A Lectionary Reflection for the people of Thankful Memorial Episcopal Church for worship from home, June 14, 2020, Year A, 2 Pentecost

Genesis 18:1-15
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:23

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

“When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus looked at the mass of humanity before him and his first response was compassion.  How much do we need that right now?  Compassion, it seems to me, is a lost art. 

I looked up the word online and Merriam-Webster’s gave this definition: Compassion is “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”  Let me say that again.  Compassion is the sympathetic awareness of another’s distress along with the desire to alleviate it.  If we delve a little further into the word, we discover its Latin roots mean “to suffer with.” 

In his ministry, Jesus enters into the experiences of others in order that he may understand the cause of their distress and heal them.  He goes about from town to town, seeing people’s suffering and suffers with them just as he will suffer all the way to – and through – the cross. 

But well before that final passion, Jesus saw the “harassed and helpless” and acted on his compassion.  As one commentator points out, Jesus is moved emotionally even as he is on the move physically, traveling from place to place, alleviating others’ distress, healing the harassed and helping the helpless. 

But today, it’s not just Jesus who’s doing that work.  If it is true that Jesus is moved and so is on the move, it is also true that his compassion leads directly to the disciples’ commission.  Jesus does not do all the work himself.  On the contrary, seeing the suffering before him, Jesus knows it is not work that one man – even one divine man – will do alone.  So out of his compassion for the people, he sends out the apostles to join in the labor.  They go, in the words of today’s collect, in “steadfast faith and love,” to “proclaim [God’s] truth with boldness, and minister [God’s] justice with compassion.”  And there’s that word again.  Jesus’ compassion leads to the disciples’ commission, which is to show God’s compassion to the world. 

How many of us are praying for God’s compassion to show up in the world right now?  How many of us are asking, pleading in our prayers for God’s justice-with-compassion to come among us?  We are longing for the moment when divine compassion will be known by the victims of covid, whoever and wherever they are.  We are anxious for the time when divine compassion will be known by the health care professionals and the essential workers who are tired and yet keep pushing on.  We are so very ready for the present racial crisis to bring about divine compassion for the people of color in our country who experience the effects of racism in their daily lives and are left “harassed and helpless.”  Come, Lord Jesus, we pray.  Come, oh Shepherd of the sheep.  Incline your ear to us and hear the voice of our supplication.  Come, Lord Jesus, and shed abroad your compassion. 

And I believe that our prayers are heard and even now are being answered.  For Jesus’s compassion leads directly to his disciples’ commission.  And we are his disciples.  God hears our cries for compassion and calls us out, to be laborers in the field, to be the means by which the compassion we so desire is made real in the world around us.  We are the answers to each other’s prayers. 

In her reflection on this passage from Matthew, and drawing on the words of Archbishop Rowan Williams, writer Debie Thomas suggests that Jesus’s disciples, today and every day, are tasked with “making God credible in the world,” with “taking responsibility for God’s believability.”  In other words, if we want other folks to know that “the kingdom of God has come near,” then we must prove it, by the way we live, by our words and our actions.  If we want people to get a sense of God’s love and care for us all, then we must show that love to all.  If we believe that our God is not silent in the face of our helplessness and harassment, then we must embody the Christ who suffers along with the suffering, who sees others’ distress and desires to alleviate it.  We must enter into the experiences of those we encounter – no matter their race or religion, no matter their policy or their politics – to discover the ways in which they suffer and seek ways to help them heal.  If we want God’s compassion to come among us, then we must be compassionate. 

Of course, like so much in our calling as Jesus’s disciples, it is simple, but it is not easy.  Even Jesus seems to realize that there is something contradictory about this work.  “Give without payment,” he tells his disciples.  And in the next breath, he assures us that “laborers deserve their food.”  So we are to act generously and expect generosity. 

Jesus tells his disciples to “proclaim the good news” but “shake off the dust from your feet” if your words are not heard.  We are to share and to show that God’s kingdom is here and yet not demand that people believe it.   

Jesus tells his disciples to be prepared to be “dragged before governors and kings” but not to “worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say.”  We will come face to face with those who hold vast power in the systems and structures of our lives, knowing that the only power we have is that which comes through the Spirit, and we must trust that it is more than enough. 

Jesus tells his disciples to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”  We are to do no harm and look for what is good among all people, but we are not to let our naiveté make us blind to the reality of injustice and evil. 

Jesus tells his disciples “When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next” and “the one who endures to the end will be saved.”  We are to expect hurdles and hardships but to keep on moving anyways. 

This is what it will take for us to join Jesus in his ministry of understanding others’ distress and acting to alleviate it.  This is our commission as Jesus’s disciples as we join in his labor.  This is the work of compassion: to enter into another’s suffering so that we might understand and relieve it.  And, though it is hard, it is good and right work, labor not for the faint of heart, but for the faithful.  Work for the followers of Jesus who know, deep down, like St. Paul, that such “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”  And so let us lay down our fears and anxieties, our hatred and our division, and let us take up, together, the commission of God’s compassion.  Amen.