(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Order of Compassion”, originally shared on July 12, 2021. It was the 130th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
I spent a semester in Israel when I was in
college. The professor who took us over gave us an assignment to pick one of
the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and read it in one sitting before we
left the U.S.
I
picked Matthew and when I was finished the one verse that seemed to describe
the character of the gospel more than any other was Matthew 9:36, a
parallel to one in this text. In fact, I wrote it on an index card and pinned
it above my desk, where it stayed until I graduated and then through much of
seminary. It was this: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for
them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
This text from Mark, the 6th chapter
that we’re looking at today begins with Jesus’ concern for the exhaustion of
the disciples. They had just come in off the road. They had been sent out into Galilee,
where John the Baptist had been killed by Herod Antipas, two by two to travel
light with authority over the unclean spirits. They proclaimed that all should
repent. The had cast out demons and had anointed with oil many who were sick
and cured them. They had no money. They had stayed with anyone who would give
them shelter and something to eat.
What happened when they got back, and how
did Jesus show them the role of compassion in the Christian life?
The answer begins in Mark, chapter 6,
starting with the 30th verse with the disciples’ exhaustion:
30 The apostles
gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 He
said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a
while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to
eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a
deserted place by themselves.
The apostles (they are now called “apostles”
because they have been “sent”) needed time to rest, and they needed time with
Jesus to prepare them for what was coming. Abraham Lincoln once said, “If I had
six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening my axe.”
They needed that time to rest and sharpen their openness to God.
The need to rest is nothing new, but the
idea of taking intentional time off from work is relatively new in human
history.
The pastors of our synod take some time off
with our bishop to rest and to learn at the annual bishop’s colloquy. One year,
the topic was “Self-Care” and one of the main speakers was Professor Guy Erwin,
a Luther scholar from California Lutheran University, who later himself became
our synod’s bishop. Near the beginning of his presentation, he said something
like “Martin Luther isn’t the best source for of self-care. Luther’s attitude
was, ‘The pitcher goes to the well until it breaks’”.
The idea of a weekend only started in 1879,
and then for when factory work ended at noon on Saturday. It wasn’t yet a widespread
practice. And, if you were rich and didn’t need to have a job it didn’t matter.
Remember the response of the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abby when
Matthew Crowley said he could work during the week and help manage the estate
on the weekends? “What is a weekend?”.
The practice of taking a vacation didn’t
start until the late 1800’s, less than 150 years ago.
Likewise, retirement for “senior citizens”
only started around the late 1800’s as well and only became somewhat common in
the 1920’s. Social Security didn’t start until 1935, just 86 years ago.
Still, many people don’t take their vacation
time and put off retirement for as long as possible.
Though, apparently, the pandemic has given many
a glimpse of the retired life with a time to reflect, and significant numbers
are now requesting early retirement, or just leaving to pursue some other form
of work.
The computer was supposed to usher in the
paperless office, right? It didn’t happen. Likewise, I took a course on future
studies when I was in seminary and the professor shared his expectation that,
within our lifetimes, one of our biggest challenges would be that automation,
or what we would today call artificial intelligence, would make work
unnecessary. This would result in a new kind of human being. We would no longer
be homo sapiens (people of wisdom or knowledge) but homo ludens (people of
play). Our challenge would be to help people find meaning in the workless life.
That hasn’t happened either. Yet.
We are frazzled and, as we move into the New
Normal, we are moving back into increasing frazzled-ness, only the world is changing,
and we aren’t yet sure where our busy-ness is supposed to be directed.
The disciples had become so frazzled that leisure
wasn’t even on their radar screens. In fact, they hadn’t even had enough time
to eat.
I’ve had days where I forgot to eat. I don’t
think that’s uncommon. But I think that that’s different from not having enough
time to eat.
One of my great life lessons came in high
school when a teacher, who I still consider one of my lifetime-so-far top 5
best teachers, assigned a paper that I didn’t turn in. I went to his office
that afternoon to explain that I had been too busy, and I listed all of what I
thought were my impressive academic and extracurricular activities. He
considered what I had said, rocked back in his chair, and said, “David, we do
the things we love. If we don’t have time, we make time.”
I think that we could say that the apostles
were doing the thing they loved, but they had also been sent with a
responsibility to the people they served and they were following Jesus, who was
fully God and also fully human being, who was at the same time teaching them
what compassion means.
They tried to get away. Satisfying their
genuine need to rest and resharpen didn’t work out so well. They were about to
learn a lesson from Jesus on the nature of compassion.
