Caution: disciples at work

Every three years those of us who follow the Revised Common Lectionary will listen again to an unremarkable passage from the gospel of Mark, chapter 6.  It begins with tired and hungry disciples, completely skips over the miraculous feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on water, and concludes with Jesus healing all the people swarming around him.

I call it unremarkable because we usually get a good miracle, a pithy teaching, even an obscure exorcism.  With this selection of scripture we get ordinary, plain vanilla healing.  Ho hum.

But of course to those folks who live on the fringe of society, touching the fringe of Jesus' garment and experiencing the healing power of the Lord of Life was anything but Ho Hum.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  It was their own particular miracle, their own particular encounter with the power of the Living God. All it took was Jesus delaying his time away; pausing to teach and to walk among them, allowing them to reach out and experience the powerful presence of God in their midst.

I wonder, however, where we are in this story?  What is God's message to us in this peculiar cut and paste of Mark's gospel?  What are we supposed to do with this?

Here is one possibility.  When I was learning how to bake bread from my mother, we got to the part called 'kneeding the dough'.  It's an important step and it takes practice. My mother tipped the dough onto the generously floured surface, sprinkled flour over the top of the dough and said, "You do it like this."  After a couple turns of the dough, she put her hands on mine and we pushed and pulled and turned together until I got a rhythm.  Then I was on my own.

Later in the story Jesus will tell his disciples to care for his sheep.  Today he gave them a lesson on what that looks like.  As he walked among the needy and desperate you can almost hear him say, "You do it like this."

As followers of Jesus, we walk among our neighbors and bring with us the powerful presence of our Lord. Right?

The hard work of compassion

"As Jesus went ashore he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd" Mark 6.34


No matter where Jesus went, there they were.  People flocked to him, pressing upon him and trying to get just a touch, just a word, maybe a crust of bread, maybe a miracle.  It was enough to wear a person out.

Yet, Jesus saw the great crowd and had compassion for them, and in spite of his hunger and fatigue, he began to teach, to touch, to heal.  You can picture Jesus walking among the demanding crowds, like a shepherd walking in the midst of his milling flock of sheep: the sheep crying out in their confusion turning this way and that, packed together for a sense of security.  There is Jesus in the midst of them, within an arm's reach, working the crowd for the sake of the Divine Creator.

Compassion requires up close and personal commitment.  The word itself means 'to suffer with' and 'suffering with' cannot be done from afar.  Compassion doesn't ignore or circumvent or even turn a blind eye to the suffering before them.  Compassion walks into the crowd, staying within arms' length, hearing and smelling the needs of others.

God's great act of compassion was to be present among us in Jesus.  Thus is the power of the incarnation = God taking on human flesh.  In Jesus, God walked among us, within arms' reach, up close and personal.  This was no virtual reality; Jesus was no hologram.  As we suffered so suffered Jesus; as we die, so Jesus died.  Compassion - to suffer with another.

Mark records no special miracle performed that day, but of course, having the Savior of the Cosmos within arms' length comes amazingly close.

Walking with ........the role of compassion

What does compassion require of us?  

For many, compassion is a sentiment which pulls at your heart strings, triggered by touching stories, personal injustices and at times, puppies and small children.  The weak or powerless move us to a compassionate response so we paste a link on Facebook,  write a check, or volunteer some hours to a cause. 

Taking the time to reflect on those people or situations that move us to compassion would be a good spiritual exercise.  Take a couple of days and make a running list of what has moved your heart, what has brought to the fore your 'that's not right' response.  

How many of your items were from your own neighborhood?  Your state?  The nation?  The world?

Who moved you to a compassionate response?  Were they children?  Women?  Teens?  Men?  The Elderly?  Did they all look like you?  Share the same beliefs?  Speak the same language?

What situations prompted your injustice meter?  Hunger?  Addiction?  Abandonment?  Violence?

Were there situations that only led you to argue quietly within?  The homeless person with a sign at the intersection for example.  Did you find yourself saying..."If I give them money, they will only use it for drugs"? "How do I know they are really homeless?"  "Why can't they get a job?"  Not that I am condemning these internal conversations, I am simply asking that we all be truthful with ourselves.

What did it take to move you beyond 'thoughts and prayers' to a concrete action to right the wrong and support the suffering?

At its core, the word compassion means ‘to suffer with or alongside’.  Although we might begin at a distance with a news story or chance encounter, compassion calls us to move closer.  We are to suffer  alongside those whose plight has challenged our sense of justice, to walk with them.  Compassion feels the pain of others, and ultimately, requires action on their behalf.  In the end, a life of compassion is a life of action for others. 

The quintessential example of this in the Bible is Luke's story of the Good Samaritan (chapter 10).  Lots of folks saw the beaten victim of robbery laying on the side of the road.  Priests and officials, plus, I would expect some ordinary citizens trying to get to the market.  They looked, they saw, and yet, 'passed by on the other side' of the road.  The Samaritan (who, BTW, every Israelite thought of as less worthy) stopped, bound up his wounds and provided for his care.  The Samaritan whom no one would have called 'neighbor' acted as neighbor to the anonymous man.

