Compassion: Matt 9:35-38

Rumor has it that some time ago a research firm did a "word association survey" for a certain major Protestant denomination asking the simple question: "What is the first word/phrase that comes to mind when you hear the name "Southern Baptist"? The results? #1: "hates gays".

Really? Ouch. Is that the only message that we are sending now-a-days? I fear that at times, the answer is yes.

As former SBC President Frank Page aptly stated in his Presidential address at Convention in San Antonio (08), "For far too long, Southern Baptists have been known only for what they are against, it is time that they are known for what they are for!"

How about compassion as a starting point, not only for the SBC, but for all Christians. Consider this passage from Matthew:

35 Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. 36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.

A major point that modern American evangelicals miss about Jesus' ministry is his compassionate nature. More than once, we are told that Christ has compassion upon those around Him, and not only for their spiritual condition. He healed their illnesses, and was moved by their "dispirited" state, a word me might translate as "despondent" or "depressed". The Ancient Mediterranean was a factory of misery and Jesus did not turn a blind eye to the plight of the poor, the helpless, nor the ones at the top of the heap responsible for most of that misery.

Strangely absent from the teachings of Jesus are tirades against the local sex trade, the exploitative nature of the collection of Roman taxes, or even a pamphlet about drunkenness. This is not to say that Jesus was unconcerned with sin. Sin is what caused His mission to be necessary. He bore the ugliness of sin on His shoulders from birth until the Resurrection destroyed the power of sin (1 Cor 15). So we can be certain that these issues were subsumed in his universal call to repent (Matt 4:17). But interestingly, Jesus tends to avoid dealing with specific sin issues when dealing with those outside the Kingdom and outside the religious circles of His day (cf. John 8, the woman caught in adultery where Jesus does not launch into a dissertation on the destructive power of sexual sin, but says, "neither do I condemn you AND go and sin no more"). Instead we see Jesus staring into the sin of the masses, and responding not with hatred, but with a zealous love.

Point of fact, the only people He seems to "chop wood" with is the Pharisees; those who claim to be the true faithful, the remnant, what we might have once called "The Moral Majority" of their day ( cf. Matt 23 for a grand tour of Jesus' antipathy toward the Pharisees). But this is another topic for another day.

Jesus felt deep compassion and longing for those who were hurting. The words splagchnizomai and eleos; which are translated as both 'mercy' and 'compassion', pop up more than three dozen times cumulatively in the NT, the bulk of these appearances are in the Gospels. Take these three examples from Matthew:

When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick. Matt 14:14

And Jesus called His disciples to Him, and said, " I feel compassion for the people, because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way." Matt 15:32

Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes; and immediately they regained their sight and followed Him. Matt 20:34

Perhaps then it is no mistake that Matthew places this teaching on compassion directly before the following exhortation from Jesus:

37 Then He *said to His disciples, " The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38 "Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest."

Step one: Be compassionate: recognize the needs that exist around you; both spiritual and physical.

Step two: do something: seek out ways in your family life, and in the life of your church family to get to work in the harvest fields.

There is much to be done friends, but it begins with compassion.

It has been said that the opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy.

I say Amen to that.

(BTW, for a good survey of SBC compassion ministries, check out the Baptist Global Response, and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. You may be surprised how much mercy us Southern Baptists actually have)

One of the Two Sure Things in Life

Today Edith Shain died. Who? Edith Shain, the nurse in the famous V-Day kiss photo. Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped the photo on V-J Day (Aug 14, 1945, the day victory over Japan was declared) for Life magazine.

Photography, indeed film of all kind, has been said to have the psychological effect of projecting immortality. For instance, recently, students were polled on whether or not Marilyn Monroe was alive or dead; many students were certain that she was alive. It goes to show you the power of media in general.

As such, the news that the gorgeous brunette nurse in the photo here was dead produced a slight glitch in my system. People in pictures don't die. Right?

Just another reminder that the grisly Reaper is still mowing, and that eventually, he'll find his way to my pasture. Let us remember this fact, and let us also know that while death is certain, that our eternity is not, unless we enter it with Christ.

