At the heart of it all is the heart. The one revealed to me and to others as the light of the world is a man of compassion. Everything that Jesus said and did was centered on this principle of unconditional love. When that truth has been revealed by the church we are engaged in holy activity and when it is not we are not. No matter how sacred the language, how beautiful the hymn, how eloquent the preacher, if at the heart there is no heart then it is not holy. It is their hardness of heart.

We were driving around San Francisco and I was listening to an interview with Ken Kesey, the rather bizarre author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. If you're familiar at all with Kesey you know that he is the embodiment of Hippie life back in the 60's...only Ken has never really left it. He was asked by the interviewer what he would do about the then troubling and tragic situation in Bosnia.

Kesey replied, in his cavalier manner, "Why, I'd drop a ton of LSD on them all and watch what happened!"

Whoever else was listening that morning joined me in shaking heads and scoffing at his foolishness. But then, as if he knew what all the listeners like me were thinking, Kesey said, "Do you think that's any worse than what they've been doing?" Not for a minute am I advocating the use of psychedelic drugs but, in a curious way, Kesey spoke of a very Christ-like principle. To the world, compassion is often the most foolish of actions, but judging from what is going on out there, do we really think it could be any worse?

What would happen if we centered our lives in compassion? Is it just possible that relationships would be strengthened and the joy of life would return? Is it possible that instead of lives lived in fear and trepidation, we might live in hope and expectation? Is it possible that mediation might be discovered as more useful than political machinations? Is it possible that the church, who has so often operated out of power and domination, might discover a better way, a more holy way...the way of the heart?

At the heart of Christianity is the call to give our hearts away. Marcus Borg claims that the most illustrative verse of the message of Jesus is also one of the shortest. It is found in Luke 6:36.

"Be compassionate as God is compassionate."

What makes this passage so important is that Jesus has taken a most familiar saying from Leviticus, "Be holy as God is holy" and radically illuminated it in a new light. Holiness is equated with compassion! Holiness is equated not with keeping all the little laws or believing all the right things or mingling only with the right people. Holiness is found in being compassionate. The Kingdom of God is entered not with right words, right gestures, right food, right teachings...but by compassion.

So much of Christianity seems to have forgotten this. Whenever we put anything above compassion we have failed to honor the one to whom we claim as our founder. Whenever we say that thinking a certain way or feeling a certain way or talking a certain way or even believing a certain way is more important than the call to compassion we have moved away from Jesus. Over the last twenty centuries, we have moved far away.