Splagknizomai

A splendid word for today – Splagknizomai – it is what we hear that the Samaritan felt when he saw the man almost dead on the road to Jericho. He was “moved with compassion” in English but that sound all too proper and polite!  It is so much more vivid in the original Greek. He was “splagknizomai”-ed – which means as it sounds – he was moved physically – his heart and guts were twisted and wrenched, as he saw that poor man suffering in the road.

Jesus clearly wants us to be spalgknizomai people, for that is what he says at the end of our Gospel (Luke 10:25-37) “Go and do the same yourself”. He point us to what the commandment to love God and our neighbour really means. It doesn’t mean some vague polite caring, he is evoking some vital words from the commandment. We are to love God, and our neighbour, with all our heart.. soul.. strength.. and mind. But how do we do that?

Let me give you an example. When we watch or listen or read the news. How do we react? Do we simply sigh about all the troubles in the world and turn onto something more entertaining. Or do we tut tut, shaking our heads, at the dreadful things other people do? Or do we refuse to listen to the news at all? I am guilty of all those responses at times, but when  behave like that I am like the priest and the levite who passed by on the other side. I would just rather not be bothered, or I would rather not be splagknizomai-ed by such things. It is just too painful!

But it is not simply painful it is also beautiful. The Samaritan responds with overflowing love and we have a hint of a man recovering to full health at the Inn and the Samaritan returning not just to pay the bill but to rejoice that the man is well again. To rejoice with one’s heart and soul and strength and mind is also part of our Christian calling. To see the world as God sees it. Yes, God sees the pain and the suffering – much more than we do. God weeps with those who weep. God suffers with those who suffer. That is what Jesus dying on the cross is all about. But God also sees all the beauty and the love that is in the world. The stuff that is rarely reported in the News.

So if we are to be truly Christian we have to aim to be like God in both ways. To be  a splagknizomai – person, but also to be someone who is aware of all the beauty and love that is also all around us – shown to us in the overflowing care the Samaritan shows to the man lying dead in the road.

We wonder sometimes why God made a world in which there can be so much suffering. Of course he could have made a static world, a robotic world where there would be none of these strong feelings of pain or pleasure. Remember the Android/Robot called Data in Star Trek. He wanted to be more human, and that included learning both to laugh and cry at the right times. Both of these things make us more human, they make us creatures who care. 24 Hour News bombards us with so much, that it often feels easier to retreat into what the Pope recently called Global indifference, in which we no longer really care about what our fellow human beings are doing, unless they are very close to us. Christians are called to be fully human, to be Christ-like, which means to be God-like, and that means caring passionately when anyone suffers, but also celebrating with great gusto all that is good and beautiful in our world.

This is what it means to pray. Not to say polite words like “Please God help the people of Syria” but to look at that tragic situation as God looks at it, to feel, to “splagknizomai”, the tragedy, and yet also to see the love and care that is there in the midst of the suffering, as people, some supported by us, try to care for one another. 

To be a baptised Christian then is to be someone who is called to feel more than others both the pain and the beauty of the world. It is a difficult road, but the alternative is to become hardened into a robotic state in which all that makes us fully human is lost.