“Jesus’ Compassion” Mark
6:30-34
Intro.: It is difficult to watch the TV News these
days with all of the suffering to which it exposes us. After all we are a compassionate people,
aren’t we? The Random House Dictionary defines compassion as “a feeling of deep
sympathy for another’s suffering or misfortune.” By that definition it is probably safe to say
that we are compassionate and have sympathy for others. Regrettably, that is often where our
compassion ends, with a passing feeling.
It is so easy for us to turn off the TV when the images begin to make us
feel too much, or to turn the other way when the time comes to translate our
feelings into actions.
In
each of today’s lessons God teaches us that His compassion is something
different; it cannot be turned off or turned away. In our Gospel we learn about the true
compassion of God through His Son, who sees, cares, and responds to needs of
the suffering.
I.
In His Compassion Jesus Sees Our Needs.
(vv. 30-31a, 34a)
Being by very nature God, Jesus cannot
just turn off the TV when He begins to feel too much for people. He cannot just put us and our suffering out
of mind. He sees it all and knows our
needs even better than we know them ourselves. (Illustrate with Nursing Home)
A. As our Gospel begins the apostles were
returning with great excitement over all that they had done and taught under
the authority of Jesus’ name. Yet, in
His compassion Jesus saw their needs. He
knew the toll their journey had taken on them and the demands of their service
under Him. Life was so hectic that they
could not find the time to eat or sleep or even sit quietly with Jesus. He saw that they needed spiritual
rejuvenation and physical rest.
B. Jesus’ compassion did not end with those
closest to Him. It also led Him to
recognize the needs of the crowd. They had
come because of what they had heard and seen, and they came with all kinds of
wants and needs. But Jesus did not cater
to what they wanted or what they thought they needed. He saw the true need they all shared in
common which was a spiritual need. He
looked out over them and His heart ached because He saw that they were like “sheep without a Shepherd”; lost,
wandering, and being devoured by the wolves of the world and that roaring lion,
who is the devil.
C. Christ sees all of your needs also. He knows everything that is going on in your
life; the things that are weighing you down and making you weary. He knows all your pain, all your trials, and
all your sorrows. He knows that you are
prone to wander away from him, away from the Church and this flock, to do your
own thing. He has seen your sin, the
shame and hurt that it has brought upon you, and that you are harassed and
helpless.
In fact
He knows your needs better than you.
Like the crowds of our Gospel you may think that you know what you
need. You seek the Lord in the hopes
that He will give you what you want, like more excitement or relaxation in your
life, a better job, car or house, more money or fewer obligations. You may think that what you need is someone
to tell you that you can go on living in the sin that has taken hold of you,
that there is no hell or if there is no one is really going there. Thank God that Christ’s compassion does not
cater to what we want or think we need.
That would be like sitting in a sinking boat in the middle of the ocean
boring holes in its bottom with a drill, and asking Jesus to come and patch
some of the leaks, when in fact what we need is for Him to take the drill away
from us. He knows that our real problem
is sin and our craving for self-destructive independence from God. He knows that we are sheep who love to wander
and continually need to be brought back to their loving Shepherd. And…
II. In His Compassion Jesus Truly Cares. (vv. 31b, 34b)
A. I must confess, and I hope that I am not
alone in this, that there have been times when I have done what seemed to be a
good thing and responded to the needs of another person, not out of love, but
out of a sense of obligation or guilt. Christ’s
compassion is not like that. It never arises
out of a sense of obligation, as if He owed us something, because He doesn’t.
In
love God created humanity to be the crown of all that He had made, to bear His
own image in the world. He turned over
paradise to our parents and gave them all that they could ever need and
everything they should ever want. But
that was not enough for them, was it? Even
though the Lord had provided them with every fruit and vegetable in the Garden
of Eden to generously supply their physical needs, and came to them in that
place to provide for their spiritual needs, they still wanted more. They wanted God’s place, a knowledge that
would destroy their spirit and fruit from the tree which God warned them would
lead to their death. Nothing has changed;
according to our fallen natures we are still insatiable and ungrateful. No matter what the Lord gives us we always
want something more or something different.
