Read the Bible as you Read the News

A few weeks ago in a sermon, I recommended that Christians read the Bible with the newspaper open; and, when followers of Jesus read the news, which we should do, we do so with the Bible open.  This is an attempt to demonstrate what I meant in that recommendation.

I was looking at the Saturday New York Times, pages A6-7.  The following headlines grabbed me: “Syrian Talks, Ending First Round, Fail Even to Agree on Easing Aid Blockade; Indonesian Militants Join Foreigners in Syria; Abuse claims in Ukraine Rise among Protesters.  In one photo, Ukrainian politician and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko leans over the hospital bed of a man who had claimed to have been tortured.  Another picture shows the haze resting over the Syrian town of Aleppo right after it had been bombed.

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars – Matthew 24:6a.

If Jesus was specifically referring to Rome’s inevitable conquest of Jerusalem, then it is not a perfect fit to call upon that text in reflection upon the violence and political upheaval in the world right now. But it is enough to note that our Lord, the one we call “Prince of Peace," was a giver of true peace.  He did not, though, promise that violent conflict would disappear.  Just the opposite; men would and do kill men.  Nations destroy nations.  People groups and religious factions seem bent on wiping each other out. 

From the time humans were driven from Paradise (Genesis 3:24), sin has been a part of our existence and violence and war are one of the worst manifestations of sin.  What’s happening in Syria and Ukraine and North Korea and Iraq and Egypt – in all these places it is sin.  Sin is an unavoidable reality in the Biblical story.  Sin screams in a thousand shrill voices from the pages of the newspaper.

In your own reading, you may not easily call to mind a specific passage like Matthew 24 or Genesis 3.  But even if you read the paper and think and pray and still no scripture comes to mind, don’t be discouraged.  Just working at it got you to think and pray.  Keep at it – the reading of the Bible with the news in mind and the reading of the paper with your Bible open.  After weeks and months, scriptures will come to mind.  I promise.  If they don’t, let me know.  I’ll work at it with you. 

The Bible story is relevant.  We feel the relevance deeply when our reading, our prayer, and our media consumption are all intertwined.  

A Prayer for the Removal of the Wicked King

I am a preacher and it is the season of Advent.  On December 8, my sermon dealt with Psalm 72.  “Give the King your justice, O God.”  The Psalm went on to show that the king is just when he notices the poor and down and out in society, and he uses his kingly powers to help people who need help.  The compassionate king is the truly just king who represents God well. 

In my sermon, which you can read on this blog (http://honesttalkwithgod.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-kings-version-of-justice-psalm-72.html), I compared King Herod to King Jesus.  Herod committed genocide trying to kill Jesus (Matthew 2:16).  Jesus commanded that cared of the “least of these is care for him” (Matthew 25:40).  Jesus insisted children be allowed to come to him (Matthew 19:13-15) and said that we need to see things as a child does (Matthew 18:3-4).  It is pretty clear who fulfills the words of Psalm 146 and who does not.

And a king in our day, most certainly does not.  I readily admit I do not know a lot about the civil war in Syria.  I know thousands of refugees have poured into neighboring nations.  When citizens have to flee and become refugees in another country, one’s country is in dire straits and Syria is.  A story reports that in recent attacks on a rebel-held town, al-Bab, 57 people were killed. 

The most upsetting part comes in the observation of Barry Abdul Latif.  “It seems that the regime is determined to hit the supply route [of rebels] between al-Bab and the city of Aleppo, but the shelling of the regime is only targeting heavily populated civilian neighborhoods and away from any rebel headquarters.”[i]   Only targeting heavily populated civilian neighborhoods?

It’s the most troubling thing I’ve read this week (aside from Herod’s actions in Bethlehem as he sought to kill Jesus).  In my message, I compared King Jesus to King Herod.  In the process, I asked our congregation to be intentional about praying blessing for our modern “kings.”  I was thinking specifically of Barak Obama.  I do think believers should pray that God would bless him and help him rule well.

But, President Bashar as-Assad had acted in such a way that I simply pray God would remove him.  I don’t know that a Western-style democracy is the best thing for Syria or even possible there.  I am not a political scientist.  I only know that people are being uprooted, displaced, and bombed.  Assad sees people, like the women and children in al-Bab as pieces in his war.  He doesn’t see people at all.  He sees chessmen for him to move, to capture, to stomp. 

