“Known for Compassion”
Rev. Dr. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
August 22, 2010
Mark 1: 40-45
My family was on vacation recently and when we returned home a week ago Thursday we pulled into BWI parking lot to get our car. I noticed another car parked near ours that was a company car for a business called Church Decoys. The company tag line on the automobile was, “Church Decoys: Tell ‘um you went to church.” With a tag line like that I thought this company must be selling decoys that one could set up in church pews to make it seem like a person was in church even if they weren’t. Perhaps a replica of yourself that your spouse could bring to worship and place in your usual pew so the pastors will think you are in worship while you are really out on the golf course. So I researched Church Decoys and found out it actually makes duck decoys for hunters and the business happens to be owned by a man named Church. No connection to religion.
Of course the desire to remain anonymous on Sundays can apply to pastors as well. There is a story about a minister who woke up one Sunday morning, saw it was an exceptionally beautiful and sunny summer day, and decided he just had to play golf. He headed out of town to a golf course about forty miles away. That way he knew he wouldn't accidentally meet anyone he knew from his parish. Setting up on the first tee, he was alone. After all, it was Sunday morning and everyone else was in church. As the story goes, about this time, Saint Peter leaned over to God while looking down from the heavens and exclaimed, 'You're not going to let him get away with this, are you?' God sighed, and said, 'No, I guess not.' Just then the minister hit the ball and it shot straight towards the pin, dropping just short of it, rolled up and fell into the hole. It was a 400 yard hole in one. St. Peter was astonished. He looked at God and asked, 'Why did you let him do that?' God smiled and replied, 'Who's he going to tell?'
Who is he going to tell? That is the question. That was the issue that Jesus was concerned about in our second lesson for today.
In Mark’s gospel, we hear how Jesus was moved with compassion to help and heal a leper, but then was concerned that the man would tell everyone about what Jesus did, for the consequences of that might not be all good. Let’s hear an account of that interaction and think about its implications for us as we listen now to God’s holy word.
So a leper came to Jesus begging him for help. Moved with pity and compassion, Jesus healed the man. The leprosy left him and he was physically clean.
But the conversation that follows is unusual. Mark writes that Jesus “sternly warned” the man saying, “See that you say nothing to anyone,” but go, and offer yourself to the priest. But he man then disobeyed Jesus, went out and began to spread the word about what Jesus had done.
Why did Jesus warn the man not to tell everyone about how he was healed? Some scholars have argued that Jesus did not want to draw attention to himself because he did not want to be known too widely for his healing, compassion and powers. We get this impression because Mark reports that when the leper goes ahead and tells everyone, Jesus is no longer able to go into the towns openly but has to stay out in the country because he is being swamped with requests to help people.
Mark 1 is a chapter in which Jesus engages in a number of healing miracles. Mark’s Gospel does not have the birth narratives of Jesus that Matthew and Luke do, instead it begins with details of Jesus’ ministry. With each section of Mark chapter 1, Jesus performs more and more miracles and his reputation continues to grow. So by the time we get to verse 40 and read of his healing of the leper, Jesus is being overwhelmed with requests to heal people.
Yet, I believe that Jesus asked the leper not to tell the world that Jesus was the one who had healed him in large part to protect the man.
The leper asked Jesus to make him clean. At that time, the ability to make one clean from leprosy was a power associated with great, even divine power, so this request demonstrated trust and respect for Jesus on the part of the leper. The ancient understanding of leprosy included a concern for the leper’s contamination of others and so before a leper who had gotten better could rejoin society, a priest had to declare them clean. So although Jesus had healed the man, the man could not rejoin society without a traditional priests’’ certification.
For Jesus to reach out to touch the man violated the codes of society, plus the crowds that had started gathering to see and support Jesus were threatening the religious and political authorities of the time. Jesus was controversial, particularly with the priests who would have to declare the leper clean. So if the man spoke widely about the source of his healing, it might hurt his changes of being certified as clean by the priests. It was for his own good that Jesus was cautioning him.
Jesus knew that his own life was only going to be more difficult once he became known for compassion. Once word got around, more and more people would come seeking his help. And that is exactly what happened. Jesus starts getting swamped with requests and he has to stay in the countryside.
Yet that didn’t deter Jesus from helping people over and over again. In fact, the key phrase in our lesson that depicts Jesus’ actions is that Jesus was “moved with pity or compassion.” That phrase occurs several times in the Gospels, and in most of these instances, Jesus is in a very public place and is moved to compassion by the suffering of a crowd. We see it in our first lesson, which Terry read, where Jesus is moved by the suffering of the crowds to help. Jesus is moved with compassion in the story of the “Feeding of the 5000,” where Jesus multiplies loaves to help large numbers of people. We see it again in the story of the “Feeding of the 4000,” where Jesus is moved to compassion and multiplies food for groups.