None of us can act every time, in every situation, with equal amounts of commitment and support.  From a spiritual perspective, the problem is not the demands of acting every time, but rather, the emptiness of never acting at all.

When Jesus walked the via dolorosa he provided us with the divine example of what it means to have compassion - to walk alongside those who are suffering, taking their suffering on your shoulders.  

Compassion is not about the weeping that accompanies a poignant TV commercial; it is about taking up your cross with your neighbor.

A desperate mother......

She has assumed the position against the side of an SUV; you cannot see her face but she is young in body.  Next to her is another anonymous person whose hands are frisking her body.  At her feet stands her two year old daughter as bereft as any two year old can be, crying with her whole body.

This may be the last time that mother sees her daughter for months; neither will know where the other is.  Some stranger will now bring the toddler meals and change diapers.  Some stranger will turn out the lights.   Someone who is not her mother. John Getty image: Woman with Child

There is no resistance.  Neither is there compassion.

She is seeking asylum in the United States.  She came to our southern border and requested asylum.  They frisked her, detained her, and took her child.

The gospel story about a Syro-Phoenician woman could well be a 1st century parallel to this.  The Syro-Phoenicians were enemies of Israel - and the Israelites would tell you that there was good reason behind the enmity, although one wonders how long a people can carry a grudge.  Regardless, the rift went way back and was a well recognized rule of social interaction:  have nothing to do with those people.  We owe them nothing but our contempt.

So when Jesus refuses the woman's request for healing for her daughter, no Israelite hearing this story would be surprised.  Modern readers are a bit put off by the fact that Jesus manages to call the woman a dog in the process.  "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."  A little harsh.

Yet she does not resist; she allows the comment to pass.  She accepts the role given to her, and yet asks, "Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs" ...and 'for saying that' a healing occurs. Mark 7.24-30

A desperate mother willing to accept the crumbs.

I wonder why we Americans have no crumbs to give the mother who comes to us?  Do we really need to hold two year olds hostage?  Are we that kind of master?

What if it is Jesus in the ditch?

We can't tell for sure, and that is the way it is intended to be because that is how parables work. We can't tell for sure which character is intended to represent Jesus, and so let us consider that it is Jesus who is lying in that ditch, wounded and in need of life-saving help.

 What could we learn from that?

Clearly we aren't going to 'save' Jesus.  Clearly Jesus can 'save' himself if needed.  So why put the face of Jesus on that anonymous man in the ditch?

Perhaps so that whenever we look upon the wounded and abandoned people of our world we will see the face of Jesus.  Perhaps so when we encounter the lost, the lonely and the unwanted ones - especially the ones which will require some sacrificial giving on our part - we will see the face of Jesus, the wounded one.  Perhaps so we will begin to understand that to love God is to love that anonymous neighbor in need.  It is an understanding of the heart and not the head: we are reaching out not only in Jesus' name but we are reaching out to Jesus himself.

That's the way love works.  It generates deep compassion for those around us.  God's love for us in Jesus, the one who reached out to give us life and wholeness becomes the compassion with which we reach out to our neighbors.  The life Jesus gives us wells up into life-giving compassion for our neighbors in a never ending circle.  Love God - love neighbor - be loved by God - go love neighbor - love God.

One biblical author asks, How can you love the God you cannot see when you do not love the neighbor who is right there in front of your face? (clearly a paraphrase).

All this to come to the answer of the lawyer's question  Who is my neighbor?

The answer is Yes.

Looking up from a roadside ditch.......

At some point in every parable you have to decide which character you identify with.  A good interpretive approach is to move around in the story: be one character first, and then trade places and consider the story from another character's point of view. Today, we are going to lay down in that ditch (from the parable of the Good Samaritan Luke10) and consider the world and this story from that point of view.

It had been a nothing-unusual kind of day for this anonymous traveler, although the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was always a bit dangerous.  It was busy most days and so it was also a favorite of highway robbers.

That's how we ended up in the ditch: mugged, stripped, robbed.  Wounded and left without even our dignity, we now lay there and pray that someone ...anyone....will come to our aid.    We can hear the feet of passing travelers, yet they continue on.  Once, twice.  Without someone's help, we are lost.

Of all the things we know or think we know about this story, let me highlight what we don't know.  We don't know if the guy in the ditch was a Republican or a Democrat.  We don't know if he was a CEO or welfare recipient; whether he was a convicted felon or model citizen; whether he was straight or gay; whether he was a wife beater or in a happy and long marriage.  We don't know if he was brilliant or just barely literate; whether he was depressed or happy; whether he was a drug addict or in perfect health, whether he was a couch potato or a tri-athelete.  We don't know anything about this man in the ditch except this:  he was a person in desperate need of help.  It was life or death.  It was now or never.

So it wasn't politics or currying favor or identifying adequate credentials that led to a hand reaching out to that desperate, dying man.  It was compassion - the deep stirring of the heart which recognized a fellow human being abandoned by the world - that powered that act of mercy.  The wounds of the victim caused equal pain to the rescuer and he reached across the divide of 'all that my mother taught me' and gave life-saving aid.

