COMPASSION:
HAND DELIVERED
Rev. Alfred Williams
Ladera Community Church
June 29, 2008
Matthew 9:35-38
Prayer: Surprise us with your grace, O God. May our hearts hear the sound of your voice and our feet be moved to follow your leading. Amen.
As Matthew tells it, Jesus’ ministry has begun. Jesus goes about the cities and villages of Galilee. He teaches in the synagogues. People gather to hear him on the hillsides and at the shore of the sea. He proclaims a message that the New Day of God’s Realm is both present and coming. But not content just to proclaim his message in words, Jesus seeks to put his words into action so that people may experience for themselves the first signs of that promised New Day.
In chapters eight and nine of Matthew’s Gospel, the writer recounts several episodes. In one story Jesus touches a leper and his leprosy is cleansed. In another Jesus heals the paralyzed servant of a Roman centurion. There is the time Peter’s mother-in-law is lying in bed with a fever. Jesus touches her hand and the fever leaves her. There are accounts of Jesus exorcising demons. The tale is told of Jesus taking the hand of a young girl given up for dead and raising her to life. There is the woman who suffers from hemorrhage. She touches the fringe of Jesus’ cloak and is made well. There are stories of Jesus opening the eyes of two blind men and enabling a man who is mute to speak.
In today’s lesson Matthew summarizes these healing stories with these words: When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them. He saw them as a shepherd-less people harried by wolves and left bleeding. So much so, that his heart aches and compassion wells up within him.
According to one commentator, the word translated “compassion” implies “pain of love,” intense and prolonged. An intense and prolonged pain of love that heals and transforms and is life-changing.1
Some of us are prepared to testify that Jesus’ healing, transforming, life-changing compassion is still at work in the world today. Personally, I have not been privileged to see blindness or deafness cured or a dead body brought back to life. But I can testify to this: I was not blind, and yet Jesus’ compassion has given me sight. I was not deaf, yet Jesus’ compassion has given me hearing. I was not dead, yet Jesus’ compassion has raised me to life.
How did it happen? Was it a miracle? Well, yes and no. Jesus’ compassion is often experienced as a miracle. It comes unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere. But as my faith and I have matured I have become convinced that Jesus’ compassion is in fact rooted in the basic stuff of life. Borrowing and adding to an insight from Thomas Merton: The core of life that exists in all things is tenderness and mercy and grace. You might want to mull that over this week. “The core of life that exists in all things is tenderness and mercy and grace.“ 2
Or you may prefer the words of John Shelby Spong. “I experience God as the source of life in the act of living fully. I experience God as the source of love in the act of loving wastefully. I experience God as the Ground of Being in the act of having the courage to be. Jesus is the revelation of this God for me, not because of miracle stories or excessive pre-modern claims, but because Jesus is portrayed as one who is fully alive with the life of God; totally loving with the love of God, and as one who possessed the capacity to be all that he could be, revealing the very Ground of Being that I call God.”3
Jesus’ compassion: It may seem miraculous, but in truth it is the very core of all that is. It is far more than a mere palliative. It is far more than a sentimental feeling. Jesus’ compassion heals and transforms and changes lives.
There is another essential truth about Jesus’ compassion that must be affirmed. Compassion as portrayed in Jesus must be given, it must be offered, it must be shared. Jesus’ compassion must be hand delivered to others, more often than not, one-on-one.
Let me take you back to my first year in seminary. For a host of reasons, which I don’t need to share this morning, my life was in turmoil. Thanks to a seminary grant, and the generosity of the Rockefeller Foundation from whom the money flowed, I was able to stay in school. But there was another problem that money could not solve. I had signed up for a course in Curriculum Writing that was way beyond me. Most of the people in the class had already graduated from seminary and were employed by denominational boards, hard at work on the design and writing of church school curriculum for national distribution.