My honest prayer is that God would get that guy out of power?  How?  That’s up to God.  God used Babylon to punish Judah and then God punished Babylon.  I trust God’s justice and God’s methods.  My prayer for his removal is not necessarily a prayer that his political opponents seize power.  I pray Syria would be in God’s hands and God would make a path for His church to thrive there.  I pray Syria and Iraq would become bastions of peace and commerce human respect – the opposite of what they are and have been.  I pray that world-wide, people would marvel at the harmony in Syria and Iraq.  This is my prayer to the King.

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[i] From the Al Jazeera site - http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/12/scores-killed-syria-barrel-bombings-201312117307117718.html

Christians in Syria

An Appeal to the Prince of Peace

            An American Christmas involves for Christians much of what it involves for non-Christians.  We buy gifts, go to parties, sing carols, set up trees, dress in red and green, take a bit of time off work, and spend time with family members we might not see the rest of the year.  Christmas in America feels familiar for Christ-followers and unbelievers alike.

            Christians in America do experience some particularly Christian accents in the season.  Worship includes the lighting of Advent candles.  A worship service is scheduled for Christmas Eve.  The scriptures read in worship during the month of December are intentionally arranged so that they set the theological and liturgical expectation of the coming of the Savior and Messiah, Jesus Christ. 

            Included in those readings is Psalm 122:8b-9.  “I will say, ‘peace be with you.’ Because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.”  Also, Psalm 146:8-9 is one of the Advent passages read in churches.  “The Lord raises up those who are oppressed; … the Lord protects foreigners.”  American Christians are not oppressed.  For the most part, even with the secularization of society, American Christians are not “foreigners.”  They feel at home living out their Christian Christmas in America.

            Does it make any difference for believers in Syria that they are Christian and it is Christmas?  The Washington Post reports that Christians are vulnerable to extremist splinter rebel groups.[i]  While both the Syrian government and the Syrian Opposition Coalition pledge equality for minority groups, some Jihadists seek to eradicate Christianity from Syria.  The followers of Jesus in that war-torn country have little to no power to resist and are in danger of displacement or annihilation.

            How do those Christians hear the word of God when it says, “the Lord raises up, the Lord protects?”  Has God overlooked them?  Is their suffering an opportunity to witness to the faithfulness of God?  It is easy to type that sitting in a comfortable office in Chapel Hill, NC.

            A recent incident, illustrates the peril of being a Christ follower in the middle of the civil war in this Muslim nation.  On December 2, rebels in the Islamist Nusra Front took over the town of Maaloula including the Greek Orthodox Monastery.  Now several nuns are being held as hostages.[ii]  The Christianity practiced by these women is in radically different form than the casual appearing American evangelicalism.  But, Syrian nuns and American evangelicals worship the same Jesus.  They are bonded together in Christ. 

            This Christmas, the Americans will enjoy the soft warmth of big meals, family gathered, and children laughing.  The Syrian sisters will pray to survive.  If they do, what then?  What future is there for the Christian faith in Syria? For that matter, what future is there for any Syrian in that nation that is overrun by violence and death?

            The residents of the Heavenly throne room exalt Jesus for redeeming people from every tribe, language, people, and nation (Revelation 5:9).  Syria is included in the gathering of the redeemed.  There are Christ-followers there, right now, and the Christmas ahead of them is not like the one American Christians will enjoy.  We in America are right to enjoy the blessings we have.  We are right to celebrate the coming of Jesus and the life we have in his name. 

Our celebration, though, is complicated.  As we smile and sing, we also carry the burdens of pain of the people around us and of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world.  We must take a moment away from our parties and festive worship times, and we must go forcefully to God in prayer.  We must call God to account.  We must read the Psalms proclaiming what God will do for the downtrodden and we must demand that God do this for Syrian Christians.

In prayer, we plead with God.  We remind God that God has made promises.  We bring up the issue that Jesus has died for these Syrians and they are God’s children.  We pray like it matters, like it is an issue of life or death.  Because it is.  And we pray as if God will do something with our prayers.  He will.  Christians everywhere look to Isaiah 9:6.  We call our Lord the “Prince of Peace.”  Between now and Christmas day, may each Christian enjoying a comfortable life in American go in prayers of desperation to our Prince of Peace on behalf of our Syrian brothers and sisters.  May this Christmas be a time when God does unexpected and miraculous things in a part of the world that is seemingly lost to chaos.  God can.  Pray that salvation will come. 