I can only imagine the gratitude of the wounded man, but I imagine it as enormous, indescribable, and, truth be told, totally unexpected.  All that could be known about this wounded man was his wounded state and deep need....and apparently, that was enough for this unknown Samaritan.

Who reaches out to wounded people simply because they are in need?  Who is willing to do the hard work of bandaging and transporting him to an inn, nursing him for a couple days and then be willing to pay whatever it costs to bring him back to health?  Who cares that much?  Who can muster up that kind of compassion?  Who acts like that?

Jesus.  Want to know the breadth of God's love for God's creation?  Look at Jesus.  Want to know what kind of God has come to be among us?  Look at Jesus.  Want to know how God acts towards the anonymous,wounded people of this world?  Look at Jesus.

It is hard to tell what is more scandalous in this parable - that a hated Samaritan embarrassed observant Jews by living out the compassion of the Torah's teaching by loving the neighbor....

.....or that Jesus presents himself as a Samaritan: one of the hated ones; one of the unclean ones.
But the one, who in the end, poured out all he had and all he was for the sake of a wounded and dying humanity.

How much is enough?

My children did not like peas.  At all.  So every meal that included peas also included a conversation about how many peas had to be eaten.  How many were 'enough'? We finally settled on a system where they ate one pea for each year of their age.

We only ask the question How much is enough? when there is some goal we are trying to achieve (like being excused from the dinner table).  How much is enough laundry detergent for this load of laundry?  How much money do I need to spend on my spouse's birthday present?  How many answers do I have to get right in order to pass this test?  How much money do I have to save for retirement?

People of faith often ask this same question.  How much must I do?  Am I doing enough?  Am I giving enough? (OK, this question isn't asked as often as the others)  Am I compassionate enough?  Am I faithful enough?  How much is enough?

I can only ask "Enough for what?"  Enough for God to love you?  Enough for Jesus to forgive you?  Enough for you to experience the fullness of life that God in Jesus promises us?  Enough to "win the prize?"

Sometimes the question arises out of a searching for a deeper relationship with God, a richer spiritual life, and a sincere effort to be faithful, We look around us and there are too many who are hungry, too many who are oppressed, too many who need healing and comfort.  We look at our own lives and see too many places where we have cut corners, we have been less than compassionate, turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.  We look at ourselves and know that when we stand before God, we have a lot that isn't in right order.

That is how it should be.  When we stand before God we should be aware that all is not well, not in our lives and certainly not in the world around us.  This is not accusation, this is fact.  In religious talk, we are truly broken people, sinners before the Creator God.  This is confession, and it can often lead us to the deeper connection with God that we desire.

However, it is good to remember this: we cannot do enough ever to make it all right.  We cannot fix ourselves nor can we fix the world.  The problem is bigger than we are.

No matter how much we do, we will never prove to God that we are worthy of God's mercy and love. We will not prove our 'goodness' by doing 'enough' ....no matter how much we run and run and run and work and work and work.  Our work does not obtain God's love.  God gives it freely because that is who God is.

The love of God is broader and deeper than we can ever imagine.  We receive God's mercy because that is who God is.  We receive God's mercy because we need God's mercy.  We are always beggars in this equation.  Always.  Always.

So the answer to the question:  How much is enough? is this:  all and none.  Jesus calls us to give all of us......because there is nothing else we have to offer to a God who loved us before time.

All and none:  the challenge of living a life of faith.

God moments......

They are God moments - moments of compassion and mercy and forgiveness.

Each time compassion is evident, mercy is bestowed and forgiveness is announced, the Spirit of the Holy and Living God is at work.  I say this because each of these actions bring light into a situation where there was gathering darkness.  Each of these actions bring life where death hovered.  Someone is healed; someone is made whole.

It's time to tell these stories; to share what we have seen and heard and experienced.  It is time to give glory to God by lifting up all those places where we have seen God at work through others.

Take a moment and share your story with us all.

Oh no! Jesus is at it again....

One of the important truths of the biblical story about Jesus is this:  very religious people often - frequently - rejected Jesus and the vision he brought of the future in God.  It was nothing personal, they simply couldn't conceive that God's work in this world would take such a radical and unexpected direction. Religious people today often feel the same way

The Jesus who upset the balance 2000 years ago continues to upset the status quo today as well.  We have a resurrection God and that means that what we see as a dead end, God sees as a place for new life, new possibilities, a new creation.  This means that all those clear answers and considered opinions we have held for so long might have to be chucked out the window to make room for God's new thing to happen.

The Spirit continues to move into new corners and bring about new life for the sake of the whole world.  The Spirit continues to form new communities around the God actions of mercy and compassion and serving others. 

We have to get out ahead of the curve to keep up with this creating Spirit.  Remember learning how to ride a bicycle?  If you peddle too slowly you simply can't find your balance - you have to keep moving with what feels like crazy aplomb  in order for it to work at all.  They say you never forget how to ride a bike once you've learned.  Let's pray that the same is true about working with the Spirit of God.