The Compassion of Christ

I’m sure many of you have seen the popular movie known as Passion of the Christ. It made box office history a few years ago by telling the story of our Lord’s journey to the cross. Jesus betrayal and public execution began the turning of the tide in Jerusalem, His love and sacrifice were put on gruesome display as this film portrayed the last days of Christ as a flesh-bound man on Earth. However, I want to cover a different viewpoint of His life’s work in this message, one that meant the world and eternity to those that it touched. The compassion of Christ.

Years ago, when my son was small, while I would do yard work, he would bring his little plastic lawnmower and follow me in the yard. He was probably only four or five years old and as I would use the real thing, he would follow in my footsteps making the noises like a little kid’s version of a walk behind mower. A few years later when he was older, he took over for me while we were again outside doing yard work. This time he took the reins of the real mower and I quietly watched from the side. He went straight down the line of cut grass turned around and kept going back and forth. As he mowed, small pieces of grass were left uncut here and there where he wandered back and forth. Like little cowlick hair follicles, they stuck up here and there across the yard. When he was done, he approached me and said, “how’d I do”? My answer was, “you did a great job”. We talked several times that day about how good he had done and how proud I was of him. For the next few days, I told anyone that would listen how good he had done and how he had stepped in to mow my yard. I was a proud bragging dad.

I think God looks at us with those same eyes, ears, and heart. He sees his children toiling about here on Earth with our trials and our hurts, and then we turn to him and we ask for help; we plead, we read books, we pray to connect to him, and sometimes we feel that what we do isn’t good enough, that our efforts somehow have to look polished or refined. That not spending enough time in the church might make God not want to listen to us, or by failing to have enough faith that he sometimes won’t answer our prayers.

I’m reminded of all the times that Jesus showed compassion and not judgment, which would have been his right, but was not His mission. Something that stood out the other day in my reading was his mother at the wedding party where he performed his first miracle. His mom knew that the party had run out of wine, which in those days would be a major insult to the wedding party and host. She directed the people serving to fill the jugs with water and present them to Jesus so he could bless them and presumptively do something “out of the box”. Jesus politely reminds his mother that it’s not his time and almost recuses himself of her request. But then, it seems, he does the compassionate thing and proves his mother’s faith and belief in her son to be well-placed. He not only turns the water into wine, but he turns it into the very best wine. In fact, Jesus publicly shows his compassion many times over the course of his ministry. Matthew the tax collector, a highly educated man in a hated position among the Jews. Come and follow me he told him, most assuredly against the “good judgment” of His current followers and the onlooking eye of the temple leadership. He dealt with Peter a notorious hotheaded fisherman and the rest of the disciples who at times could hardly understand his direction and teachings. He even stopped to discuss dangerous accusations with a woman on the street one day, noting that her accusers had all left once he asked them which one of them was without sin. He showed compassion on this woman all the while knowing that she had failed, not condoning her failure or telling her it was okay to keep on failing, but telling her to go and do it no more.

On his last day in the flesh here on Earth, Jesus used his final few breaths to show compassion to a man who had also been beaten and publicly humiliated that day. The thief on the cross who begged Jesus to forgive him and remember him when he came into his kingdom was there during the last minutes of Jesus life here on Earth. As his strength failed and his breathing became more and more difficult, he spoke to the thief and in compassion reassured him that “today” he would be with Him in Paradise. I want to impress on each one of us, Jesus was always first to dispense compassion, grace, and love on those who many times seemed unlovable. He taught us that the ambition of all Christians should be to learn to love one another, to show love as he had loved them, as He loves us.

 This is the way that we will stand out from the rest of the world, by our propensity to love, when loving isn’t easy. They will know that you follow Me, by your love.

Jesus could have come into this world to judge and condemn wayward people, to create a kingdom of servants and followers, but he didn’t. We often think with horror of the torture and pain that Jesus endured during his last few days before he was hung on that cross, and rightly so, it was our actions that nailed him there. He could have called any number of angels or changed a single heart or circumstance to overcome His ruling of execution. But he didn’t. Jesus did not come to rule over a kingdom of servants, he came to save a world who were and are His children. When he looks at your life and mine, he sees that poorly mowed yard with the stitches of grass still sticking up here and there and the edges not sharply mowed. He sees the feeble attempts to paint the beauty of nature with the wrong colors, the areas where we’ve gone outside the lines. When we fail to love as we should or find the good in others and say the wrong things. When we seek possessions and power instead of loving our neighbor or giving the gift of compassion. When we step on the weak to get ahead in our own lives. When we push others out of our gatherings because they don’t look like us or act like us. When we think thoughts of lust for things that are not ours. When we finally and shamefully come to the realization that we have wronged others, ourselves or God and come before him with hearts that are broken, beaten, worn and trampled on; like a proud dad would, he gives his sons and daughters a big hug and tells us what a great joy we are. He encourages us to keep going, keep learning, keep pursuing and running the race.