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[i] Loveday Morris, October 4, 2013, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-10-04/world/42686197_1_syrian-christians-maaloula-syria-s

[ii] Reuters - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/02/us-syria-crisis-maloula-idUSBRE9B10LD20131202

Lasting Faith

Pray for Kenneth Bae.  It is urgent.  Each day that passes, marks another day that this 44-year-old man is separated from his children and family.  He also goes by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho.  Whether Bae or Ho, God knows who you mean.  Pray for this man, a Christian whose heart breaks for orphans.

            Bae is a U.S. citizen from the state of Washington, but has been living in China serving with the highly acclaimed and thoroughly reputable organization Youth With a Mission, YWAM.  YWAM wants to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost in the world.  Bae is ethnically Korean.  He takes people from China on tours into North Korea. 

            On November 12, 2012, in the country legally, Bae was arrested and has been in a N. Korean prison since.  It has been 188 days, and counting.  Our brother in Christ who values evangelism and salvation as we do is now imprisoned for carrying out the Great Commission.  He has received the longest sentence ever imposed on a U.S. citizen in North Korea: 15 years.

            Revelation 14:12 says, “Here is a call for endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus.”  Indeed.  Jesus sends us out with the good news that He is offering salvation from sin and death to all people.  Bae, sent out by Jesus, is now in prison in a dark place.  Imagine being separated from your family for 188 days; for 15 years.   Pray for him.

            And listen to God’s word.  Mr. Bae would understand the Christian who wrote Revelation, John of Ephesus.  John was imprisoned for refusing to bow to the Roman emperor.  He was sentenced for life to the prison compound on Patmos Island.  John could empathize with Kenneth Bae.  His word to all who suffer for Jesus is “endure.”

            While John passed the time of his internment he met with the risen Christ and was taken to Heaven in a vision.  He writes, “I saw another angel flying in midheaven” (14:6a).  I don’t know exactly what John means by ‘midheaven.’  He does not elaborate.  Rather he emphasizes the angel’s activity. 

            The angel carried an “eternal gospel,” which was to be preached to “those who live on earth – to every nation and tribe and language and people” (14:6b-d).  Because of Christians like Kenneth Bae, that gospel is preached in places like North Korea.  North Korea has been described by Christians who have escaped as being openly hostile to God and to faith.  These believers acknowledge there are some Christians in the country.  However, the large Churches in the bigger cities are facades.

            These buildings are actually controlled by the government and are in place to give the impression to the world that North Korea is a place of religious freedom.  In actuality though, these buildings are occupied by people who actively oppose Christian faith.  This information comes from a report of Max Fisher of the Washington Post.  He interviewed a defector who reported on the conditions in Pyongyang and other cities in that country.[i] 

            Thank God that Kenneth Bae is carrying the word of God to people in a place where there is a terrible cost for committing one’s life to Christ.  Will an American diplomat travel there and negotiate his freedom?  Will he serve out 15 years?  After a decade and a half, will he even be freed then?

            Last week, I mentioned Christians in Syria.  They made up 10-15% of the population before the violence began.  Now, the numbers dwindle as they flee to Lebanon.  God bless those who stay and maintain a church in that war-torn land.  They know the Assad regime is immoral, abusive and must fall.  However, they fear it will be replaced by the rule of Muslim extremists who have no tolerance for the presence of Jesus worshipers. 

            How can the eternal gospel Revelation says is to be proclaimed make it into these places of war and persecution?  We might find comfort reading that it is an angel carrying this gospel not men and women.  But Jesus gave the command to his disciples, and the first ones to “go and tell” the Jesus story were the women who followed him.  Before the angel of Revelation does his work of worldwide gospel proclamation, the church is to go and tell, and to do so in all places, even hard places.

            These extreme examples make for good stories, but if we leave it there, then the good stories end up being really bad preaching.  Why?  Because it is so easy to leave it there.  I am completely serious in telling the church to pray for Kenneth Bae and for the crumbling Christian presence in Syria.  We could add to our prayer list Nigeria.  Always on the brink of war, Muslim-Christian tensions are boiling over right now.  When we answer the call to prayer, it changes us and makes a difference for good in the world.

