Sermons in Brief
"Filled with Compassion" - Mark 1:35-42
Preached by Carol Bett, Ordained Deacon, and faculty member at Northwest Nazarene University
Oswald Chambers says, "We look for visions from heaven, for earthquakes and thunders of God's power - and we never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us. If we will do the duty that lies nearest, we shall see Him. One of the most amazing revelations of God comes when we learn that it is in the commonplace things that the deity of Jesus Christ is realized."
Mark introduces Jesus Christ as a servant, the Servant of the Lord. More than 40% of Mark's gospel focuses on Jesus as a suffering, sacrificing servant. Mark's theological point in writing his gospel becomes clear: mature Christianity is servanthood. To be like Jesus is to do what He did: take on the form of a servant. To be a Christian servant we must be both caring and compassionate. We see that God's involvement in the lives of his people is both practical and physical.
Already, we are seeing some obvious patterns in Jesus' life: private worship, public worship, disciple making, witness and ministry. This appears to be how Jesus organized and conducted His earthly life. For more than anything else, we want to be like Jesus. It's my heart's desire to be able to present you, every one of you, mature in Christ. To be mature means that we must care for ourselves as well as others.
1. Caring for self (prayer)- We observe Jesus after a long, demanding day, doing something rather unusual. It may surprise you what Jesus did next: "While it was still night, way before dawn, Jesus got up and went out to a secluded spot and prayed" (Mark 1:35). It is very apparent that, after this time alone with God in personal devotion, Jesus had been renewed in spirit and had a new sense of purpose, of divine direction in His life. Jesus had read the prophet Isaiah many times before, and He knew Isaiah's words are true, "They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength." After His disciples found Jesus, Mark tells us they traveled throughout Galilee preaching, driving out demons, with a brand new, fresh anointing and energy. Jesus, who had felt drained just a few hours before, felt invigorated, energized, charged with the Spirit of God; filled.
2. Caring for others (service)- The next recorded event in Jesus' life tells us what: "While traveling along, a man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, 'If you are willing, you can make me clean.' Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. 'I am willing,' he said. 'Be clean.' Immediately the leprosy left him and the leper was cured" (Mark 1:40-41). Observation: there was a direct correlation between Jesus' devotional time with the Father and Jesus' compassion for persons. In other words, the more time Jesus spent in solitude, in private worship with the Father, the greater was His compassion for people in need around Him. Henri J. M. Nouwen, in his book, The Way of the Heart: Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry, writes: "Here we reach the point where ministry and spirituality touch each other. It is compassion. Compassion is the fruit of devotion and the basis of all ministry. This purification and transformation that take place in solitude manifest themselves in compassion (p.34)." For the most part, praying people are compassionate people. They've learned the secret of compassionate ministry: times of solitude, times of silence, and times of prayer. This morning, I want to explore what it means to be "filled with compassion as Jesus was." Compassion is a sense of shared suffering, feeling and exhibiting concern and empathy. It involves generosity and mercy as well..
I. Christian Compassion is an Expression of God's Love
A. Christian compassion is not just feeling sorry for someone. It is not just a superficial, psychological phenomenon like pity. Christian compassion is the result of God's love in us. B. When Jesus looked on a person with compassion, He was looking in love. Compassion is love's emotional response to someone else's pain. C. A study of the word we translate "compassion," in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and Greek of the New Testament may be helpful: 1. In the Old Testament, we find the word which we translate into English "compassion." Interestingly, it is also the word the Hebrews used for "womb" and used to describe a mother's love for her child. This compassion, this love comes from the inmost self of God and can be compared to the love/emotional response a mother has for her own child. 2. In the New Testament, in the Greek we find the word which literally means "bowels/inward parts: the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys." The King James Version translates the word "bowels of mercy." In Papua New Guinea, emotions are not felt in the heart but in the liver. So instead of saying you love someone with all your heart, you would say that they are your liver. This love, this compassion is so deep that it causes a "gut reaction" when someone else is suffering. It is so real and so intense that it produces physical effects; in other words, when Jesus saw the suffering person, He felt it right in his heart . . . love's emotional response. D. Have you ever had such a relation to someone in need? This is God's love at work in you.
