With Pure Passion :: Matthew 9:35-10:1
Are you a compassionate person?
Most of us probably consider ourselves to be compassionate. After all, it’s not too difficult for everyone in this room to have sympathy for the other people here, people you’ve been sitting next to all of your life, and then finding yourselves moved to come to each other’s aid, and actually following through.
That is compassion.
You care deeply about each other. You have empathy for each other because many of you have walked a mile in each other’s shoes. You have suffered together, worked together, prayed together. And you care deeply when the people around you break ankles and heels ... when they are diagnosed with bad hearts and eyes ... when they are suffering ... that you search for ways to relieve or ease their pain.
That is compassion.
Compassion is a most enviable trait. In some circles, it is the top quality that a person can have. A website called The Sales Blog ranked compassion ahead of humility, grit, game, loyalty, strength, thoughtfulness, sense of humor, comfort in your own skin, and duty, because compassion is selfless.
Psychologists say mammals are born with compassion. If you own a cat or a dog, you know what I’m talking about.
To be clear, compassion is more than empathy or sympathy. It isn’t just a feeling. Sympathy is sharing a feeling of suffering. Empathy comes when you have the feeling because you have shared the experience. Cancer survivors know what I mean.
Compassion takes sympathy and empathy a step further. Compassion requires action. While others might have sympathy and empathy from a distance from those who are suffering, compassion prompts us to act on their behalf.
That brings us to our Gospel reading from Matthew. We read ...
Jesus went around to all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the good news, and healing all the diseases and all the maladies. Seeing the crowds, he felt compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s Gospel reading is a most telling passage about our God and Lord. It is showing us that the Author of Life is not simply some distant uninvolved god who doesn’t care about you. He isn’t simply a good man with a good word about good living ... paying lip service to the putting our best foot forward.
Our Lord Jesus Christ acts on our behalf. He comes to us ... meeting us where we are, as Matthew says in every city and village. As he comes, he sees firsthand the misery that we have brought upon ourselves. He experiences what we experience, and he is moved with the deepest compassion that prompts him to do something about it, teaching and preaching and healing any and all ... Jew, Gentile, black, white.
Try as we might, I don’t think we can relate very well to Jesus in this moment. When our Lord passed through this world, to him, it must have looked like a hospital system that had not flattened the curve. People were suffocating under the weight of the Law. They were dying of sin.
What does the world look like to you?
Green pastures?
By the time our gospel reading opens, Matthew has described how Jesus had already cleansed lepers, calmed a storm that was terrifying his disciples, cast out demons, healed a paralytic, raised the dead, given sight to the blind, given voice to the mute, and gave relief to a woman who had been suffering for 12 years. He has healed multitudes of people ... even a man sight unseen. All the while he was teaching them the scriptures and preaching the Good News about what God is doing ... not what man is doing.
He was moved to compassion by all of the world’s pain.
Try as we might, we don’t understand.
This word “moved with compassion” is the strongest word for pity in the Greek language. It is formed by taking the word which points to our gut, our deepest seat of emotion, and it describes the movement that cuts us to the core, a movement that inspires action.
In the New Testament it is used only to describe Christ.
In the Old Testament, it is used only to describe God.
Jesus was moved with compassion when he fed 5,000 and 4,000. God was moved with compassion to forgive the unforgiving servant.
Go figure, Jesus is God. He was moved to heal the sick, to give sight to the blind, to set free those who are tormented by demons, and to preach good news to the poor.
He was moved by you.
And amazingly, the world rejects him who has the most enviable trait. They want to know what they can do to help. They aren’t interested in God helping them.
But Jesus had the compassion we only long for.
When God in the flesh came to us, what he found was faint-hearted people who were beaten down and exhausted ... struggling to dot every I and to cross every T of thousands of laws and traditions their religious leaders had imposed upon them. Everywhere he went he found people who were being flayed by the minutiae of how to live righteously all the time ... as if you are able to do that. He found people who didn’t have faithful shepherds in their lives to draw them home with the Gospel.
He found people who had never actually heard the Gospel before.
So Jesus called his disciples together and said ... The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Pray earnestly, therefore, that the Lord of the harvest will cast workers out into his harvest.
But he didn't stop there, passing lip service to our plight. Having called his twelve disciples, he gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and all the maladies.
We are still praying, aren’t we?
Because sadly, things haven’t changed that much in two thousand years.
Have you been paying attention to the news? Our world is still groaning under the weight of sin. The world is still burning around you. People are still being oppressed and killed all the day long. They are still being beaten and broken. They are still being weighed down by the law, as preachers declare what you must do for God instead of what God is doing for you. And justice still is not prevailing.
If you think I am speaking about the riots and racism that is affecting America, you are only partially right.
This applies to everyone who isn’t hearing the Gospel. That could mean your friends and family who aren’t coming to church.
Have you shared the Gospel with them?
As Jesus went about ... the Jewish leaders should have been giving men the good news about Good coming to us, but they were in fact bewildering us with subtle arguments about the Law, which provided no comfort at all.
So ... seeing the crowds, our Lord Jesus Christ was moved with compassion for you. He sent forth his apostles to give you this good news. One of them even wrote this news for you.
Matthew and John ... both of whom figure prominently in this church year ... ultimately tells us how ... in eternity ... before the foundation of the world ... God saw that the man and woman he would create would rebel against him and bring ruin to his good creation. Yet God chose to proceed with his creation, and with compassion immediately after the fall into sin, he gave us the promise of a savior. God foresaw that sinful mankind would crucify his Son, yet with compassion, God sent Jesus anyway to redeem us.
That’s true compassion.
Our holy Triune God stepped into our shoes, taking on our flesh. He didn't just feel empathy, he lived it, becoming true man for you, taking your place under the law, and fulfilling it perfectly. He then shows his compassion for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). He who knew no sin showed us true compassion by becoming sin for you, so that he could bear the wrath of God for us.
Through his horrific crucifixion, where he was persecuted and condemned and murdered for you, our incarnate Lord therefore was able to reconcile us to our heavenly Father. That is pure compassion.
Now this Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised from the dead, and through his resurrection, and your baptism, he has given you the promise of eternal life with him in paradise. That is pure compassion.
This is truly remarkable good news that is directed to unloving, undeserving people. We may be touched by another’s suffering, but our sympathy and empathy is always tainted with our own sinful self-interest.
But Christ’s heart goes out to sinners who have nothing to offer him in return. That is pure compassion. He sees the whole spectrum of our sin; he feels the purely selfless emotion of God’s eternal love. And then delivers to you forgiveness, life, and salvation.
That’s pure compassion.
As if that were enough, Christ then expresses more mercy, as he continues to teach us, baptize us, and feed us the bread of life in a meal that makes us whole. He continues to pour out his Holy Spirit upon us, nurturing us and making us holy just as he is holy.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us give thanks this day for the laborers that the Lord has sent into His harvest to proclaim the good news so that even more people can bear witness to the compassion of Jesus Christ.