            However, it is so easy to leave it.  We hear a word a church and the truth might compel us … a little bit.  So we pray and wipe our hands and our brows and say, “Well, I prayed!”  Is there more?  Both the angel and the church are to be about some very specific activities as they pray.  Does this mean I think we are all to go sit in prison with Kenneth Bae?  Maybe. 

Maybe God is calling someone here to that ministry.  We want to open ourselves to do whatever God sets out for us and by “whatever,” we truly mean we will answer God’s call without thought to how difficult it seems.  I met a doctoer early in 2012 who is an American citizen and is ethnically.  She is, by now, in North Korea, there to teach in a medical school.  Also, she will secretly work with Christians to encourage them and grow the church.  She knows full well she could have 15 years of hard labor.  Yet she goes with Heavenly joy in her heart. 

Maybe one of us is to join her and Mr. Bae.   Or one here might be called to Syria or Nigeria or other hard places.  We are all called and God’s church is called to every nation.  In our nation there won’t be arrests and imprisonments.  There is not the threat that the government will soon be dominated by a hate-filled religion that has no conscience or hesitation in killing believers.  What threatens our witness?

Many things in American culture erode, water down, suppress, and relativize the Christian’s message that Jesus is Lord.  It all boils down to compromise.  We aren’t going to suffer bodily harm for our testimony, but our culture tells us to mute the Gospel and only allow it to speak in its proper place – in church buildings on Sunday morning; before meals and bed; and in a word of thanks for secular successes.   Oscar winners and athletes who win the championship are allowed to emphatically thank God.  In those moments of triumph unrelated to anything we see in scripture we see the victors declaring “God has a plan.” 

Yes, a major component of God’s plan was for you to win the title and for the seven Christians on the other team to lose.

Our separation-of-church-and-state nation celebrates our announcement that Jesus is Lord as long as we make that announcement conform to the values that reign currently: tolerance; freedom; excess; affluence; and, our infatuation with all things young, all things thin, and all things cool.  If Jesus fits in with all that, then He can be Lord in the hearts of American Christians.  If he does not, then Christians need to bend a little and compromise their statement of faith or at least minimize it so that it does not offend anyone else.

This “eternal gospel” is defined in Revelation 14:7.  “Fear God and give him glory … and worship him.”  Fear God does not mean fear Him like we would fear a bully or fear an intruder or fear an impending storm.  This is not fear of heights or fear of snakes.  Fear God means to hold God in such reverence, to afford God such authority, and to recognize God’s absolute holiness that we see that sin nauseates God.  We know our lives are under God’s watch.  Every instance of rebellion is seen by God, so we fear God’s judgment and we also fear hurting God’s heart.  Both are true.  Appropriate God-fear leads us to see God as the exalted one whom we cannot approach casually.  We exist to serve Him.

Fear is a condition that leads us to the second command in the eternal gospel – glory.  Give God glory.  This happens in our worship.  It also comes about in our living.  When we relate to other humans in love, God is glorified.  When we get the most out of our abilities, God is glorified.  Relationships and work are to be done with God constantly in mind.  We are ever seeking God as we go about life, submitting ourselves to Him and conforming to His ways.  We live to lift God up.

Worship is an activity and it is a posture.  We have talked about worship in recent weeks.  We know it happens in worship services and also in private moments. 

These commands of the eternal Gospel which apply to all people – fear God, exalt God, worship God – contradict our culture’s unwritten rules.  In our culture, we are to fear peer disapproval.  If our peers don’t like how we’re living, we must change.  We exalt ourselves.  And we worship things that make us feel good and do it right now.

To abandon fear of God, glory of God, and worship of God, for fear of peer disapproval, glory of self, and worship of immediate gratification is compromise.  Revelation calls this fornication (14:8) and drunkenness.  Verse 9 says, “Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads … will also drink the wine of God’ wrath” (14:9-1).

God has no place for us reducing our faith and making it fit.  Faith in Jesus and the life lived in his name ignites fire within.  We fear nothing but God and face the world determined to tell about Jesus, knowing He will bring healing, joy, and life.  This is no time for wishy-washy faith.  In Revelation 3:16, Jesus declares he will spit out of his mouth those with lukewarm faith.  We are either with Jesus all the way or not at all.  In our times, where we live, the Bible calls us to live out our witness for Jesus as if doing so would get us killed.  That is the commitment the Lord expects.  God wants all of us – every bit of each one of us.  We won’t be persecuted for testifying that Jesus is Lord.  But we must be as committed as if that were to happen. 