Until then.

Follow Through

Endure, persevere, stand firm... these words permeate Scripture.

Jesus tells the disciples to endure the tribulation to come (in AD 70, and in 2000-something) (Matt 24:13). Paul tells timothy to persevere in life and doctrine (1 Tim 4:16), that perseverance builds character, which leads to hope, which does not disappoint us (Rom 5:5). The author of Hebrews tells us that we must persevere to receive the promise reserved for the faithful (Heb 10:36); and famously Hebrews 11 is chock full of examples of endurance for the sake of God and Christ.

Granted, all of these examples concern spiritual matters, in fact, they concern eternity! But one has to wonder, (or at least I do), where else endurance matters. The answer; I have found is, everywhere .

In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus says, "...'Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master." (Matt 25:21). It has been my experience that few people rise to the responsibility given to them. In other words, if someone is not faithful with simple tasks at work, making them a manager will not instantly inject them with responsibility. Perhaps this is something of what Jesus is getting at.

As Christians it is imperative that we are known as people of our word. When we say we will be somewhere, or that we will do something, are we? do we? As leaders, have we plotted a course, or cast a vision, for it only to be lost in a sea of sticky notes and emails? Have we fallen prey to the "Tyranny of the Urgent" (thank you Bill Hybels). How often has our phone tag trail grown cold. How often have started something and not brought it to completion?

Col 3:17 exhorts us to exert ourselves in all things as though we were doing it unto the Lord. This counts for everything. It becomes a matter of character. Are we known for follow through? We'd better be, for we wear the name of Christ and when we show ourselves as being unreliable, we bring His name down with ours.

Truth, inside.

I often turn to the Psalms for help. In times of sorrow, or fear, sleepless nights, teeth grinding days. Of all the Psalms, the one that turn to most often is Psalm 51. It is a “penitential” Psalm, that is to say it is written from the perspective of a person who has sinned and is humbly approaching the Lord for forgiveness. The context is scandalous, it follows David's adultery with Bathsheba, arguably one of the darker periods in Israel's history. The Clinton scandal was gross, the Bathsheba scandal was down right ugly, and David knew good and well that he had done wrong.
There are some stand out passages, ones that have spurred theological debates (v.5), ones you will recognize from praise choruses (v.10-12), etc. but v.6 has struck me time and again:
Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being... Ps 51:6a
Truth, inside.

In Matthew 23, Jesus lays down the law (metaphorically speaking) on the Pharisees. The most stinging of his critiques from an Ancient Mediterranean religious perspective was his accusation that the Pharisees were whitewashed tombs (whited sepulchres, KJV). This seems strange to us, to accuse someone of being a lovely grave, but trust me, it hurt. The Old Testament forbid holy persons from touching the remains of the dead. This was actually used against the Jews during a feud between they and the Samaritans when the latter spread bones among the Temple courts to prevent the Jews from observing Pesach1. In other words, He told the Pharisees that no matter how holy they appeared (white-washed) they were unholy within, full of rottenness and corruption.

When I was a boy, my family visited the Vicksburg battlefield, a site of one of the more brutal battles in the Civil War. Among the tombs were some magnificent tombs to commanders who had died there, and not far from there were row after row of simple headstones. No matter how lovely one was on the exterior, inside the contents were the same. Dressing up a tomb doesn't change the fact that it is filled with decay.

What this has to do with us is quite simple. When God looks into our “innermost being”, does He find truth or duplicity? Is the person that our employers, fellow employees, friends, etc. know on the outside, the same as the one that resides within us. Surely there are facets of who we are that are private, tucked away, as it should be, but you know what I mean. Who are you... really? What does your heart long for, your mind wander to when you are alone. When you are laying in bed at night, are you wishing that you could be yourself, or worse, that you could be the person you project to others?

A friend of mine from back in the Red River Valley was much closer to his grandfather than to his won father. At his grandfather's funeral, the minster made a statement that will never leave me, “This man was the same person all the time.” In a world of shifting sands, kaleidoscopic morality, and waning chivalry, what a compliment. May the same be paid to us by those who know us, and by He who knows us best.