JESUS THE COMPASS t ONATE MARCH 12, [972
JOHN [1:35 JOHN M. BUCHANAN

John 11:35, besides being the shortest verse In the Bible, just may be one
of the most important. Two words: subject and verb: "Jesus wept". The old stand-by
of countless Sunday Schoot Bibie memory contests: repeated mostly without thinking
about the volumus it really speaks. Later on in the same account we read that
‘Jesus was deeply moved: the New English Bible translates “he sighed deeply".

And together they telt us about something in Jesus that is very significant,

We are a tittle afraid of the story itself, and well we ought te be. For what
do you do with a man tike him? What do you do with this power to command dead
Lazarus - whose death is punctuated by the author's earthy vignette regarding the
aosthetics of opening a four day otd grave - what do you do with this power to commsid
him to get up and watk, whereupon he docs just that? Do yu treat that allegorica} ly
and conclude that Jesus' own resurrection is here foretold? Do you treat it symbol~
ically and conclude that it reaily didn't happen at all,but that Jesus said some
particularty significant things about lite after death and the author turned it Into
a story? Do you treat it as myth - a story inserted into the account by the author
of the Fourth Gospel to lend credibitity to his claim that Jesus was, in fact, God
in the flesh? Or do you accept that literally? Do you believe it happened, just
like that?

Well, however, you profer to handic Lazarus's miracious resurrection: whatever
meaning it has for you, | would suggest that the fact that Jesus wept is wery bit
as important as what he did subsequently.

We've been thinking in recent weeks about the tundamerted Christian clatm
that Jesus was God incarnate. Under that generat heading we have thought about the
humanity of Jesus: Jesus the Teacher. Today, we come to "Jesus the Compassionate”,
the one Luke introduces to us by way of a Nayareth incident in which Jesus talked
about the blind seeing, the lame walking, the poor hearing gcod news and th. captives
being released: the one Matthew reports as saying "inasmuch as you have done if to
one of the feast of these, my brother, you have done it to me". The one Jonn tells

us wept for Mary and Martha because their brother was dead: the one who wept because

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his friend had died, the one who felt the pain and need of men in his own body,

and who was able to communicate to those about him his total empathy with their
situation, The one a modern writer describes in these words: "Whatever hurt people
or even bothered them was a concern of Jesus. lf they were hungry, he sew The
practical necessity of feeding them. If they were sick, disabled, or weak, his
mercy was extended to heal or strengthen. If they were defeated or discouraged in
the race of life, he offered encouragement for a new start. (Georgo L. Cutton
Alive Now! Spring 72, P. 44) Today, we think about Jesus the Compassionate.

One of the current debates in the church is whether our business is “saving
souls" or feoding, healing, enableing, freeing people. It's not a new debate, really.
The concept of a Social Gospel has been around for a long time, and there have always
been advocates on both sides. Today there are groups that speclalize in one or the
other: there are evangelism peaple who want the church te be concerned with getting
everyone info heaven: and there are social action people who want the church to
see thateveryone gets enough to eat, and proper medical care, and a good education,
and an equal opportunity while they are on the earth. Both groups can arm themselves
withBiblical proof-tests to defend their position. And | think the whole debate
is a theological cop-out. You cannot honestly confront the beautifully compassionate
Jesus of the New Testament and turn him into another -wordly savior. You cannot
“spirituatize’ the Jesus of the New Testament because he was obviously concerned
about the bodily condition of people around him. And so | think it's a phony
argument: | think you cannot go one way or the other without doing violence to the
one who cared deeply about man as a totatity - not body or spirit - but the whote man.

