06172020 – Matthew 9. 35-10.8
As often as I have preached it, as much as I have heard it, I still need to hear it (myself) again and again. It needs to sink in. I need to embrace it. Wholly.
Jesus continued touring around, preaching in both village and town in the backwater synagogues, talking about the kingdom of heaven, curing, and healing all kinds of people – you know, “the norm.” The norm for Jesus, that is…
Just doing the stuff, we expect from him.
He felt “compassion.”
Which really means, he felt some- “thing” for someone else – way down deep within his gut…in his bowels.
He felt sympathy, pity.
He was moved.
He had empathy.
He showed empathy.
He expected that empathy be shown.
We are talking about showing care and concern for the other. Real, true, legitimate care, and concern. NOT LIP SERVICE. Nothing fake. Nothing phony.
To be compassionate toward another means “to be sensitive” to both them and to their needs. It is to “care about the plight of another human being or animal.” Sometimes, I think we are better with animals than we are, with each other.
It is to be “tender-hearted, soft-hearted, to epitomize, embody, represent and express warm-heartedness” toward somebody else.
Whatever happened to people, individuals feeling something for someone else?
It is to display “love, tenderness, gentleness, and mercy.”
All the stuff that our world and the people in it, poo-poo today.
Do not be such a snowflake.
Do not be such a pansy.
Grow a pair. SHOW NO WEAKNESS!
Charity and benevolence begin at home, we tout today. We have to take care of our own, first.
Consideration for all-of-humanity-is- lame. Out of style. So, last year.
And yet, the scriptures remind us again and again, how Jesus “felt compassion” toward those who “followed after him.”
The word compassion actually comes from the Latin and means “to suffer with” or to “suffer alongside of…” neither of which, many people actually do. But Jesus did.
Jesus “showed compassion-constantly.”
He was right, the harvest was more than plentiful, but the laborers were and are “few.” Very few!
We are too busy – wrapped up in ourselves…our needs…our wants…our desires…our stuff.
The “opposite,” or an “antonym” for compassion would be “indifference” or perhaps “heartlessness.”
The message of Jesus is a message that needs to be heard again and again in every age, often and frequently.
It was not just time to get more laborers. It was time to start feeling something, again. It was time to reach inward and find “your own humanity.”
Jesus knew all too well the social realities of being an “outsider.” He saw it daily. He witnessed it often.
So, as he begins his public ministry, as he calls his first disciples, he teaches them, he reminds them…to go to those experiencing the greatest need. Go to them who are hurting, the most.
The Gospel (the good news) of Jesus is always directed to those who are in need; to those who are hurting; the sick, the hungry, the poor, the weak, the ostracized, the outsiders, those whose lives are all messed up or screwed up and seemingly beyond repair… Those who are not accepted and are left alone to fend for themselves.
The poor and the outsiders in society have never had any real leaders. They have always wandered aimlessly, lost and alone.
Let them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Let them find their own way. Others have done it, why can’t they?
Jesus and “human need” have always gone together! He did not come for “the healthy, the wealthy, the wise.” But for the sick. For those having any kind of need…. those who are down and out…and hurting. What about us? What about YOU?