It’s hard to imagine why God would continue to pursue us in His loving, patient way when we run so very hard in the other direction, but He does. No matter whether you’re the hated tax collector. No matter whether you are a hard-headed and hot-tempered person. No matter if you are involved with infidelity or sexual sin. No matter if you are a thief in your last few hours of life, Jesus has compassion and acceptance for you. Forgiveness is waiting for you if you’ll only ask for it, it’s definitely a step into the abyss of faith. You see the story of this thief and Jesus in those last hours on the cross did not go like this, ‘Jesus reached out to the thief and ask him if he wouldn’t please consider one last time believing in him’. No, the thief saw one last opportunity and took it. Paradise was his that day because he decided that the message of the Gospel was not a fantasy or just for those who were cleaned up and in the right club. His life in eternity changed direction on that day because the thief spoke up in faith, took that difficult first step and believed in the compassion of Christ.

John 13: 34-35

ONE...

Loneliness to Friendship

   We often talk about the meaning of the word ‘one’ in our churches today. Worshipping for an audience of one. Being ‘one’ with God. In the secular world, we tell people to be one with nature or get one-on-one with a task or important person. It seems we as a people and society put a lot of importance on being singularly good at who we are, or is it being good at who we want people to think that we are? Certainly, being independent is a good trait to aspire to, it has its upside when it comes to being successful in life. My regular career has always been centered around a job requiring a great deal of individual thinking, and self-motivation. So, I concede up front that it’s not a bad thing to be self-sufficient. It can, in fact, save your life.

   The idea that I want to explore here is where do you go, what do you do, when your individual, self-created plans and ideas run into roadblocks? When you come against walls in life or obstacles so huge that you feel overwhelmed or defeated before you ever start your day. Maybe today, you could barely get out of bed because depression weighed you down from the moment that you opened your eyes. It could be that life-shattering news about your health or the health of a loved one has beaten you up, and you feel as though life is not bearable or even worthwhile. There are millions of reasons to be in that place in your life today. Bad life choices can put you in ugly financial wreckage, or personally in an emotional prison. Or, you could just be living the life of Job. Where do you find yourself in this story of one?

   Sometimes in our life, we feel like we're a single entity against the world. Like it's us against them. I think back to all the friends that my father had in his lifetime, and how he kept many of those same friends until his dying day. After he retired, he used to go and have coffee with them. They would sit together at a local fast food restaurant and buy ten-cent coffees and apple pies and then talk about all of the world issues and of course grandkids. One day, they decided to come to my house to work on a plugged sewer line. Arriving home at dusk and after a long day at work, I found three or four of these old guys at my house. All of them were in their 70s or 80s, working away digging up the front yard doing their best to suggest the proper repairs for my house’s plumbing issues. It was a thing of friendship beauty. These gentlemen were mostly World War 2 era men; the “let's get it fixed” crowd of people that never stopped to ask if it would be hard or difficult, they just got involved. They made a plan, rolled up their sleeves, worked hard with the knowledge that they had as men of hard knocks and life lessons, then they fixed the problem. Funny thing, I had come home thinking that I would have to work several nights to resolve this problem, their gift to me was that they had resolved most of it for me. What a gift it was too, not so much the actual repairs, but knowing that they would give of their energy and time, to help me and my family for no real reason at all except compassion and charity. I am still amazed by their actions today. Several of them only lived a short time after that day, my dad included, but they taught me so much through their actions.

   You see, each of these men, as individuals could not have helped me resolve my plumbing problems, the harshness of the digging and working underground on that old pipeline, would have overtaxed any one of them individually; however they were not working alone, and that was the lesson that is, to this day, not lost on me. The ability to come together to take care of the needs of one with the strength of many, that was their greatest asset and their path to success. It seems there may be much more here than the obvious though, so let’s look deeper together.

