The Superintendent of Schools was having a bad year. Some contentious issues were being dealt with by the school board. One Sunday, during the coffee hour after church, I heard the Superintendent say in a particularly loud voice, "For crying out loud, it's my day of rest, too!" Someone had approached him about a concern in the school district, and he felt that there was no place he could go to get away from it. I learned right then not to approach people about business matters when they are not on duty.
Jesus was able to deal with such intrusions more graciously. In the passage we are looking at, Jesus has been rejected by the people of his hometown, his disciples have just returned from a mission he sent them on, and he has been informed about the murder of his cousin, John the Baptist. People were pressing in on him, seeking all kinds of help. Jesus felt that it was time to withdraw and get some rest, so he and his disciples got into a boat and set out for a more quiet place some distance away. Unfortunately, some of the townspeople heard where Jesus was going, and they hurried there on foot. When Jesus and his disciples arrived, a crowd had already arrived and needy people were already standing around, waiting to present their needs. Any person seeking a rest would have been justified if he expressed exasperation under such circumstances. Mark tells us, however, that Jesus had compassion for the crowd, because they seemed to him to be like sheep without a shepherd.
What does it mean to have compassion? Mark spends the remainder of the chapter showing us. Jesus proceeds to teach the people, then to feed them, then to comfort his disciples and allay their fears, and then to heal people who are sick. The work appears to be never-ending. Those first century disciples experienced firsthand the mission and ministry of Jesus. They learned by observation what compassion meant. Then they were called to put it into practice. So are we. If we are to put compassion into practice, we need to know what is involved.
In order to be compassionate, at the very least, we need to be sensitive to the suffering of others. Some people's hearts have become hardened. A number of years ago a television company ran an investigation into the allegation that certain ambulance companies would not transport apparently poor people to hospitals without payment up front. The television production team called an ambulance company and asked them to send a team to a staged emergency. When the ambulance team arrived, they found a shabbily dressed middle-aged man lying on the floor of an apartment, his eyes closed, writhing in pain, gasping desperately for air. The driver and attendant looked on impassively. "He's gotta have 38 bucks, or we don't take him," one of them snapped to the stricken man's roommate. Pointing to two one-dollar bills on the kitchen table, the roommate pleaded: "That's all I can find. But he's got a job, and he's good for the money." This wasn't good enough for the ambulance team. Visibly annoyed, the attendants helped the roommate prop the victim in a kitchen chair. Then they departed, but not before one of them pocketed the two dollars from the table.1 Those who are so hardened to the suffering of another certainly invite our contempt.
Fortunately, most people are capable of more compassion than that. Mencius, a Chinese philosopher who lived several hundred years before Christ, and was eager to show that there is good in everyone, said, "All people have a capacity for compassion. If people see a child about to fall into a well, they will, without exception, experience a feeling of alarm and distress. This is not because they know the child's parents, nor out of desire for praise ... nor out of dislike for the bad reputation that would ensue if they did not go to the rescue. From this we may conclude that without compassion one would not be a human being." Mencius was right to say that compassion is a component of true humanity, but alas, recent wars have shown us that there are also those who would as soon throw a child into a well as to pull one out. Some people are so self-occupied that they don't even notice those who are suffering. The compassion of which we are capable needs cultivating if it is to find expression.
Following Christ is one way to nurture that characteristic. Flannery O'Connor, the insightful Roman Catholic writer, lifted up the Christian dimension when she wrote: "You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people's sufferings and not your own." The beginning of compassion involves becoming aware of the suffering of others.
But it is not enough simply to see the suffering of others, we need to feel it. It is possible to see suffering, but not to feel it. Dewitt Jones tells about a photographer who walked down the street one day and came upon a man who was choking. "What a picture," he thought. "This says it all: A man, alone, in need. What a message!" He fumbled for his camera and light meter until the poor fellow who was choking realized that help was not forthcoming. He grabbed the photographer's arm and gasped, "I'm turning blue!" "That's all right," said the photographer, patting the fellow's hand, "I'm shooting color film." Just noticing suffering isn't enough.
The word "compassion" means to "suffer with." Throughout his ministry, Jesus involved himself in the sufferings of others. The passage we are considering reminds us that he fed the hungry, healed the sick, and taught the ignorant. He put his hand out and touched lepers. Even Sunday school children know the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept," which reminds us that Jesus not only saw, but entered into the sorrows of others.
