Every third Saturday the non-profit where I volunteer and serve as a board member hosts a pop-up event. It’s a morning of lavish generosity shown to our unhoused neighbors. We offer gently used clothing items, new socks, a hot breakfast and coffee, conversation, clean shoes, haircuts, dog food for their pups, free refurbished cell phones, vaccines, and when we’re fortunate enough to have extra volunteer professionals – facials, manicures, and massages. And if they want it – prayer. All of this is offered free, with no questions asked.
Before “opening” that street corner in the morning, part of what the Executive Director (who is also my husband) says to the men and women we serve is this, “It doesn’t matter what you did last night. It doesn’t matter what you did this morning. You are loved.”
There’s something about this idea of unconditional generosity that can rock folks – both those we serve and our volunteers. And I get it. Often our instincts are that people need to clean up first. We question whether people who may have spent the little money they have on alcohol or drugs “deserve” all this free stuff. Sometimes our desire to see people “clean up” is even quite literal. I once had a conversation with someone volunteering for a different organization who told me that they required unhoused individuals to participate in alley clean-up before being given a sandwich.
I’m sure that organization is well-meaning and that their intention may be to help instill a sense of good citizenship and responsibility to the community they live in, but I don’t think Jesus’ idea of mercy and compassion was ever to hold them contingently.
What’s not to get?
Days after The Super Bowl, there were plenty of things to talk about: the underwhelming first half, the surprise overtime, Usher and Alicia Key’s half-time performance, Travis and Taylor! But the conversation I was most interested in and disturbed by (but not surprised by), was the intense reaction to three words: he gets us.
If you haven’t seen the commercial, an organization called, He Gets Us, aired the ad during the Super Bowl for the second year in a row. The commercial shows illustrations of people from all walks of life washing the feet of people from different walks of life, and ends with a bold statement both in typography and in sentiment: JESUS DIDN’T TEACH HATE. HE WASHED FEET. And finally, the words, “He gets us. All of us.”
Instant Christian criticism ranged from how much money was spent on the commercial to how it presented a watered-down version of the gospel to it being a message that condoned sin. I’ll be very candid with you, the first criticism is a non-starter for me. I don’t think we can spend too much money on introducing people to Christ. If someone’s got millions/billions of dollars to spend – introducing a massive amount of folks to Jesus is a grand gesture of love and God-honoring as far as I’m concerned. So, I won’t spend time there.
What I’ll also add is that no matter how we feel about the “completeness” of the message, I’d assume that any Christian can agree with the claim: that an Infinite God who made us, does indeed get us. Scripture brims with metaphorical language that describes God as a master craftsman; knitting us together, (Psalm 139:13-18), molding us like clay (Isaiah 64:8), and preparing good works for us, his handiwork. (Ephesians 2:10). My point is, that if we take the claim, “he gets us,” at face value, there isn’t anything to argue.
But let’s talk about the two bigger potential issues; the watering down of the gospel and the condoning of sin. We’ll do that as best we can in a short-form essay, by diving into the parable of The Good Samaritan.
Compassion without caveats
In Luke 10:25-36 we’re told the story of a lawyer who asks Jesus how to have eternal life. Jesus being Jesus, answers the guy with a question of his own. He asks how he interprets the law. It’s a great question. It’s logical to think a lawyer would interpret the law correctly, right? And he does. “You shall “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,” he says. “And with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” I imagine Jesus nodding enthusiastically here. And he basically says, “Yep – go do that!”
We think the conversation is over at this point.
But then the lawyer asks for clarification about who his neighbor actually is. The ESV says the lawyer desired to “justify himself.” The transliteration for the word “justify,” in Greek is dikaios, which broadly means to be seen as virtuous or doing the right thing. But more acutely it means to be in right standing with your fellow man.
As someone with a deep motivation to be “good” and “right,” there’s a part of me that totally gets this guy. And I’ve asked similar questions of Jesus; often when I’ve felt spread thin and overwhelmed by the seemingly endless demands of life, I’ve asked, Jesus, what is mine to do here?