Jesus'. Jewish theology, you sce, didn't distinguish between soul and body. The
Jew's wouldn't have known what we were talking about when we refer to the soul of
man as if it werc something different from our bodies. Even the Hebrew word for
"salvation ~- really means wholeness, health, total well-being. And so if fs wrong
to regard Jesus doing two separate things when he proclaimed God's Kingdom on the
one hand, and fed a Aungry crowd on the other hand ~ He simply encountered needy

peopte - and met their needs. He felt their pain; he hurt - because They hurt -

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regardless of whether it was the pain of hunger or guilt, leprosy or dishonesty,
poverty or sin. That is to say, he was compassionate,

Jesus revealed a God whose nature It is to be compassionate. In the Old Testament
jwsson this morning we heard a God described who is merciful and kind and foraivine.
This is a strong Old Testament then that is played against the theme of God's
righteousness and judgement and anger and wrath - and sometimes drowned out by it.
Jesus revealed a God who is conpretely cunpassionate,

In his time, given the Jo.ish environminf, that was still a radical idea, be-
cause fhe going “ .cloqy wos Greok, Tor the Greeks the most basic concept of God
was serenity, detachment from mortal affairs: the word for if is Ataraxia which means
inviolable puace. The Gods on Mt. Olympus didn’t care about men. that was part of
their charm and appeal. They had absolutefy nothing to do with humanity. The
Stoic philisophers disregarded the traditional Greek gods, but still talked in
terms of God's apatheia - his ‘unfeelingness", and taught a way of life that
accepted whatever fate handed out without emotional response. The idval was to be
able to endure physical pain - and emotional pain - without feeling a thing.

Jesus revealed a God who could feel and does feel: a God who suffers and
laughs: a God who weeps: a God who hurts where his children hurt. For some it was ~
blasphemous idea. But forothers It was a saving idea - this idea that God cares,
that Ged feels something when we suffur, that God cven Knows whet Tt moner to
watch a son die.

A black poet, James Weldon Johnson, put the tdea in a form that is child-like,
and yet profoundly theological

"And God stepped out on space,

And he looked around, and said,

"Tim lonoly

l'ii make me a world

Then God walked around

And God looked around

On all that he had made.

He looked at his sun,

And he looked at his moon,

And he looked at his little stars:

He looked on his world

With all its living things,

And God said: “I'm lonely still.

Then God sat down -

On the side of a hil! where he could think,

By a deep, wide river he sat down,

With his head in his hands,

God thought and thought

Till he thought; 't'li make me a man!"

Jesus revealed a God with feelings: a God who even knows what it is we are
experiencing when wo are lonely. William Barday put it succinctly: “Jesus Christ
came to tell men of a God who cares desparately, a God who is involved in the
human situation, A God who in the Old Testament phrase, is afflected in all our
afflictions, a God who is concerned’ (Ethics in a Permissive Society, P. 31)

Jesus was a compassionate man. He revealed a compassionate God. And to know
him very well is to have one's conscience stabled and one's compassion awakened.

Perhaps the major contribution of Christianity to the life of the world is
at this point. Now Christian history is not always pretty. We, after all, sponsored
the Crusades, the Roman Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots at 9:30 on Masterpiece Theater,
and then the Protestants and Catholics of North Ireland dispatching each other
today on the 11:00 News, punctuates the obvious point that the compassion of Jesus
has not always been reflected in the lives of his people. But there is another side
to that story. Once the centuries Christianity has been a humanizing and gentling
influence. From the evcntual abolishment of the arena in Rome, to the establishment
of orphanages and hospitals by the Church, to the push for child labor laws in

England, to the abolition of capital punishment in our day, the people of Jesus have

vn Be
been the one consistant source of compassion; the one source where the dignity
and sanctity of the individual was worth dying fr. Christianity produced a William
Booth, who founded the Salvation Army and said: "We saw the need. We saw the people
starving, we saw people going bout half=naked, people doing serated labour; and we
set about bringing a remedy for these things. We wero obliged - there was a
compulsion. How could one do anything else?

Booth knew the compassion of Jesus Christ: Booth's own great compassionate
spirit is best revealed, however, not in his public speeches, but in a casual
comment he once made-namely that he was haunted by the thought of children to whew
the word ‘kiss! was a moaningless mystery. ~“Cisid. P.32)