In a less emotionally turbulent time I like to think I would have had the good sense to drop out of the course early on. But I didn’t. I stuck it out. At the end of the semester I submitted my curriculum design - the sole requirement of the course – for which I received a grade of D. I was heart broken. Written next to the grade was a note from the professor, Dr. Lewis Joseph Sherrill: “Please make an appointment to see me.”
I remember taking the elevator to his office. I walked in, sat down, and almost immediately began to cry. What Dr. Sherrill said or what I said I don’t remember. What I do remember is that Lewis Sherrill was far more concerned about me than about his course or my grade. This didn’t mean that Dr. Sherrill dismissed the fact of my unacceptable work or the consequences of a failing grade. With Dr. Sherrill’s help I set to work on a rewrite of the curriculum design. And the grade on the rewrite was a C.
But all of that was secondary. For me, far more than a grade or a course in curriculum, design was at stake. I needed help down deep in the depths of my heart and soul. And Dr. Sherrill knew it. But what else would you expect? As I appreciate even more today than I did then, at the core of Lewis Sherrill’s life were tenderness and mercy and grace. And on a day more than half a century ago Lewis Sherrill hand delivered Jesus’ compassion to me.
Over the years I have witnessed more than one such exchange. Some years ago I was in Ghana where I spent a week with Bob and Nelda Thelen in a little village a couple of hundred miles north of Accra. Bob was an agricultural missionary working with a small tribe who were farming the way their ancestors had farmed for centuries. Their implements consisted of a machete and a short handle hoe augmented by burning. At most they farmed three acres, which produced barely enough of a crop to meet their needs. Every year for six to eight weeks they were forced to get by on one meal a day.
The Ghanaan government at the recommendation of agricultural experts from around the world tried introducing tractors and farm implements. I saw the tractors standing in the fields turning to rust. Bob’s approach to agricultural development was different. He introduced pairs of bullocks trained to pull a plow and a harrow. Bob’s method was relatively easy to learn and it more than tripled the acreage for crops. Which meant enough food to last for an entire year and even some extra to sell for cash.
But to Bob Thelen, even more important than the method was how it would be introduced. Early on Bob was on the lookout for a farmer who would try it out on his own land and then be willing to introduce it to his neighbors. Bob was also aware that this new method of farming had a down side. A farmer with bullocks and implements could work his land by himself. The need to work cooperatively with other farmers was reduced. So Bob looked for ways to reinforce cooperation among the farmers.
Bob’s approach to agricultural development is to work with people where they are, to equip them to move one step at a time, to show them the way but at the same time to look for others who will lead, and to be attentive to the impact change has on the people both individually and collectively. He was concerned about the life of the person and the community, not just an increase in the crop. Call it compassion: hand delivered, as modelled by Jesus.
This morning’s lesson from Matthew ends with Jesus saying to the disciples: The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Contrary to the way I have often heard that verse interpreted, Jesus is not asking for recruits who will increase the membership rolls of the church. Jesus’ eyes are still on the crowd - the shepherd-less flock, harassed and bleeding. That is the harvest of need to which Jesus summoned the disciples and to which he calls us today.
What does it take to hand deliver compassion? A few weeks ago I watched my friend Sue sit at her dying mother’s bedside for hours on end. Very few words were spoken by either of them. For the most part they were silent together. But all the while Sue held her mother’s hand. What does it take to hold a dying person’s hand? Compassion!
Deep down, living or dying, most people most of the time need tenderness and mercy and grace. That’s what you and I need. That’s what most of our friends and neighbours need. That’s what folks in Portola Valley need. That’s what the world needs.
Thanks be to God, when it comes to compassion we don’t have to manufacture it. That isn’t our job. And when we try to make it our job we usually fail. Compassion is the stuff of life – the core of all that exists – a gift of God’s grace. The church’s job is to deliver it.
Just as long ago Jesus called Peter, Andrew, Levi, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus – so I beseech you. Listen for your name written on God’s heart, called in the voice of the Spirit. The harvest of need is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, listen. Dare to believe that the Lord sends you.
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