Anything less disgusts the Lord to the point that God is unhappy.  God’s love never fails so our strongest alliance is with him.  The world around us, the world demanding we compromise, will have no influence.  Rather we stand firm. 

Revelation 14:13, “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus” (14:13).  Whether a believer is fighting false doctrine like many 2^nd century Christians, a believer sees his life on the line like John on Patmos and Kenneth Bae in Korea, or a believer is tempted to relegate her faith like the affluent 21^st century American Christian, we are called to stand and endure.

Robert Wall points out two implications for the disciple who demonstrates this lasting faith.  First, we will sacrifice.  Some sacrifice social standing or friendships or popularity or even jobs.  Others even sacrifice their freedom or their lives.  An enduring faith is not recognizable in easy times, but rather when it is severely tested.  If we with stick Jesus and don’t yield, we will be tested.

Second, there is good news for the enduring disciple.  “Blessed are those who die in the Lord.”  This could even be translated “Happy are those who die in the Lord.”  Paradoxical?  Ask Kenneth Bae.

After months in prison, he was permitted some phone calls.  His sister said he sounded calm and not discouraged.  Did he know he would be locked up for trying to help North Korean orphans and for doing it in Jesus’ name?  I am sure he was not surprised.  Calm and not discouraged. 

I knew friends in seminary whose wives left them because they did not want to go into ministry.  Calm and not discouraged. 

High school and young adult believers grow to the point that they as Christ followers have to decide.  Will I continue in the party life of my friends knowing that God is not pleased?  Or, will I cease the me-first, party hard, ignore-the-rules life and begin living for Jesus even if doing so means some of my friends will ditch me?  They opt for the Jesus way.  Calm and not discouraged. 

Where in your life is the decision point?  Fear God, glorify him, and worship him, no matter the cost.  Pray like life depends on it because it does for Kenneth Bae and for Christians in North Korea, Syria, Nigeria, and other places.  And in your own walk, develop lasting faith.  Don’t wilt under the hot lights of temptation.  Stand strong in Jesus’ name.  Tell the world about him.  Some will mock you.  Others will hear Jesus through you and turn to Him because of your witness.

AMEN

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[i] Arthur Bright, Christian Science Moniter online, May 10, 2013 - http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2013/0510/North-Korea-explains-why-it-sentenced-American-Kenneth-Bae-to-hard-labor

Driven by Compassion

At the end of the week, this past week, the headlines told of an awful tragedy.  A gun man walked into a crowded theater in Colorado and began shooting.  This was front page news, but not in Burgas, a city in the Eastern European nation of Bulgaria.  There, the big story was a terrorist attack.  A suicide bomber blew up a crowded bus.  And in Iraq, the big news was the seizure of border stations along the Syrian border by rebel militia groups.

            Where you live determines what you would call the biggest news of the day.  Everything I mentioned would fall in the category of bad news.  Horrific; awful; tragic; depressing. 

            As followers of Christ, we are called beyond our own lives.  We have our individual problems which are significant.  Our individual stories are stories of faith.  We are also a body of believers, bonded together in Jesus.  As individual disciples and as a body, we are called to respond to the happenings of the world, elections, wars, random violence, weather patterns (like extreme drought) and natural disasters.  When chaos is unleashed and humanity panics, people look to the church because they’re looking for someone – anyone – to help bring order and reveal meaning in all that goes on.

            We’re in our 3^rd week of seeing Jesus in the pages of Mark’s gospel.  In today’s passage, we find a key component, not the only one, but an important aspect of a Christ-follower’s response to a world afflicted with suffering, chaos, fear, and hurt. 

            We pick the story up with Jesus and the disciples on the move again.  This time the location is not specifically named, nor is the exact spot important.  What catches our attention is Jesus’ care for his disciples.  A lot has happened.  His popularity is at its peak.  Mobs overwhelm him and them.  He has endowed the 12 with his miraculous powers, and he knows that as they cure diseases and defeat demons, crowds would come upon them just like the do on him.  “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile,” Jesus tells his friends and followers. 

