Jul 164 min read

Responding with Compassion

“... and Jesus had compassion for them because they were like a sheep without a shepherd ...” (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56. Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 11(16). ) This is not the story we may have been expecting from Mark chapter 6. Many of us would imagine we were going to consider the story of the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus as the bread of life. Indeed we have the bookends but no miraculous meal. So what is our attention being directed toward if not the expected?

You may like to consider what I wrote three years ago as a reflection on Reconciliation as outlined in Ephesians.

Having considered the dark and disturbingly violent banquet at which John the Baptist was beheaded last week we had reasons to look forward to a life giving meal with 5,000 other seekers this week. (However we need not be too disappointed as soon we will have five weeks to consider Jesus as the Bread of Life.) But instead we are served a fragmented and chaotic description of people desperately travelling here and there looking for guidance and purpose, food and healing – for meaning and for help. That Jesus sees them as a people like sheep without a shepherd is not an insult nor is it only compassionate on his part. It is almost certainly a judgement on Herod and the rest of the leadership who not only has had John the Baptist beheaded he has failed to rule with mercy and justice the people of the region. For the metaphor of sheep without a shepherd is an image from the Hebrew Bible used to describe Israel when they were without a king or without a good king and it is therefore a critique of the current leadership. (Numbers 27:17; 1 Kings 22:17; Ezekiel 34:5; Zechariah 10:2)

However Jesus does not stop at criticising the current leadership but responds with compassion by teaching, feeding and then healing the people. His response is one of compassion – human and divine. His response might also have been viewed by the people, by his disciples and by the authorities as offering an alternative leadership, an alternative kingship. Especially given this story is told immediately after the story of Herod’s appalling abuse of power and responsibility, and immediately before the story of feeding the seekers of Israel and miraculously calming the stormy elements! This brew of story elements could well be understood as painting a new kind of king in a new kingdom. It certainly makes sense of Pilate’s question of Jesus in chapter 15 “Are you king of the Jews?”

So what of this relates to our world and our issues? We can certainly look at our news feed and agree our leaders are corrupt or weak, concerned with the powerful few rather than the needs of the many, and look around to see if there is a new “king” on the horizon who will lead us where we want to go. But usually we just want our particular king or leader to lead the nation, the company, the church, our psyche to a place we already have in mind. But Jesus was not simply an alternative king in an ongoing kingdom. To the extent that king is even an appropriate title for Jesus it is an upside-down, inside-out, servant-leadership type of kingship and not of this world but of the kingdom of God upon this earth. If we follow Jesus we get to follow him to the garden of Gethsemane not to the banquet of the rich and important, we get to follow him to the cross not a best selling book launch, and through death to life not success as the well to do.

The people came looking for Jesus having heard he had a gift for healing and giving meaning. If our churches are emptier than we would like is it because people no longer need the teaching and healing touch of Jesus or is it because we are no longer perceived as offering meaning and healing? And if so then why? Is it we are in competition with science and other faiths or maybe we have been so busy arguing over our beliefs and membership rules that we have generally been so otherwise engaged that we have largely failed to actually offer food, meaning and acceptance to those who are in need? Have we in the church been so busy comforting and calming each other down that we have been unavailable to hear the wisdom and the need of those outside – the invitation to play, to share humble food, and hear the cry that still surfaces from the depths in each generation, in each community?

I ask these questions not from any safe distance but from the heart of my pondering and desire to refine and re-find the servant heart of our tradition and to respond to a lost and chaotic world with the same compassion as our Lord did. I trust that over the next weeks, as we consider Jesus as the Bread of Life, we may be challenged and encouraged in more detail. For now, let us honour and give thanks for our hunger for more. Let us see and give thanks for the hunger of our neighbours who are not satisfied with mere success or the never ending pursuit of the necessities of survival. And let us attend to our holy hunger until we are hungry enough to seek that which truly satisfies.

Even so, come Lord Jesus the Christ, come stir up the hunger in us until we hunger for you and the things of your kingdom.