Many of the harsh and bruta! social conditions that awakened William Booth's
conscience and compassion are gonc today. And yet | believe there is a need today for
compassion in our common life as ner before. There is a desparate, crying need for
a humanizing influence In a time of war by technology: when men sit in planes
30,000 feet in the air, and have no idea whatever who gets killed when the bombs
hit. There is a desparate need for basic human compassion in mass, urban society
when thousands of sick, elderiy poople sit in one room hovels without anyone in the
world who cares whether they live or die. Someone has +o translate Welfare case
number 74,630" inta Mrs. Brown who *hinks about the way it used to be around the
dinner table, and who !ikes sugar cookes,, ant whece arthritis hurts every night.
Someone has to reduce the body counts to individual men, and boys, and widows, and
fatherless children. Someone has to reduce that safe military euphemisn called
“Protective reaction strike’ into little children who die in infancy, bodies riddled
with the fragments of American anti-personel bombs. Someone has to remember that
picture of two little boys standinc outside a town called My Lai: Brothers, nine and,
six, the elder sheltering the younger: both of whom were shot to death. Someone
has to have the courage to cry - fo weep - publically ~ to have compassion.

To be that person today, is not an easy thing to do. For our culture is a \
littlc skeptical of the compassionate man. Compassion just may be weakness. We a

start out by teaching little boys not To cry. We teach our children that it's

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best to be tough. And we proceed through adutthood trying desparately not to reveal
the deeply human feelings in our hearts. Our image of real manhood says "I don't
need pity - | don't need anyone's compassion’, which quickly becomes "I can't
feel compassion: Patton was the prototype: the strong, indestructable man, the
totally unfeeling automotien, But there is another kind of man, and when wea
meet him we are strangely moved and compelled by him: a man characterized in the
very popular movic “Billy Jack”. The tremendous appeal of Billy Jack is, | believe,
in the fact that he is a strong and sufficient man, but also a man who can cry when
little Indian Children are degraded and dehumanized.

Albert Schweitzer once said. "There is so much coldness among men because we
do not dare to be as cordial as we really are. ‘And went on to say that we act as
men toward other men when we can care and have compassion.

There are other reasons why it is difficult to be a compassionate man today.
To show compassion for one's fellow men is to risk being regarded as weak and soft:
it is to risk being called a ‘bleeding heart . But in addition if is difficult
because of a certain middle class isolation from any real suffering. There are a lot
of hungry, hurting,bleeding people out there - but they aren't visible in the circles
most of us frequent. They donit come to P.T.A.: they don't belong to Bridge Clubs
and they don't come to Presbyterian Churches. They live off th: beaten paths of
urban society - and it's quite possible to live in ignorance of their existance.

At the opposite end of the spectrum television brings so much suffering
into our living rooms, in living color, that | think we protect ourselves by simply
not allowing it to register. | know it happens to me. We were getting ready to
go out to dinner one evening and happencd to see the execution of several men in
Pakistan - by bayonet - in front of a cheering crowd, and | experienced a rather
intense desire to shut it out: to not feel anything at all.

Finally, | believe we all salve our consciences with a little sentiment - which
is substantially different from compassion. We allow ourselves to observe a little
suffering: we allow just a little conern. But it isn't deep: it doesn't really hurt.

Wegive a little more to the United Fund and the pain stops. Tolstoi told the story

- Jo
of elegant Russian ladies who would cry at the theater, without giving a thought to
their shivering coachman walting outside In the cold. There is a little of that in
all of us.

Jesus was a compassionate man who could cry publically af th. death of a

friend. He showed us a God of campassion. And he calls us,as part of our discipleship
to become his compassionate people. The psychiatrist Rollo May says that learning to
care ~ to fool - to have compassfion - is our most urgent problem. To follow Jesus
Christ is te deal with that - to t:arn how to feel for others - to learn to
hurt when othurs hurt - tot. Christians to the point of weeping publically for the

suffering of other men.

it is to learn to have compassion for each other. Onc writer put it this
way: it js possible to experience, through each other, the toving God who became
incarnate in the Compassionate Christ’. (Lela M. Hendrix Alive Now! P. 38)

And that sentiment is expressed in a very old and beloved hymn, written in
1832. “We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other
flows, The Sympathizing tear.

When we learn that - when we can feel for each othur ~ and weep for each ofher -
and rejoice for each other, woe become men as God created us to be. And we usher in

a little bit of his Kingdom on Earth. AMEN

Father, help us to fee! the pain of others. As we follow our lord to his cross,

help us to see again his grat compassion for us and for all men. AMEN