            They get in the boat, a sure way to separate from the crowd that hungers for every word that falls from Jesus’ lips just as much as they long for every wonder he performs.  The thing is, when Jesus works miracles, he’s not performing.  He’s revealing God’s love and he does this through his inclusion of people who are rejected everywhere else.  He does it through a radical new understanding of the Law that sees it as a door to God and not a burden that keeps people under heel.  And he does it through his ceaseless sharing of grace and mercy.  But he gets tired.  The disciples are tired.  They need down time. 

            The mob travels faster.  When Jesus and the disciples arrive at the location of their prayer retreat, we see a throng waiting for them. What does Jesus do?  Get back in the boat?  Mark writes, “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them” (v.34).  Get the highlighter out, underline verse 34, and on your notes session in the worship bulletin, write that Mark 6:34 is one of the most important verses in the entire Gospel.  Confronted by the crowd he wanted to escape, Jesus was filled with compassion.

Someone is traumatized because they go to be entertained by the comic book violence of Batman on the screen and instead have to deal with real life, senseless violence right in their face.  Do we love them? Even when we don’t have the words or the energy, do we reach out to them and walk with as Jesus does?  Do we, as compassion literally means, “suffer with” them?

A nation, Iraq, beleaguered and broken by a decades of war and tyranny is now trying to get it together, and it’s neighbor, Syria is bringing her war onto Iraqi grounds.  And Iran and Israel are trying to fight their own battles and Iraq is right in the middle.  How does the church – you, me, churches all round – respond?  With compassion?  A compassionate response could take on many forms from care for refugees to financial contribution to Christian ministries to political advocacy.  It begins with prayer.  Do we pray for Iraq?

Or Iran?  Or Bulgaria?  Or Israel?  Or victims of drought in our own nation?  Or victims of insidious combination of drought and terrorism in Somalia?  Are we gripped by the Spirit to pray compassionately?

“As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them.”  Why?  Why did they need Jesus so much?  Mark’s narrative continues.  “They were like sheep without a shepherd.”  If I were in that crowd, I might not like being characterized that way.  Americans have self-sufficiency woven into our worldview.  The pioneer spirit and protestant work ethic on which our nation stands say that we are never meek, directionless sheep.  By our will and courage, we’ll find a way.  The truth is our nation is great, but sin has been around longer.  We as a nation and as individuals are fallen and will fall short of God’s glory just as that hungering crowd fell short in Mark 6.  We may not like it, but we are often also sheep without any guidance or protection against wolves that would use our greed, our sense of independence, and our pride to devour us. 

In describing those around Jesus in this way, Mark reaches back to the prophet Ezekiel.  He wrote,

              Ezekiel 34 New Living Translation (NLT)

34 Then this message came to me from the Lord: ² “Son of man, prophesy against the  shepherds, the leaders of Israel. Give them this message from the Sovereign Lord: What sorrow awaits you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of your flocks. Shouldn’t shepherds feed their sheep? ³ You drink the milk, wear the wool, and butcher the best animals, but you let your flocks starve. ⁴ You have not taken care of the weak. You have not tended the sick or bound up the injured. You have not gone looking for those who have wandered away and are lost. Instead, you have ruled them with harshness and cruelty. ⁵ So my sheep have been scattered without a shepherd, and they are easy prey for any wild animal. ⁶ They have wandered through all the mountains and all the hills, across the face of the earth, yet no one has gone to search for them.

⁷ “Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: ⁸ As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, you abandoned my flock and left them to be attacked by every wild animal. And though you were my shepherds, you didn’t search for my sheep when they were lost. You took care of yourselves and left the sheep to starve. ⁹ Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. ¹⁰ This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I now consider these shepherds my enemies, and I will hold them responsible for what has happened to my flock. I will take away their right to feed the flock, and I will stop them from feeding themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths; the sheep will no longer be their prey.

Jesus came to seek out and save the lost, to rescue the sheep who were being devoured.   Yes, he and the disciples were tired, but they were needed.  So compassion ruled and he welcomed the crowd and began to teach them.  Mark says he taught many things until late into the day.  The crowd, captivated by Jesus’ gentle but unquestioned authority, drank in his words without thought of provisions. 

The disciples finally had to interrupt him to say, “Hey, enough compassion for now.  It’s supper time.  We’re kind of compassioned-out.  Send them away.  They can fill up the Cracker Barrel and the Chik-Fil-A.  They can sit around and discuss your great teachings.  Send them away so they can eat and we can have some peace.” 

