“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like a sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36
Compassion. I’ve heard it said many times over the years that compassion is in short supply in our world. As much as my hopeful spirit doesn’t want to believe this, and despite the fact that I often witness extraordinary acts of compassion around me, I fear that cruelty, indifference, greed, and selfishness seem to be in much larger supply. Regardless of how one measures, perhaps all can agree that the world can always use more compassion.
As a follower of Jesus, to say that the world could use more compassion is to say that the world could use more Jesus. Compassion is the mark of Jesus’ ministry. As one of my favorite hymns expresses it: “Jesus, thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art” (Hymn 637). To be compassionate is to live faithfully into the Gospel of Jesus. Life and ministry in Jesus’ name finds its fullest expression in compassion.
To know Jesus, to follow Jesus, to serve Jesus is to be compassionate. I would even argue that compassion is the sum total of the Fruits of the Spirit as described in Galatians 22-23. “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Compassionate people bear all these fruits of the Spirit.
The world needed more compassion in Jesus’ time, too. And his remedy was to send his disciples out to be compassionate: to heal, to cure, to restore life, cast out all demons and the darkness in people’s lives, to relieve suffering and disease.
Jesus didn’t send his disciples out just to feel badly for others. His Gospel isn’t a Gospel of sympathy, but a call to action grounded in recognizing the suffering and the needs of others with a passionate desire and commitment to alleviate it, to do something about it..
Being compassionate is not the same as feeling sorry for others. Compassion recognizes our common humanity in the suffering of others, in the exploitation of the vulnerable, in the cries of the hungry, in the injustice of poverty, and the cruelty of prejudice. Compassion recognizes these as the scandal that they are: a scandal against the image of God we all share; a scandal against the love God bears to all creation; a scandal against God’s gift of life. Compassion recognizes these and then does something to alleviate them; to change them; to heal them.
The world can use more compassion
Jesus sends out disciples to be compassionate. Jesus is calling you. Compassion is calling you. Find your partners and go.