Jesus' response to the lawyer is less than concise. He launches into a story about a traveler who is robbed and violently attacked on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho. As the man lies dying on the side of the road, several people pass him by. A Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. We assume the holy man, a priest, would stop and offer assistance, but he crosses on the other side of the road. The Levite, has strict cleanliness rules to maintain. But the Samaritan, a man who would have likely been despised by the traveler, stops to help him.
The Samaritans were a people who had unorthodox ways of practicing Judaism and had adopted pagan customs. But the bible says this Samaritan “had compassion” and ministered to the traveler’s wounds, taking him to an inn to recover. Once there, he paid the innkeeper to allow the man an extended stay; telling him he’d pay him back for whatever time the man needed to stay and heal. When Jesus finishes the story, the lawyer correctly identifies the Samaritan as the one who acted most like a neighbor.
The parable doesn’t share much about the traveler. All we know is that he was going to Jericho. Jesus doesn’t develop a character arc. We’re not told if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. And since Jesus doesn’t typically mince words, I think it’s safe to say he’s left those details out on purpose – because they don’t matter when it comes to compassion and mercy.
Mercy beyond measure
The Bible Project podcast recently discussed the word, mercy within the context of their Sermon on the Mount series. Their deep dive into the origins of the word showed that our modern-day understanding of the word, “to forgive someone a wrong” didn’t fully encapsulate what it meant in the original Greek or Hebrew, which seems to point more toward acts of overwhelming generosity whether an offense has been committed or not. At the end of their discussion, co-host Michelle Jones suggests this as a working definition, “…[people who]treat people like really close family with outrageous generosity...”
It’s this type of extravagant good that the Samaritan shows towards his neighbor and it’s the kind of mercy that Jesus says is exemplary of a blessed life or a good life in Matthew 5:7.
It’s a convicting call, this sort of compassion. It asks me to sit aside all judgment and show up for my neighbor no matter the circumstance.
This traveler wasn’t sinless, of this we can be sure. And for The Good Samaritan, it wasn’t a deciding factor in choosing to stop, kneel, and minister.
The part that we Christians are often afraid is missing from any narrative about compassion, whether shared by a commercial or otherwise, is the part about sin. We’re afraid that somehow an act of compassion shown to an unrepentant person is synonymous with saying that sin is ok. But the gospel points straight to THE ultimate act of compassion done on our behalf while we were yet sinners(Romans 5:8). There was no amount of cleaning up that I could do on my own for God to deem me worthy of stooping down from heaven.
Before everything, God knew that the law would not suffice in governing human behavior. He knew that ultimately it would be outrageous kindness that led us to repentance. He makes us in His own image, like the craftsman He is, but understands that humankind is largely formed by brokenness; not by the perfect heavenly kingdom it was designed for.
He doesn’t just get us a little bit. He gets us wholeheartedly.
The Sidewalk exchange
I’ve seen men and women living on the street show up early to those pop-up Saturdays I mentioned. They sweep the sidewalk of any debris so we can set up tables without delay, they help unload heavy boxes from our trucks, give out socks to the community with smiles on their faces, ask what church we attend, if they can come too, and for prayer. These things, I believe, are evidence of a special type of currency native only to God’s Kingdom. Where compassion moves us closer to who we were meant to be, God unwilling to spare any expense in our homecoming and our restoration.
What did you think of the He Gets Us commercial?
If you’re wondering what the heck I’ve been talking about this whole time, here it is: Hegetsus.org
Also, may I point out the original foot-washing series? Below you’ll find a link to the work of a beautiful artist I’ve been following for a couple of years now on Instagram, Jessica Bond. She creates gorgeous pieces (and I saw them long before the commercial everyone is talking about).
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The more folks who contribute financially, the more opportunity I have to continue using my free time to write and hopefully — one day, publish a full-length book.
To love like Jesus, to be merciful and generous as He is to us, we need a radical change in our natural bent in viewing others different than us. I'm thankful Jesus daily continues to lavish His outrageous generosity on us and frees our hearts more and more to overflow the same to others.
"...because they don’t matter when it comes to compassion and mercy." What's not to get, indeed. Thankful for your words, Brandy!