Jesus' Compassion Wears on You

Not long ago I had lunch with a woman I’ve known for awhile. Since then I’ve not been able to get the conversation we had out of my mind.

She told me that she deeply feels the concerns and pain others experience. It bothers her to see, on TV, refugees living in camps in Darfur. She doesn’t like reading stories in the newspaper about youngsters dropping out of high school.

Often she feels compelled to act. She’ll send money to relief agencies, or write a letter to her congressional representative. If she hears that a foundation was established to support the family of the Carmel schools police officer who was killed Thursday night, she’ll make a donation. Frequently she’ll call a friend or family member, and, with tears in her eyes and voice choked with sadness, ask them to do the same.

Now it gets a little heartbreaking. Several people she knows, including her children, have told her it’s abnormal to feel so deeply. When she had a similar conversation with her doctor, he said she might be depressed and offered her some Prozac. She asked me if I thought she was crazy and should see a therapist.

I suggested the more accurate description of her feeling is, likely, empathy. That means to feel WITH someone, rather than to feel FOR someone. Feeling for someone is usually described as sympathy or pity. Feeling WITH someone (empathy) has sits roots in compassion.

Compassion is an extraordinary, godly gift. Think of the number of times this trait is described as characterizing Jesus’ mood and response – four times in Matthew alone (9:36; 14:14; 15:32; and, 20:34). Like this text from Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, the evangelists usually say Jesus was “moved” with compassion.

That’s a good clue for coming to recognize the difference between compassion and sympathy. More often than not, feelings of sympathy lead to clucking the tongue, or shaking the head, in pity. Compassion, as a rule, causes the person who feels with someone else to act, immediately, in that person’s behalf.

It gets better! Compassion, according to a theologian whom I admire tremendously, is a radical form of social criticism. Compassion that’s moved to act on someone else’s behalf says, immediately and publicly, “This pain, or oppression, or injustice is a hurt that must be taken seriously.” The hurt can’t be dismissed as acceptable, normal and natural. Rather, this hurt is abnormal and unacceptable if humanity is to flourish.

Most societies establish laws and norms to keep the “empire / emperor” going, not to keep the people going. In these sorts of systems, the most looked-down upon quality is compassion. Having compassion makes it impossible to blame the victim, or encourage them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. But emperors and empires will not tolerate any solution that requires them to level the playing field by changing systems and structures so that opportunities and advantages are available to everyone, equally. Remember these presidential pronouncements:
• there’s no free lunch
• we have more will than wallet
• government is not the answer
• big government is the problem, not the solution.
These methods for maintaining the status quo are designed to keep hurt and pain hidden, and when that’s not possible, to show that those who experience them deserve them. Empires require the lack of compassion in order to maintain that neither the empire nor the emperor is part of the problem, or part of the solution.

Compassion refuses to let them get away with that. Compassion calls ‘em like it feels ‘em. Compassion says, for example, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles and swims like a duck, it’s not jumpstarting the economy, it’s a tax cut for the wealthy.

Showing the best traits of a biblical prophet – to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable – Jesus’ compassion, his feeling with and immediately taking action for those who were oppressed by sin, sickness and death, was a public announcement that God has reached his last nerve, and has come down to deliver all God’s people.

Jesus’ compassion is a public critique that the pain caused by oppression and injustice can no longer be hidden when the Kingdom (rule) of God begins, with Jesus’ his presence, to break in. Jesus’ presence, what he taught, the actions he took, were each a public critique against the way world is organized.

Emperors and empires structure world to deceive world-followers that God wants certain ones to suffer, and certain others to live in the lap of luxury. Emperors and empires are glad when loyal citizens keep up that illusion by saying that compassionate people aren’t normal, or ought to just get over it, or perhaps have their senses dulled by drugs.

Jesus is ushering in a new era so Jesus is acting in the fashion Jeremiah prescribed. Remember how this whole incident started? We heard it two weeks ago when Jesus sent the 12 out two-by-two. He sent them to deliver the very teaching he did, “Hey, turn around, don’t go that way anymore; come this way, the Kingdom of God is breaking in.” He empowered them to perform the same deeds he did; heal the sick, free the possessed.

Look at Psalm 23. Isn’t this what Mark is telling us Jesus is doing for these crowds who rush around the shore-line to greet him as he steps off the boat, spoiling the debriefing, celebration and time of reflection Jesus had planned for the disciples just returned from mission?

He immediately responds to their aimlessness like a shepherd toward his sheep. He makes them lie down in a fertile, life-giving place. He offers them the refreshment that comes from belonging. From within his own identity with his Father-God, he leads them in the direction of relationship and rootedness. They’re fearless in his company because he has a rod in one hand to fend off the wolves, and he’s got a staff in the other to coax straying sheep back into the flock. So they’re comfortable when he nourishes them, in a place where both Herod’s henchmen and the priests’ and Pharisees’ spies can see compassion’s critique on their system. He anoints them with healing and makes their cups overflow.

Now most of you know this is more than just tall-tales from long-ago. You’ve experienced this. You’ve been filled with worry, anxiety, and complete restlessness, then the Shepherd quieted your spirit. You’ve traveled down dead-end roads but the Shepherd met you there to bring you back to right paths. You’ve lived in parched places without loving and trustworthy companions, governed by enemies, and the Shepherd set up a table for you in a new home place. You’ve crossed into death-dealing territories and lived to tell the story because the Shepherd guarded your way, guiding you out of there. You know what it feels like to be anointed by the Shepherd so that your dis-ease is transformed.

That’s why we do most everything we do here. Remember what we did last summer during Vacation Bible School? For four nights we had over 50 children in here for a Fiesta – a Psalm 23 Fiesta. Now it’s time to debrief, rest up, and give thanks to God. But be sure of this, the crowds are still pressing in, like sheep without a shepherd. Out there, they’ll find cold shoulders and, once in a while, a pity party. In here, folks moved with compassion will surround them.

What would that look like today? Do you think it might look like this? We have all the influence and authority we need to:
• Heal a child from the afflictions that result from not being able to read (I’ll tell you his name and arrange a time for you to start tutoring him.)
• Liberate a man from the subjugation that results from unemployment (We’ll meet with him as soon as you’re available to put his resume together and you can introduce him to your network.)
• Free a mom from the oppression that results from not having adequate housing for her children (She needs a mentor to teach her to manage a household and prepare for home-ownership.)

That’s costly, tiresome work, all right. But it ain’t crazy; it’s Jesus, right here, right now. And his compassion looks mighty good on you!