But Jesus wasn’t compassioned-out.  He was full of compassion.  He was driven by deep love for people who were hurting spiritually, politically, emotionally, and physically.  Jesus never runs out of compassion.  He runs on compassion.  It fuels him and comes from him.

Mark 1, Peter’s mother-in-law cannot perform hospitality her most crucial service as a first century lady of the house.  She’s down with a fever.  Jesus takes her tenderly by the hand and lifts to her feet.  By the time she’s standing, the weakness and sickness is gone and she’s 100%, ready to do her thing. 

Also in Mark 1, a leper runs to Jesus.  Lepers were, by law, to keep their distance.  In approaching, this one broke the rules, but his disease made him so desperate, he did not care.  Seeing him, Jesus was moved with pity.  He healed the leprosy (1:41).

In Mark 2, Jesus is surrounded by tax collectors, those in Israel who were treated as hated turncoats because they collected taxes for Rome.  Jesus never minimized the base sin in the crowd at the party that surely included gamblers and prostitutes.  He saw the very shepherdless sheep Ezekiel lamented.  In response to the Pharisees who complained about the company he kept, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (2:17).  Jesus saw sin as an evil disease that puts sons and daughters of God in harm’s way.  He came to cure us of what ails us because he loves us.

In Mark 5, he meets another woman, sick, bleeding, cast out from society.  The law called her untouchable, unclean, unworthy.  Jesus called her “daughter.”  This forgotten, stepped on woman was a daughter of God in the eyes of the compassionate one.

In two other healing miracles, one with a deaf mute, and another with a blind man, Jesus could see that the healing was going to be an involved process.  It included rubbing mud on the blind man’s eyes and spitting on the mute man’s tongue.  Knowing this and knowing that the diseases would be attributed to sin by some legalists; in other words, the deaf mute and the blind man would not only suffer their maladies but be blamed for them; knowing this, Jesus first took both individuals, again by the hand, away from the crowd.  Not only did he heal these illnesses.  He preserved the dignity and restored these lost souls to society. 

Jesus was driven by compassion.  Jesus we have to send the crowd away so they can eat.

No.  The teaching I give comes from God and if the people hear it and heed it they will understand that in my coming the Kingdom has arrived.  A kingdom where the rejected are welcomed and compassion and love are the rule. No.  No one is sent away.  You feed them.

We know what happens next.  The disciples protest and Jesus takes a meal of 5 pieces of pita bread and a few fish, and he feeds 5000 people and there are 12 baskets of leftovers. 

Flipping over to Mark 8, it happens again.  The circumstances there are slightly different, but again, Jesus takes the food from an individual’s meal, miraculously multiplies it, and feeds thousands.   

People were so desperate for what Jesus had they would follow him.  He was on the move, so to keep up, they had to move.  They may have meant traveling without making adequate preparation and then being caught in the wilderness with no food.  Jesus, driven by compassion as he always was, determined to teach the truths of the Kingdom of God would not allow hunger to distract his followers any more than he allowed storms at sea to consume the 12 disciples. 

I think miracles can still happen, but I don’t know when.  It’s the Holy Spirit’s call, not ours.  But, whether miracles happen our not, the body of Christ, the church, is to be driven by compassion every bit as much as he was.  Middle class Americans living high-tech, educated, affluent lives may feel like we have it all together.  But then we have a week where people die going to the movies.  That reminds us of our history of senseless violence.  Drought and heat remind us that we’ll never be more powerful than the weather and when it is dangerously bad, it can hurt us.  News from wars and terrorism from around the world remind us that the chaos of sin is all around us and no matter how independent we want to feel, in truth, we need Jesus like never before. 

Can the church command miracles with ease of Jesus?  Not every time.  I have never worked a miracle.  But you and I, we can be driven by compassion as he was.  We can show his love even it means standing with someone who is suffering. We don’t know what to do, so we stand with them as long as we need to.  In coming alongside, God shows us what forms compassion takes. 

Jesus is the compassionate one.  If we want to see Him, we go where there is pain and we love those who hurt.  When we do, we realize He is in us, working through us.  And in our compassion, which is His compassion in us, the world sees the Kingdom of God.

AMEN