could put yourself in my place and I could put myself in your place, we might understand one another and help one another. Here in the sense of this text we have a bit of Messianic prophecy---Jesus put himself in our place, and in turn asks us to put ourself in his place. "In all things", says the writer to Hebrews, "he has made like unto brethren."

We are living at a time when it is very difficult to see just what the Christian religion can fairly be expected to contribute to our troubled world. But we may say a Christian ought to be a person who can put himself in the other man's place. This does not mean that he will approve of all that the other man thinks and says and does, but it does mean that we will understand how other man came to be as he is--as we say in the vernacular--"how he got that way."

There are a vast number of people in the world who seem anxious to do good to others, but who will do good only on their own terms. We meet them on committees, we watch them manage our philanthropies, we find them at work in politics and in business. They are not bad, yet somehow they are imperfect Christians. They are, if the truth be told in Job's words, "miserable comforters" or our humanity, because they stand aloof from it; they never identify themselves with it.

Our experience of life may seem to us to be of a personal and private character. But they are more than that, they are a passkey into the lives of others. There are three words which describe what our attitude ought to be towards humanity today: the first is "pity", the second is "Compassion", the third is "sympathy". There is a difference between the first of these words and the other two. Pity is an aristocratic virtue: Pity is static, Sympathy and compassion are dynamic virtues. Pity condescends; compassion and sympathy share. The greatest help we get in time of trouble comes to us from someone who can say to us wuite simple, "I have endured all that".

We have in those words the secret of the appeal of Jesus to our minds and hearts. He was tempted just as we are. He was hungered and homeless as millions are today. He was misunderstood and rejected and lonely. The greatest thing we know about pain is that Jesus felt it. And for the Christian the significance of these facts rests on the conviction that God Himself is not content with divine and aristocratic pity for his children; but that He has compassion on them and sympathizes with them.

Life has not been easy for any of us. Yet we are here alive, in securtiy, and as the world goes, in great comfort. Our happy circumstances might prompt us to be content with pitying the rest of the world. But that temper that thought will never get us far. There is in our humanity some proper pride, some deep-rooted self-respect which prompts the comeback, "I don't want your pity. I prefer to do without it."

Our real problem as a Christian is, therefore this; How far can you really put yourself in the place of another whom you would really like to help? How far can you say, "I have endured all that," or if you have not endured enough to understand something of your life and your lot, even though it be far off. From the Christian standpoint the hurt of our time will never be healed by an autocratic pity. They require the Dynamic and Christian virtues of compassion and sympathy.

There remains one final problem. You may not pretend to experiences you have not had, and all of us know quite well that there are ills in the world that lie beyond our experience. No two lives coincide, and given the totallity of man's experience, what any of us may know and feel is very little. How then, are we to match a limited life to the limitless occasion's for sympathy.

The best we can do is try to cultivate patiently that unselfishness of mind and heart which we know as imagination. When human relationships break down, that break down always implies failure on someones part to put himself in the place of another. Thus a student of social affairs says, "The broken link between classes in the modern world is a fundamental defect of imagination." This is the weak link, ending often in broken link, in homes, in churches, in races, in states. The white Gentile is inclined to talk in a condescending way about the Negro problem and the Jewish problem. But he has never tried to feel what it is like to be regulated to a Jim Crow car in the south, or tuned away from an apartment house in the north. It is not the Negro or the Jew who is his initial problem. His first problem is his own unimaginative self. He will never contribute much to the solution of those other problems until he has solved that prior, and more intimate problem. He will be in Job's words, a "miserable comforter" of mankind until he has cultivated the power to put his soul in their sou's stead.

An unknown author says:
I sought my soul
but my soul I could not see
I sought my God,
But my God eluded me.
I sought my brother
and I found all three

Jesus stood in our place he calls us to stand in his place. What will you do with this call of Jesus.
Let us Pray

Nottingham United Methodist Church.
Nottingham Village, Cleveland, Ohio

August 1, 1965