September 13, 2026 - Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost: Compassion: Whatever is True

September 13, 2026  Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9, John 18:33-38, John 1:1-5, 14
“Compassion: Whatever is True”
Douglas T. King

A group of young middle schoolers gather in a basement room blessedly out of earshot and eyesight of parents.  It is one of their first attempts at a party that is not about cake and silly party games.  There will be no pin the tail on the donkey, but they do have a game in mind.  Truth or dare.  Everyone is trying to be nonchalant but there is a combination of excitement and anxiety in the room.  Will someone admit to having a crush on someone?  Will someone kiss someone else?  Choosing either truth or dare comes with its own vulnerabilities and risks but truthfully admitting something we have yet to reveal to anyone is perhaps the more intimidating choice.

Our parents teach us to always tell the truth as if it were always that simple.  But we grapple with how to speak the truth and what are the deepest of truths throughout our lives.  It is easy to hear Pilate’s “what is truth?” response to Jesus as the guffaw of a snide political despot who has the power to announce what is true whether it matches reality or not.  But the question is one that is worthy of our consideration, particularly in a social climate that struggles to share a collective understanding of what is true.  

Today is the first sermon in our series on compassion that Melissa and I will be preaching over the next couple of months.  As I said in my chapel bell article this week, for the entirety of this series the first scripture reading will be our remarkable text from Philippians describing what the call to compassionate faithfulness in a diverse community looks like.  How can we be compassionate in a world that reflects less and less compassion?  

Presbyterian minister, Jill Duffield, has written a compelling book about how we need to be reminded of how to be faithful together.  She argues that this Philippians text is a call to remember the old Southern response to each other, “appreciate it.” In other words we are called to deeply appreciate one another.  She writes, “I’d like to think that a generosity of spirit might be a means of resistance to the contempt that threatens to render all of us extinct.  Perhaps appreciation could draw us into a curious proximity that reveals our inextricable and our much-resisted need for one another.” (Duffield, p.2)

Our journey toward that appreciation, toward compassion, begins with the first call from our Philippians text, “whatever is true…” and perhaps Pilate’s question.  The first time we hear of truth in John’s gospel is in that glorious, cosmic description of Jesus Christ that concludes with the line, “full of grace and truth.” It makes me wonder if Jesus is completely full of both grace and truth, then grace and truth are inexorably linked; perhaps in the deepest sense of both of those things one cannot have one without the other.  There is no truth without grace.  

Let me lay out my pathway to that conclusion.  Each one of us has our sense of what is true and what is not.  Some of which we would likely all agree.  The sky is blue on a sunny day.  And some of which we very well may not.  President Trump is either saving or destroying America.  Each of us brings our own limited, mortal perspective to what is true and untrue.  But all of us would agree that God’s truth is the ultimate truth, the deepest truth.  

Now, I am not nearly wise enough to parse God’s deepest truth in all matters.  And frankly those that confidently claim to know God’s deepest truth in all matters make me nervous.  But there is one area where I will confidently and unequivocally claim to speak of God’s deepest truth.  Each and every one of us is a beloved child of God.  In the most quoted of all the verses in John, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” “God so loved the world…” that is you and me, and the people down the street, and the folks in China, and Peru, and Iran and every last corner where people are just trying to get through their days.  That is the deepest of truths of which I will consider no rebuttals.  This is why we have a large baptismal font in the center of our sanctuary with, “You are beloved” etched in the bottom of the bowl.  This is a truth that will not be denied.

But here is the thing about that deepest truth of God’s love for each and every last one of us, it would not work without being accompanied by grace.  As convinced as I am in God’s love for all of us, I am equally convinced, that there are times for all of us, when we are not all that lovable.  In the midst of the foibles, mistakes, and limitations each of us possesses, none of us is loveable all of the time.  And yet, with grace, God loves all of us, all the time, just the same.  The deepest truth is always linked to God’s grace.  

And this is when we pivot to compassion and appreciation.  We often refer to each other as children of God.  But I wonder if we should tweak the metaphor.  What if we would refer to each other as infants of God, freshly baptized, foreheads still damp?  Even those with whom we vehemently disagree; even those folk who repeatedly get under our skin for one reason or another, an infant of God, deserving of grace.  

Jill Duffield writes, “I pictured, for just a moment, each and every one of us as babies. Beautiful.  Treasured.  Beloved. Dependent.  Guileless.  Helpless.  Fully grown, but still full of possibility, still needy infants.  And, at least for a moment, doing so transformed what I saw and changed what I noticed.  Maybe even for a moment, it allowed me to imagine I might want to care for everyone around me, not only the ones with whom I agree.  For a moment, I felt the urge to embrace them instead of holding them at arm’s length.”
(Duffield, p. 17)

During the first portion of our baptism liturgy we always say, “Let us remember and rejoice in our baptism as we celebrate this sacrament.”  With that cooing baby before us, and that reminder of divine love in our ears, rejoicing and celebrating is an easy ask.  I wonder if we added a line to that liturgy.  Something like, “Let us remember and rejoice in the baptism, of all the infants of God’s beloved-ness, even and especially with those with whom we disagree.”  Maybe it is a little clunky but it speaks to the grace and truth Jesus came into the world to bring.  

I remember being on the streets of San Francisco years ago with my mentor in ministry and his mentor in ministry.  We were three generations of clergy who had spent the week studying scripture and preaching.  We were approached by someone who was clearly a professional pan-handler.  She was poised and perfect in how she sought out money from all who were passing by.  Now we all know the best way to care for those who are unhoused is by supporting the agencies who can provide systemic and sustained solutions.  But my mentor’s mentor reached into his wallet and gave her a generous gift.  As we walked away my mentor queried his mentor, “somebody’s daughter?”  “Yep. Somebody’s daughter.”  He did not see that woman for how she might have been out hustling; for how she might spend the money;  for how she represented a huge, intractable, heartbreaking problem in our society.  He saw someone’s daughter.  Perhaps he saw her as God’s daughter as well.  

Imagine what our world would be like if our first frame of reference in every context, from someone cutting in front of us in traffic, to those whose politics makes our skin itch, to geopolitical adversaries bent on dominating and destroying one another, was as a beloved infant of God.  Perhaps it is pie in the sky to imagine world leaders living in this frame of reference.  But if you and I are seeking to be followers of Jesus Christ this is just what we are called to do.  

It is a deep and abiding truth of God and God’s grace that all God’s children are indeed beloved.  And when we are tempted to believe we have some other truth that supersedes this truth and allows us to judge another, I am reminded of a quote by the former pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, John Buchanon. “…When it comes to ultimate truth, the most appropriate posture is modesty, silence, reverence, not propounding, shouting, condemning, excommunicating.” (Norris,  p. 378)

Those early days of truth or dare were an opportunity to begin exploring one aspect of becoming adults.  The question for us is do we dare to have a level of mature Christlike compassion that allows us to live into the grace and truth of being disciples that recognize both friend and supposed foe alike as beloved?  Will we dare to embody God’s deepest truth?  May it be so.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.
 
Duffield, Jill J., Appreciate these Things, WJK Press,   Louisville, 2025.
Norris, Kathleen, Acedia & Me, Riverhead Books, New York, 2008.