In his book The Human Comedy, William Saroyan noted: "Unless a man has pity, he is inhuman and not yet truly a man, for out of pity comes the balm which heals. Only good men weep. If a man has not yet wept at the world's pain, he is less than the dirt he walks upon, because dirt will nourish seed, root, stalk, leaf, and flower, but the spirit of a man without pity is barren and will bring forth nothing...." Good people feel the pain of others, and they weep.
Will Rogers was known for his laughter, but he also knew how to weep. One day he was entertaining at the Milton H. Berry Institute in Los Angeles, a hospital that specialized in rehabilitating polio victims and people with spinal cord injuries and other extreme physical handicaps. Very soon, Rogers had everybody laughing, even patients who were paralyzed; but then he suddenly left the platform and went to the restroom. Milton Berry followed him to make sure he was all right. When he opened the door, he saw Will Rogers leaning against the wall sobbing like a child over the tragic situations he was seeing. Berry closed the door, and in a few moments Rogers appeared back on the platform as jovial as ever. Christians are called to a ministry of compassion, and if we are faithful to it, it will cause us to weep with those who weep.
But it is not enough simply to feel the pain of others, we also need to act to relieve it. In Albert Camus' novel, The Fall, an established, impeccable French lawyer has his world totally under control until one night when he hears the cry of a drowning woman and he turns away. Years later, ruined by his failure to act, he winds up reliving the experience in an Amsterdam bar: "Please tell me what happened to you on the Seine River that night, and how you managed never to risk your life," he says to himself. "(Go ahead), utter the words that for years have never ceased echoing through my nights ... 'O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may have a second chance of saving both of us!' " When we fail to act in behalf of someone in distress, something inside of us knows, and will not let us forget, for we have been less than God intends us to be.
Too often, we are content simply to talk about a situation rather than to do something about it. In a book titled Get Out There And Reap! Guin Ream Tuckett chronicles the activities of a character named Marsha, who is a forward-thinking Christian in a stodgy, tradition-bound church. One time, quite by accident, she influenced her junior high Sunday school class to challenge the status quo. They talked about an upcoming church dinner. Marsha observed that there was always an abundance of food at such gatherings. She casually remarked what a witness it would be to share their abundance with others. On the evening of the next church supper, the tables were filled with food as usual. During the pre-meal prayer, a loud noise erupted as two dozen disheveled teenagers of all sizes, colors, and appearances rumbled down the stairs. A boy from the junior high class, Jason, went running up to the young people and greeted them enthusiastically. Jason's father worked at the local youth social center. Jason and the class had taken Marsha's words to heart and invited all the kids from the social center. These newcomers were kids who didn't have healthy family structures, and paid little attention to table manners. But they were enthusiastic about the church program, and they gratefully shoveled down food as though they had never had a full meal in their lives. The church members were shocked, and many stared accusingly at Marsha throughout the evening. At the next meeting of the class, Marsha scolded her students for not warning her of the grand scheme. Then she realized where the problem lay. "That's the trouble with you kids," she said. "You take your religion seriously!" Then she realized what she was saying. She and the older church members had been content simply to talk about hungry people. The kids had acted.2
Writing about another time and place, Leo Tolstoy said, "I beheld the misery, cold, hunger, humiliation of thousands of my fellow human beings ... I feel, and can never cease to feel, myself a partaker in a crime which is constantly being committed, so long as I have extra food while others have none, so long as I have two coats while there exists one person without any ... I must seek in my heart at every moment, with meekness and humility, some opportunity for doing the job Christ wants done." The job Christ wants done. He set the course; we are to do the rowing.
When World War II ended, the members of a church in Frankfurt, Germany, began reconstructing their bombed-out sanctuary. One of the main objects to be restored was a statue of Christ that had been sorely broken apart. All the pieces were found except the hands. After long debate, the congregation decided to leave the figure without hands. Under it they inscribed the words: "Christ has no hands but our hands." The job that Christ wants done still involves compassion. We are the ones called upon to show it.
1. Stan Gooch, Total Man (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972).
2. Guin Ream Tuckett, Get Out There And Reap! (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1976), p. 80.