Vanessa Bohns is an associate professor of Social Pscychology at Cornell University, whose work was recently featured on the NPR podcase, The Hidden Brain. The episode is really about the unknown influence we have over other people…how we sometimes inadvertently use that power; and how we underuse that power. Many of Bohns studies involve asking students to approach strangers and ask them to perform a simple task to help them – fill out a survey, give up a seat on a train or bus. While not everyone agrees to help, Bohn finds that the student is always prepared for rejection, when in reality most people agree to help. While the whole episode is fascinating, the part that stuck out to me was the story Bohn tells about being pregnant and riding the train. At first, she says, she tried to look as desperate and tired as she could while standing on the commuter train. No one noticed. Then, feeling the aches and pains in her tired and taxed body, she asked someone if she could sit down. Shocked, the stranger immediately jumped out of their seat, and said, “of course.” Relieved, Bohns sat down, and found that the stranger had become a hero in her eyes and in theirs.
Cultivating compassion. As Joyce Rupp suggests in her book, Boundless Compassion (the inspiration for our Lenten series), compassion has three components: awareness, attitude, and action. What’s fascinating to me about Vanessa Bohns study and example of riding on the train is the compassionate act of giving a pregnant woman a seat on the commuter train takes an awareness of how the woman is feeling, an attitude of wanting to ease her suffering, and a simple action of allowing her to take a seat. A compassionate act. Awareness, attitude, action. However, while the study is really meant to study the influence the pregnant woman, or person in need, has over a stranger on the train, what I find really interesting is Vanessa Bohns insight about her own actions. After asking for the seat as a part of the study, she gave herself permission to recognize when she was tired and needed to sit down. She became aware of her own needs.
I want to be careful here, because our discussion for this morning is about self-compassion, which is different that self-indulgence or self-permission. It’s a fine line that separates a very different voice. I would humbly put before you today that we are a very self-permissive culture, but not a very self-compassionate one. We hold tightly to the value of freedom of choice, but don’t actually pay attention to ourselves, even if we have a positive self-image.
In all of the compassion books I’ve read so far, this seems to be the ultimate universal example of self-compassion: when someone is sick, particularly a friend or a family member, what do you do? Tell them to get rest, make them soup, call their boss and say they can’t make it to work today. What happens, though, when you are sick? Do you do the same thing? Tell yourself it’s okay not to go to work, lie in bed, and let someone make you soup? If you do these things, that’s great! Do you feel bad about it?
The truth is, most of us ‘should’ on ourselves. I should do better, be better, look better, love better, save money better, achieve more, have a cleaner house, be at more of children’s/grandchildren’s/nephews and nieces events. Why do you think this? Why are you hard on yourself?
Our two texts from this morning are, admittedly, horribly taken out of context…all the time. Both of them occur in the midst of a challenge by the religious establishment. In chapter 11, it’s Jesus’ beloved relative, John the Baptist, who offers the challenge. Which is weird, because John baptized Jesus, and so was there for the dove and the “You are my child, with whom I am well pleased.” But in chapter 11, John is actually questioning Jesus, whether he is the Messiah, based on Jesus’s healing and teaching. He sends disciples to ask Jesus what he is doing, essentially, which apparently prompts Jesus to reflect on his ministry. He’s frustrated here, really, as he considers his work up to this point. He starts by telling his disciples that John is a great prophet, but some think he has a demon. In the same way, “the Human one” came and although his approach was the opposite of John’s, people dismissed him. A frustrated Jesus then chides the cities that have rejected him. Finally, he turns in prayer to the Father, praising the Lord of Heaven and Earth for hiding “these things” from the intelligent and the wise, instead showing them to babies. It is then that we get the words we love to quote when we are overwhelmed: Come to be all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.
Jesus says, “let me share your load.” Anna-Case Winters, professor at McCormick Seminary, says, “Jesus issues this welcome invitation to weary, burdened people….Here again Jesus has “compassion” on “harassed and helpless” people (9:36).”1 Richard Swanson wants us to remember that Matthew is writing after the fall of the temple in Jerusalem, when the people of God are at a low point. They are oppressed, weary, burdened people. They need to find that rest.
Which is really, really, hard when you’re on the move all the time. Not in a moving house kind of way. I’m sure there was a fair amount of “life was less complicated in the desert” going around. In the desert, they learned the food came every day in the form of manna and quail, they carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord around in a tent with them, their possessions were few. Now, the ark of the covenant is nowhere, but they must still carry on with all the rituals and traditions to satisfy God. It’s a kind of longing for the “olden days when things where simpler” that we can all identify with, even though the reality is that the olden days were not any simpler or better. So these words – come to me…you who are carrying heavy loads…I will give you rest. Rest.
Fast forward 11 chapters, to chapter 22, and you’ll find our second text for this morning. Perhaps the most well known of all scriptures, Jesus’ summary of the law. The chapter is the climax of the questioning of Jesus by the Sadducees and Pharisees, which, as Richard Swanson points out, is actually a huge compliment. They find the back and forth questioning of him interesting, and are coming up with some really good questions. So it’s of special note, then, when the Pharisees ask a fairly simple question, “What is the greatest commandment.” At the time, there were 613 laws that were considered essential to faith. But there has always, only been one greatest commandment. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.” And Jesus continues, past the question, “And the second is like it, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.” Ah. There it is. The golden rule. Case-Winters points out that “Jesus is not innovating here; these are fundamentals he would have learned at his mother’s knee.”2 It’s the expected answer. But in Boundless Compassion, Joyce Rupp confesses she thinks that should be switched around. Love yourself as you love your neighbor. Or – care for yourself the way you care for your neighbor. Or – have compassion for yourself the way you have compassion for your neighbor.
Again, this is not the self indulgence we associate with a material consumer culture. And it’s not necessarily the same as self-confidence or a healthy ego. It’s not about putting yourself first, before everyone else. It’s about being aware of how you’re feeling, an attitude of compassion for those feelings, and actions that benefit all those concerned.
Here are some examples: if you’re lonely, be a friend to yourself (journaling is a great way to do this); if you’re living out of guilt, forgive yourself; if you think you might not be good enough, remind yourself that you are a beloved child of God, just the way you are. If you’re mourning, tell yourself it’s okay to be sad; if you’re frustrated that you aren’t “performing” the way you should, tell yourself your worth is not in your title or your salary.
In Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer explains how this self-acceptance can aid our spiritual growth: I now know myself to be a person with weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it but to embrace all of it. . . . Others may say that “embracing one’s wholeness” is just fancy talk for permission to sin, but again my experience is to the contrary. To embrace weakness, liability, and darkness as part of who I am gives that part less sway over me, because all it ever wanted was to be acknowledged as part of my whole self.
Rev. Dr. Melodie Jones Pointon
2 Case-Winters, Anna. Matthew: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief: a Theological Commentary on the Bible) (p. 272). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
Rupp, Joyce. Boundless Compassion (p. 44). Ave Maria Press. Kindle Edition.
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