Hilton Head Island, SC – November 17, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 7:11-17; Mark 6:30-34
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – As he landed he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he taught them many things. – Mark 6:34 (RSV)
The word compassion literally means “to suffer with.” Alternatively we could say that it means “to feel with” or “to feel for.” When we observe someone who has just been badly hurt in an accident, we feel for that person, we suffer with or feel for him Were we to see starving people (which very few of us have ever actually seen), I hope we would all feel compassion for them. When someone we know loses a spouse or child or close friend, we feel the pain that person feels, because we too may have been there, and we know what it feels like.
In the liturgical calendar, Palm Sunday is called Passion Sunday, because it is the beginning of Holy Week, and preparation for Good Friday, when Jesus suffered his “passion,” his death on the cross. Compassion is not just fleeting feelings for someone in momentary distress; it is the awareness of what others are experiencing that thrusts the deepest sorrow into their lives.
Langdon Gilkey was a twentieth-century theologian who was a prisoner in Japanese internment camp in China during World War II. He wrote a book called Shantung Compound which described his experiences there. The prisoners were men of different nationalities and religions, and they all suddenly found themselves behind barbed wire with people with whom they had little in common. One thing quickly became evident to all of them; they had too little food for too many men. When the American Red Cross sent food, the Americans thought they should have it, and not the other prisoners.
Langdon Gilkey said that “after the polish of easy morality and just dealing [had] worn off,” the Shantung Compound became a case study in how men under severe deprivation behaved. He wrote that his trust in human goodness and rationality soon disappeared as most of the prisoners began to make self-preservation their number one priority, rather than the protection of the weaker prisoners. “Self-interest seemed almost omnipotent,” he wrote. Suffering brought out the worst rather than the best in many of the starving prisoners.
Compassion may be easier for those who are strong and healthy than for those who are depleted and in constant pain. If we have plenty, we may be more inclined to suffer with or to feel for those who have little. But when we are depleted ourselves, it may be another story altogether. Gilkey’s story does not paint the human race in the brightest of hues.
Another way to express this reality is to say that it may be necessary to teach ourselves compassion before we find ourselves in situations where we encounter others who need our compassion. For some people, compassion flows naturally from the essence of their personalities, but for others, they must think about the circumstances in which compassion should be offered to people in distress. Those who are basically apathetic (“without feeling”) can learn to become sympathetic (“feeling with”). Living in a prison camp is not the best setting for learning that, however, so it is best to try to learn it before finding oneself in such an extreme situation.
We are living in a very hurried world. Older people are not so hurried, but we may have gotten used to living so quickly in our younger years that we can easily overlook those who need our compassion. We may have neighbors or friends or fellow retirement community residents who are struggling with life and need some TLC. If we don’t take time to offer tenderness, TLC may not happen for them. We may be their only link to being lifted out of their pain or sorrow.
Some of the people who need the most compassion are the very ones who make it the most difficult to suffer with or to feel with them or for them. There are needy people who may need our help and support the most, but because they may put on a show of helplessness, we may be disinclined to help them. Older people in particular can be especially hard to know exactly how to help, because their desire for independence may make them likely to resist compassion. All of us, but especially Christians, should reach out with compassion to those who most need it. Our compassion may be refused, and if so, there is not much we can do about that. But if it is never offered, obviously it can never be accepted.
I chose two stories from the Gospels which illustrate the deep compassion Jesus felt for those in need. In the first one Luke tells us about Jesus being in a village called Nain. It is at the foot of Mt. Tabor, the Mountain of the Transfiguration. Incidentally, this story is found only in the Gospel of Luke.
According to the narrative, a large crowd was following Jesus as he came close to the main gate of the walled town. (You may be pleased to know that Hilton Head Island was not the first community to establish gated communities. We may find comfort, therefore, and imagine that we are let off the hook.) Just as Jesus and his large crowd came to the gate, another crowd was coming out the gate to go to the community cemetery. And here we need to pause for a moment to explain first-century Judean culture.
Back then burials would occur either on the day of the death of the deceased, or the next day. That is what both the Bible and tradition decreed. In the Middle East today, whether in Israel or in the surrounding Arab countries, a funeral procession is a very noisy affair, with much visible and audible weeping and emotional outbursts. Some people even hire professional wailers to make the spectacle even more audibly spectacular.
In this case the circumstances were particularly sad. It was a young man who had died, and he was the only child of his parents. His father had previously died, so here was a widow who had lost her last connection to her own nuclear family. Luke’s description is so powerful. “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said, ‘Do not weep’” (Mark 7:13).
Do not weep! How could she not be greatly upset? She was a woman, she was a widow, and now she had neither husband nor son to protect her in that male-dominated culture which had far too little regard for females, especially females living alone.
But Jesus had something else in mind. “Young man,” Jesus said to the corpse, “I say to you, arise!” And immediately he did.
This is one of only two stories in the four Gospels where Jesus unquestionably raised a person from the dead who unquestionably had died. The other is the story of the raising of Lazarus in the Fourth Gospel. Here it is the notion of the resurrection upon which Luke is focusing, but that is not our focus here. Rather it is the simple declarative statement, “And when the Lord saw (the widow), he had compassion on her.” He had compassion! There is no one who ever lived who had greater or deeper or more expansive compassion than Jesus of Nazareth!