II. Christian Compassion is Non-Judgmental and Never Condemns.
In the devotional book, "Moments with the Savior", Ken Gire describes the life of a person with leprosy in Jesus' day: It's a horrible disease, leprosy. It begins with little specks on the eyelids and on the palms of the hand. Then it spreads over the body. It bleaches the hair white. It casts a corpselike pallor over the skin, crusting it with scales and erupting over it with oozing sores. And if the physical stigma of the diseased isn't enough, the rabbis attach a moral stigma to it as well. They believe it to be a direct blow by God to the sinful. And with that belief comes a rigid catechism of cause-and-effect platitudes - "No death without sin, no pain without transgression." For them, leprosy is a visual symbol of moral decay. Levitical regulations require the leper's outer garments to be torn, the hair unkempt, and the face partially covered. He dresses as a mourner going to a burial service - his burial service. And he must call out to those he passes on the way, "Unclean! Unclean!" An announcement both of his physical and moral death. He must keep at least six feet away when he passes. And as he passes, he is shunned. Little children run from him. Older ones shoo him with stones and sharp-cornered remarks. Adults walk on the other side of the street, mutter a prayer for him under their breath, shake their heads in disgust, or simply look the other way. He lives not only with the horror of the disease but also with its shame. There is no cure for the man. He is forced to live outside the walls of the city in a leper colony. There he is sentenced to live out his days. Again, another symbol. This time of his separation from God. The same occurred in Papua New Guinea, not only was the leper not allowed to live in the village; they were required to use different paths than the rest of the people. They couldn't obtain water from the same place in the river and worst of all, they were cut off from the support of their tribe. They were in danger of being killed if they did not follow the restrictions of their condition.
B. Most people, when seeing a leper, were not only repulsed by their appearance, but in a spirit of judgment and condemnation, were assured they had committed some sin for which God had punished them. In other words, they deserved it. C. That's terrible we say, we would never do that! The fact is, the Church of Jesus Christ, the Body that bears Jesus' name, has a history of judgment, condemnation, stigmatizing, and ostracizing the lepers of our day. God forgive us! D. Nouwen: Compassion can never coexist with judgment because it creates distance and keeps us from really being with the others. That's not Jesus' style. Jesus is the model for the church's ministry. He never condemns the afflicted. We see, instead, one who is confident in the power of God, who touches the unclean, restores the marginalized to the center of His community, and restores the sick to a place of meaningful service. They became wounded-healers; that's Jesus' style. E. Jesus Christ came into the world not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:17). Who said that? Jesus did!
III. Christian Compassion is Difficult
A. What was Jesus' response to the leper? "Jesus reached out his hand and touched him." B. Seldom has a touch meant so much. Jesus put himself at great personal risk by touching this man. His own physical health; His behavior had to be viewed by some as a form of social protest (He was breaking the Law!) And this touch was probably viewed as immoral (there He goes again, hanging out with sinners!). That touch, and others like it, nailed Him to a tree. C. Christian compassion is hard. It is hard because it requires the inner strength to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But compassion, as hard as it is, must continue to be the basis/foundation of our ministry in and for a broken world. It is the one thing that will validate our witness!
.. Oswald Chambers says: "Jesus Christ calls service what we are for him, not what we do for him. Are you willing to be offered for the work of the faithful - to pour out your life blood for others? Suppose God wants to teach you to say, 'I know how to be humble' are you ready to be offered up like that? Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in a bucket - to be so insignificant that you are never though of again in connection with the life you served? Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister? Let us ask God then for a spirit of compassion which shows the world what Christlikeness really is like. Let us show caring that draws people to the Savior."
Oswald Chambers. My Utmost for His Highest. Ken Gire. Moments with the Savior. Henri J. M. Nouwen. The Way of the Heart: Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry. The Preacher's Magazine.