The passage concludes, starting at Mark 6,
verse 33:
33 Now many saw
them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the
towns and arrived ahead of them. 34 As he went
ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were
like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
The crowds could see their
boat from the shore and tried to follow them. This was the crowd from the
feeding of the 5,000! Can you picture a large group of people trying to keep
track of a boat in the Sea of Galilee, running to keep up with it, not watching
what, or who, was in front of them, stumbling over things and people until the
boat was finally heading toward the shore?
As he went ashore, Jesus saw
them standing there, waiting. Like sheep without a shepherd.
Several years ago, I read
a story in the paper about a truckload of sheep that had overturned less than
four miles from where we live, on its way to the L.A. County fairgrounds at the
Pomona Fairplex. The sheep had escaped and were running around on Towne Ave.
The police were called and, sizing up the situation, looked up “Shepherds” in
the soon-to-go-away Yellow Pages, and found a listing for a group of Basque
shepherds who came in, rounded up the sheep and without losing any and without
any injuries, got them back on the truck and on their way.
Sheep need a shepherd.
Was Jesus upset that his
plans to get his apostles some rest had been ruined? No. He had compassion on the
crowd. Because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
And what did he do when
he saw them? He began to teach them. Many things.
Some say that our ability
to show compassion has diminished during the pandemic. We’ve been isolated from
one another; we’ve lost the ability to read faces and emotional tone. We’ve
learned to fear people, particularly those who we don’t know. We’ve gotten used
to being apart from one another and have accepted that the world revolves
around us, and our behavior and our needs and that it will take care of us. As
a result, we’ve lost our skills for cooperation and community building and our
polarization as a nation has gotten worse.
Compassion does not come
as easily to us as it once did. We are closed in on ourselves. Some claim we
have “compassion fatigue”, but I don’t buy that. Maybe among front line workers
and first responders. But not for most of us. One of my colleagues once said
that when people say to him that they can’t volunteer for ministries because
they are burned-out, he first tries to think of a time when they have been
passionate for the church’s ministries. Because you can’t burn out until you
catch on fire.
The apostles needed to rest. Jesus knew
that.
But when Jesus saw the needs of the crowds, he
pivoted. He showed the disciples what ministry is. As a colleague once said
when a member of the church he served stuck their head into his office space to
say, “Sorry to interrupt you, but…”, he answered “Interruptions are my
business.”
Jesus had compassion on the crowd because
they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he shows us the order of
compassion:
First, sheep need to be fed and guided and
shown the way, the truth, and the life.
They need to be protected from sin, death, and the power of the devil.
Jesus showed them that their greatest need was not to get better. It was for a Savior.
So, the first thing he did was to teach them many things.
Second, Jesus took care of their physical
hunger. In the context of the apostles having no leisure even to eat, the crowd
was hungry, and he fed them. We’ll see that part of the story two sessions from
now.
Third, he gave the people a glimpse of what
God had intended the world to be and a glimpse what was coming in the new
heaven and the new earth. That’s what miracles are. He showed them God’s power
to transform. He showed them healing of what was broken. We’ll take a deeper
look at that next time.
That’s the order of compassion. It begins
with teaching. It begins with the “why”, not with the “what” or the “how” of
the Christian life. If we don’t begin with the teaching, nothing else makes
sense. We are just social service agencies using religious language.
Every one of those who Jesus taught, who
Jesus fed, who Jesus healed, who Jesus raised from the dead, came to the same
end. They died.
It was what Jesus taught, and in particular
that he would die for humanity, that gave them the reason for everything else,
that led people to receive the gift of a transformed life, becoming a new
creation in a life of faith that was eternal, starting in this life and
continuing on forever. No one else bears this message to the world but us. Proclaiming
this good news is who we are, who we have been created, equipped and sent to be.
Everything we do flows from this.
The order of compassion ends at the
cross. Here we see what is the center of all human history and the foundation
of our ministry, here is where we see God’s compassion in action:
16 “For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may
not perish but may have eternal life. (Jesus said in John
3:16)
The outcome of Jesus’
compassion was this: he began to teach them many things.
Why? Because they were like sheep without a shepherd. They had no
one to bring them to places where they might be fed with the truth, protected
from the evil one, and cared for when they were broken. We can do those same
things today for the lost sheep of our generation by pointing to Jesus, the
good shepherd.
Jesus taught people and did miracles out of compassion.
They were signs of what was intended by God at creation and someday will be again.
He calls us to faith, to the living relationship with God for which we were
created, and which was made possible for us as a gift at the cross.
Jesus shows us the nature
of compassion itself. He had compassion on the crowd, because they were like
sheep without a shepherd, and he gave them himself. He said, in John 10:11:
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life
for the sheep.”
That is the teaching that Jesus has entrusted
to us for the world and the foundation of the Christian life we share.
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