Jesus Christ has compassion, and of all people, Christians especially should express compassion. We follow a teacher, a master, who was filled with feelings for and with those who suffer. And that is what Jesus also asks of us.
Fixing food for the bereaved is compassion. Being there when someone needs someone there is compassion. Trying to help someone, even if the help is resisted, is a display of compassion. And if it is not offered, it can have no effect. Compassion not acted upon is not compassion.
Ryan King is a ten-year-old girl with spina bifida. She was going to miss her school’s trip to a state park because she is confined to a wheel chair. Jim Freeman, one of the teachers in her school, solved the problem. He made a special back pack for her, and he carried her with the rest of her classmates to the falls of the Ohio River in the Falls of Ohio State Park. That is compassion. But truly to show compassion, it must be enacted; it cannot only be internally felt by the one who offers it. And because Jim Freeman is a teacher, we might note that compassion is not only “caught;” it must also be “taught.”(CNN, Sept. 25, 2019)
The only miracle that is in all four Gospels is the feeding of the five thousand. In Mark’s version of this story, it says that Jesus had been with a large crowd of people. Many public figures are energized by large numbers of people. Apparently Jesus wasn’t one of them. Frequently, after he been doing some intense preaching, teaching, or healing, we are told that he needed to get away to re-charge his batteries.
That is the story behind the story in Mark’s telling of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Jesus told the disciples he wanted to go by boat from the west side of the Sea of Galilee to the east side so that he could rest up. (I describe it that way because that’s the way I see it in my mind’s eye. I don’t really know where they were or where they went. But because I am quite familiar with the lake, that’s the way I have always visualized this incident, and I can do it no other way.)
Many people saw Jesus and the disciples get into the boat. Mark tells us they “knew them,” and they assumed they knew were the boat was going to land. They high-tailed it on foot to the east side of the lake, and they got there before the boat. That’s when “the problem” manifested itself. Too many people had come, and too many brought nothing or too little to eat.
Mark beautifully describes Jesus’ response to this situation. “And as (Jesus) landed, he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). They were an excited crowd who came running to hear Jesus, but too few of them had remembered to bring any food with them. So first Jesus filled their minds with food to think about, and then he arranged to have their stomachs filled with food necessary to satisfy their hunger. However, the feeding of the five thousand is not what we are looking at in this story, either. It is Jesus’ compassion for people who were like sheep without a shepherd.
We too are all like sheep without a shepherd. We go running off in all directions, hoping to discover that one singular factor which will provide all the answers to all our questions. When we don’t find it, we become depressed or disheartened, wondering if we shall ever find our way through life.
Compassion means perceiving a need, and doing all we can to satisfy that need. That is who Jesus was, and that is what he did. It also is what he bids us to do.
James Alison is a leading Roman Catholic theologian. He is a strong advocate on behalf of LGBTQ Catholics. For having done this, he was suspended from the priesthood. A compassionate bishop wrote the Pope, asking that he reinstate the theologian. Two years ago Father Alison received a phone call from Pope Francis, who told him that he had restored to Father Alison “the power of the keys,” meaning the keys of St. Peter. In so doing, Father Alison is now back in good standing in the Church. The Pope told him, “I want you to walk with deep interior freedom, in the spirit of Jesus.” There was a risk in that bishop contacting the Pope, and there is a far greater risk in the Pope showing compassion for a beleaguered priest. Cultural and theological conservatives in the Catholic hierarchy oppose such measures, as they also quietly or not so quietly oppose Pope Francis. But no one can curtail the compassion which flows so freely and naturally from one of the world’s most altruistic humanitarians.
The Dalai Lama is another renowned figure who constantly displays compassion. He has special regard for his fellow Tibetans, who suffer under the rule of an oppressive communist Chinese regime. His compassion must be extended to his fellow countrymen from his exile in Dharamsala, India, because the Chinese government will not allow him ever to return to Tibet. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama remarkably displays no emotional animosity toward the Chinese authorities, who have turned Tibet into a huge fenced-off prison camp.
Often it is hard to hurt with hurting people. Many times they hurt so much they are capable of showing little appreciation. Maybe they have become so self-absorbed by their challenges that they cannot readily emerge from their spiral of despondency. There are some people who obviously need our compassion --- the seriously ill, the financially strapped, the lonely or frightened or isolated.
Highly unlikely people also need compassion, although we are not likely personally to encounter them: school shooters, sexual abusers, drug lords, and so on. However, we all know people who naturally elicit very small doses of the milk of human kindness from anyone. They are the ones who have made themselves very unlikable. They also are the ones who probably need the most compassion.
Compassion always takes a toll. It depletes us. But in the process, it also enlarges our spirit.
Compassion means doing things you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do them. It means bearing burdens, taking risks, giving someone both your shirt and your coat. It means walking the extra mile. It means putting the Sermon on the Mount into daily practice.
“When Jesus saw her, he had compassion on her, and said, ‘Do not weep.’” “As he landed he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
Jesus is all compassion, and so should we be. Pure, unbounded love he is, and so should we be. Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down. Let it flow!