Church of our Saviour, Mission Farm, Killington, Vermont

 

Mission Farm ~ Killington, Vermont

Church of Our Saviour, Mission Farm ~ Sherburne / Killington, Vermont ~ Throwback Thursday

 

Jesus' compassion, a downward pull

Once again, the folks over at the "Inward/Outward" Blog (the Church of the Saviour of Washington, DC) have offered up a quote that has struck me in a profound way. As we move toward Holy Week, the "downward pull" of Jesus' compassion is clearly an important way to reflect upon the journey of next week. Check out Henri Nouwen's quote below, and do check out "Inward/Outward" Blog, they have wonderful postings, quotes, and reflections -- and they have an amazing church as well!

Peter+

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By Henri Nouwen, et al

Jesus’ compassion is characterized by a downward pull. That is what disturbs us. We cannot even think about ourselves in terms other than those of an upward pull, an upward mobility in which we strive for better lives, higher salaries, and more prestigious positions. Thus, we are deeply disturbed by a God who embodies a downward movement. Instead of striving for a higher position, more power, and more influence, Jesus moves, as Karl Barth says, from “the heights to the depth, from victory to defeat, from riches to poverty, from triumph to suffering, from life to death.”

Jesus’ whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God’s love. Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there. God’s compassion is total, absolute, unconditional, without reservation. It is the compassion of the one who keeps going to the most forgotten corners of the world, and who cannot rest as long as he knows that there are still human beings with tears in their eyes. It is the compassion of a God who does not merely act as a servant, but whose servanthood is a direct expression of his divinity.

Quotes from Thomas Merton...

I ran across these two quotes from Thomas Merton, one (on the God's Politics Blog) that speaks to me as we try to settle into our new home, search for cheap furniture, try to resurrect the yard, unpack boxes, play with our children, put food on the table, and begin also to work. The mountaintop experiences are not where I am now, but I am striving (with some greater and some lesser success) to see God's hands at work all around me ... even, and especially, in the "everyday" moments in which God is (of course) already present....


Better just to smell a flower in the garden...than to have an unauthentic experience of a much higher value. Better to honestly enjoy the sunshine or some light reading than to claim to be in contact with something that one is not in contact with at all.

- Thomas Merton
Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom, by Hugh Feiss


The other quote I ran across on the Inward/Outward Blog from the Church of Our Saviour, risking for the gospel, and living the gospel as NEW, BRAND NEW!




The Gospel is handed down from generation to generation but it must reach each one of us brand new, or not at all. If it is merely “tradition” and not news, it has not been preached or not heard - it is not Gospel…. If there is no risk in revelation, if there is no fear in it, if there is no challenge in it, if it is not a word which creates whole new worlds, and new beings, if it does not call into existence a new creature, our new self, then religion is dead and God is dead.

Source: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander