Sermons for the Month
Compassion That Offers New Life!
DATE: July 20th, 2003
SERVICE: Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
TEXT: Mark 6:30-34 and 53-56“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN (Comments about prayers shawls - blessed during the prayers and passed around for individual payers during Holy Communion.)
I like today's bulletin cover. Did you notice it? Pictured there are some sheep, who look rather aimless, along with the words from Mark 6, "He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd." All week, as I reflected on today's theme, I kept adding words to that quote saying, "He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." It turns out that the phrase, "because they were harassed and helpless", is from a similar passage in Matthew 9. But I wanted it to be in today's text, perhaps because there have been moments recently when I felt harassed and helpless. You know how that feels, don't you? Just grit your teeth, tense your neck muscles and imagine yourself being bombarded by people - clients, bosses, children, parents - who want something from you NOW while at the same time e-mail messages are adding up to the hundreds and the phone won't stop ringing. The tension builds and builds and builds until you want to yell "stop". Perhaps even do so, but you are powerless, helpless and the flood of demands continues its bombardment. That's one way to define being harassed and helpless. One could also think of being taken advantage of, or of being ill or disabled, or of being unable to make oneself heard, or of being in need as being harassed and helpless. Perhaps Jesus saw all of those human conditions when he looked at the great crowd before him in which people were wandering aimlessly. They were in a fog, without direction or hope. And, amazingly, he had compassion on them. This text - and that word compassion - tell us so much about our Lord. Did you notice that I said it was amazing that Jesus had compassion on them? I made that statement because it's clear that when these events occurred Jesus and his disciples are tired. The 12 have just returned from venturing into villages where they were imitators of Jesus by teaching, casting out demons and healing those who were ill. We can imagine that, while exciting, such activity would be exhausting. After relaying their experiences, Jesus encourages them to "come away to a deserted place" - a retreat of sorts, a mini- vacation. They need some space; Jesus is so popular, and so many people are coming and going, that they had no leisure time. They couldn't even share a meal in peace. But the plan backfired. They have become so well known that even as they are attempting to flee to a deserted place, they are seen, and the word of their destination spreads. And, by the time they arrive, the spot is no longer deserted. A great crowd - that we later learn numbered over 5000 people - was waiting for their arrival. Now, I would guess that, given the same situation, most of us would not have reacted in a constructive way. We might even have shouted, "Leave me alone." Don't you suppose that's what the disciples wanted to do? Or, perhaps they just wanted to turn around and paddle the other way. To use current terms, they were burned out, they needed some space, they just wanted to be left alone. But that was not true for Jesus. He saw that mass of humanity with all its pain and need, and he cares about them so much that he cannot turn away. He sees that they are wandering aimlessly, that they need direction and hope, and he has compassion on them. Compassion. It's such a beautiful word, and it's interesting to note that in the New Testament the term compassion, which sometimes is translated pity, is used only three other times in reference to human behavior. All three are found in the parables of Jesus which portray someone who messed up, who had been beat up and who was backed up against the wall. (1) In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the one who messed up showed blatant disregard for his parent. He exploited his father by asking for his inheritance early, which was to act as if his father were already dead. He then proceeded to squander everything on immoral and unhealthy pursuits, until he ended up starving, feeding swine that were considered religiously unclean. To use a modern term, he hit bottom, and decided to return home and offer himself to his father as a slave. But the father has long been looking for his son, and when he see him coming he responds with compassion, rejoicing at the son's return. Then there's the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is about a man who was beat up. He was traveling between Jerusalem and Jericho when he fell among robbers who not only took all he had but beat him until he was nearly dead. He was left to die by a priest, who represented the highest religious leadership in the land, and by a Levite, who also was a person of religious vocation. And then the Samaritan approached. No body of people was despised as much as by the Jews as were the Samaritans. Amazingly, this hated person who was considered racially and religiously inferior was the one who showed compassion. He saved the man's life. Finally, let's recall the story of the wicked servant whose debt is forgiven. He was backed up against a wall because he owed the king millions of dollars, an amount he could never repay. Yet, he begs to be given the opportunity to do so, rather than being sold along with his entire family into slavery in order to repay the debt. Knowing that it was a hopeless situation, the king acted with compassion, cancelled the dept and let him go. Later, of course, the servant shows no appreciation for the great gift he has been given and ends up suffering the consequences. All three of these parables teach us that compassion involves forgiving those who do not deserve it and meeting the needs of those who have been beat up by life. That's the nature of God - to have compassion - to forgive, to heal, to make new life possible. So, when Jesus - tired as he is - looks out at that crowd and has compassion it means that he is about to open up new possibilities for them. So it is that compassion is no "namby-pamby" emotion or activity when offered by God in Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Just look what happens next in the Gospel of Mark. We already read the end of the chapter, where it says that those who even touched the fringe of his cloak were healed. But we skipped the part that tell how Jesus empowered his disciples to feed more than 5000 people with two fish and five loaves, and how he walked on the water to reach them on the stormy sea. I like to imagine that when Jesus looks at us, especially at those times in our lives when harassed and helpless are good descriptive words, he feels compassion. That means Jesus holds out forgiveness to us when we don't deserve it and he binds our wounds when we have been beat up by life and he empowers us to do that which seems impossible and he shows us his power, coming to us in unexpected ways even as the storms rage. His compassion holds us - giving us hope - we are no longer like sheep without a shepherd.
AMEN
(1 -"A Compassion for Ministry" by Daniel Leininger, Baptist Herald, January/February 1988)