So it is not our need or a sense of obligation that moves Jesus to
compassion.
B. No, Christ’s compassion flows solely from His
pure love; a love that is undeserved.
Even before He created them, God saw that the man and woman would rebel
against Him and ruin His good creation.
Yet out of love God still chose to go ahead with His creation and
immediately after their fall into sin He offered His promise of a Savior. From eternity God knew what sinful people
like us would do to His Son, that he would be
rejected, mistreated and crucified, and yet He sent His Son anyway to redeem
us. Yes, Jesus came and He died on that
cross with full knowledge of the way you would reject him in your life, the way
you would mistreat His gift of grace and subject Him to public shame, and the
way you would heap your sin upon Him, as if to crucify Him over and over
again. That is what Christ’s compassion
is like; it is boundless and certain because it flows from God’s heart which is
filled with love for the unlovable.
C. What makes Christ’s compassion different is
that it is pure and real, because it flows from genuine love and care. We may be touched by another person’s
suffering, but our sympathy is always tainted with our own sinful self-interest. As I mentioned before it may arise out of
guilt or a sense of obligation, or it may come because we hope to be rewarded
for it. We show compassion to friends
and family, because they might give us something in return. We show compassion to strangers, because it
might make us feel good or lead others to think well of us.
But Jesus’ heart goes out to people who
have nothing to offer him in return. His
motivation is the purely selfless and eternal love of God for his lost and
wayward sheep.
This kind of compassion motivated by God’s
love does not end with feelings of pity.
Rather, this compassion of Jesus that sees our needs, and truly cares
about us results in action.
III. In His Compassion Jesus Responds To
Our Needs With Gifts. (vv. 32, 34c)
A. In our Gospel Jesus responds to the needs of
His apostles by inviting them to come away with Him by themselves to a quiet
place for some much needed rest. To the
harassed and helpless crowds of every age Jesus continues to offer the invitation: “Come
to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for
I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt. 11:28-29) He comes here today in this time set aside
for physical and spiritual rest to this quiet place of His presence to speak
peace into our troubled hearts. He
assures us through the writer of Hebrews:
“There remains, then, a
Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests
from his own work…”(Heb. 4:8-10)
This morning/night Jesus the Good and Faithful Shepherd invites you to
find rest in His presence as He leads you into the green pastures and beside
the still waters of His Word, which declares to you that the work of your
salvation has been accomplished for you by Him.
B. Because He sees our need and cares Jesus also
responds with the much needed gift of food for body and soul. Our Gospel tells us that when Jesus saw the
needs of the crowd, that they were like sheep without a shepherd, He began to
teach them many things. Of first
importance to Christ was that these hungry little lambs receive from Him the
bread of life for their souls, so He taught them about the kingdom of heaven
which He was bringing to them. He called
them to repentance and faith as He shared with them the love of God for
sinners, and the gift of salvation which He was offering them.
Still today Jesus feeds us with this very
same Word to nourish and strengthen our faith.
When we feel the hunger pains of our soul and the emptiness of our
spirits, He speaks the richness of the Gospel into us, satisfies us with the
words of His absolution, and reaches out to us with His own body and blood to
fill us with forgiveness, life and salvation.
While it is not in today’s lesson later
in the day Jesus responded to this same crowd’s physical hunger also. Out of His divine compassion He miraculously
fed over five-thousand that day with a few loaves and a couple of fish. Still today he continues to feed us with our daily
bread, “everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body..”
C. Finally in His compassion Jesus responds with
the gift of Himself to redeem our bodies and souls. It would not be long after Jesus looked out
upon that crowd that He would make His way to Jerusalem to look out over
perhaps some of the same faces in another crowd, and hear them crying out for
His crucifixion. Again, in His great
compassion, He saw their need, loved them, and responded by offering Himself up
on the
Concl.: Thank God, for
Jesus’ greater compassion; a compassion that is not a passing feeling, but one
that sees our great need, is motivated by pure love to truly care, and responds
with gifts of grace for eternal life.
Amen.