If Jesus’ highest priority was to remain anonymous to protect himself, he wouldn’t keep on doing miracles in the most public of ways. Or maybe Jesus couldn’t help himself. The Gospels state that Jesus was moved with emotion to pity and compassion. As if his heart was engaged and he acted to meet the needs of others without first thinking about the cost to himself. For that matter, the leper who disobeyed Jesus by telling everyone that Jesus had healed him was not doing himself any favors either but was moved with emotion from being healed. But this not unusual with compassion.
The word “compassion” derives from the Latin words “cum” and “pati” which means “to suffer with.” For Jesus and for the leper, their actions were not always in their own self interest, there was a component of suffering to their compassion.
When Jesus uses this phrase “moved with compassion” in his parables in the New Testament or when Jesus is moved with compassion or pity, such compassion is about a person entering into the pain of another. It is more than just being nice to someone. It’s recognizing suffering and suffering with someone. And humans do not have a natural inclination to suffer. Our response naturally is to avoid pain. So compassion requires something greater than us. It’s why our reading about how Jesus modeled compassion matters. It’s why reading Jesus’ challenge in Luke for us to “be compassionate as God is compassionate” and Jesus’ parables in the Gospels about people who were moved to compassion matters. It’s why our understanding God’s divine compassion and willingness to enter into the suffering of the world by sending God’s son Jesus matters.
In the story about the pastor who went golfing, God jokes, “who is he going to tell?” In Mark’s story about Jesus and the leper, Jesus is also concerned about who the leper is going to tell about being healed. The byproduct of Jesus’ actions is that he developed a reputation for compassion.
As we’ve read, that led to more and more people coming to visit Jesus.
It’s important that this community of faith be known for compassion. And I think a byproduct is that more and more people will come visit us.
Fortunately, this congregation already is. Long before I got here, you have been known for your compassion. You have been leaders in volunteering in our Presbytery, leaders in contributing funds to broader denominational projects, and each week I find out about new mission projects that members of this community are involved with. You continue to impress me.
One of the main conversations we as a church have had this summer has been our thinking about how we engage in mission. We had a wonderful fundraiser for women’s education in Asia on June 6; well attended discussions about opportunities for local mission on July 10 and August 15 and a well attended mission meeting last Tuesday evening. From these meetings there are emerging ideas and momentum for mission, starting with our commissioning of our two missionaries to Pakistan during worship next Sunday.
And yet there are great opportunities for new people to step up and help lead us in showing compassion to the world. If you are a visitor this morning or a member who has energy to help lead us towards meeting the needs of our local community or the world, we are interested in your participation and passion.
Priest and theologian Henri Nouwen once wrote, “One of the most tragic events of our time is that we know more than ever before about the pains and sufferings of the world and yet are less and less able to respond to them. Radio, television, and newspapers allow us to follow from day to day, even hour to hour, what is happening in the world.”
Nouwen wrote this in 1982, before the Internet, and today we can follow events minute by minute. He writes further, “We hear about terrorism, armed conflicts and wars, earthquakes, famines, tortures and other countless forms of human suffering. Not only do we hear about them, but we are presented with pictures of the suffering. The question is, do these pictures and communications lead to deeper solidarity and greater compassion? Can we expect a compassionate response from people who watch television after returning home tired from their work in offices and factories? When no mediating response is presented, when the pains of the world are presented to people who are already overwhelmed by the problems in their circle, how can we hope for a creative response?”
When we read about the Gulf oil spill, the floods in Pakistan, violence in our streets, and family and health concerns in our congregation, I hope we, like Jesus, will be moved to compassion.
I hope that in the months to come, we as individuals and as a congregation will be moved to mediate the meaning of events for each other and to suffer with each other and the world enough to look for “creative responses” in our development of mission projects.
Writer Donald McNeill tells of Korean poet Kim Chi Ha’s play The Gold Crowned Jesus. In it a leper, not unlike the leper in our second lesson, meets Jesus who in the play has been imprisoned. The leper asks, "What can be done to free you, Jesus?” Jesus replies, “People like you must liberate me. Those who seek only the comforts and power of this world, who wish entry into the kingdom of heaven for themselves only and ignore the needs of the (world)….cannot give me life again……only those who suffer (with others) and are generous in spirit can give me life again.”
I hope together we can try to meet needs where we find them, not looking first to the cost but first to our opportunity to help. And from that approach we’ll be known for compassion.
It may mean that we suffer some, but the thing about compassion in God’s ultimate plan is that the suffering associated with it doesn’t last forever. Remember that Jesus suffered, but was given life again when he was also raised from the dead into glory.
The point of compassion is not for us to stay on this side of the suffering and suffer for suffering’s sake. It’s our getting others across to the other side so that they don’t suffer anymore. And that is worth telling someone about. Thanks be to God. Amen.