   We’ve discussed the obstacles and trials of life as causing us to feel alone and beaten, so how can we combat it? There are many others that seemed alone but were part of the bigger plans of God. Obviously, Jonah, whom I have written about before. His plans were so opposite from Gods, that he boarded a boat sailing in the other direction to get away from God. Gods plan and the actions of unaware bystanders brought him back to fulfill his destiny. Moses was left to die in the desert, alone. This young man was raised with everything. His family was rich, he had power beyond anything most of us can imagine, yet his story in God’s plan left him alone and defeated. I often wonder how long Moses wandered without knowing if he might live. Don’t you think that he was convinced many times that he would die in that desert? In time, God brings him to a place where Moses understands and realizes the big picture; even then, there are supporting friends and loved ones that fill in where Moses falls short.

   You see, the friends of my dad, the old guys who worked together to fix my house’s plumbing issue, they knew the power of coming together, to labor and toil with a common goal. It made their friendship stronger and brought them pleasure through the accomplishment and success of their deed. This is the basis for community and building blocks of the church. That feeling is something I find lacking on many days in my life, the camaraderie of friends who will step in to “do” life together; and sadly, it is the downfall of many churches were they talk about it but rarely carry it out, holding hands with the dying, taking food to the sick, it’s more than thoughts and prayers, it’s actions to provide help to someone that needs it. It’s taking the time to go to someone’s house even without them asking and fixing a plumbing problem. Almost daily I think of how I have arrived at the place in life, where knowing friends like my dad had, is a rarity and painfully absent in my life, maybe it is the same for you.

   In Ecclesiastes 4, verse 9 there is a rather famous line of the Bible, and the Amplified version says it something like this, “two are better than one because they have a more satisfying return for their labor; for if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and does not have another to lift him up. Again, if two lie down together, then they keep warm; but how can one be warm alone? And though one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” It certainly isn’t easy, this idea of finding a like-minded partner to help you carry the load; after all, people fail, they lie, and they betray. So where is the middle of that proverbial road? And how do you and I find that elusive friendship if we’ve already lost faith and sight of it in our lives?

   I believe there are a few things that can prepare and guide us toward this rewarding relationship if we work at it, perhaps together, you an I can give these a try. First, examine your relationship with God. Sometimes we don’t know why He tolerates us at all. We fail, we fall short of being “good people”, we have bad habits, the list goes on and on. Remember, Jesus called out to his disciples while they were still fishermen and tax collectors. They weren’t rabbis from the local seminary, they were failed sinners, far from perfect, and they continued to fail even while following Jesus. They didn’t understand, they lied to protect themselves, they were violent, yet they still went on being used by God. Find your place and talk to God about who He wants you to be.

   Second, we must seek the right kind of friends. Those who keep us accountable to what is important to our goals and what God is calling us to be and do. People that always tell you that you’re great, when you’re not, may build you up in a way that makes you believe in something false. Believe me, that isn’t helping you. We need honest people around us that can help us grow, be there when we stumble, love us when we’re dirty from sin, and help us up when we fall. Those people are usually just like us, friends that have been there, done that. That’s why they know you need help. Value these people and make them your friends, protect these alignments because really good ones are hard to find. Don’t kid yourself here, good friends are not easily found or kept, they are a precious commodity.

   Third, well I really don’t’ have a “third”. It really comes down to this, when your relationship with God is good, your relationship with others can be good as well. If you are estranged or absent with God, you will never find peace or alignment with the type of friends we’ve been talking about, I am quite sure of that. My dad had those friends because he lived an honest, respected life. He said what he meant and meant what he said.

To most of those guys, his faith in God wasn’t what they respected most about him, but because of his faith in God, he lived in a way that they could not help but respect.

   Do you see how that works? He lived his faith and told his story in a way that made him easy to have as a friend. He was trustworthy, he was kind and positive. He was faithful and patient. The reason he could exhibit these traits was that he worked at keeping his relationship right with God. He would be the first to tell you if he were here, that he was so very far from perfect. I saw that distance myself on a few occasions. The answer though, is that he kept trying. He kept allowing God to work in and through his life.

   Where are you today in that walk? Are you on a path toward God or away from him? Do you try to avoid Him when He speaks to you or do you listen even if it’s after you have to hear it a couple of times? I can tell you where I am, I’ve been standing still listening. Like being in a vast wasteland or dense forest, sometimes it’s hard to find your way. I think I have walked a little in each direction, towards Him and away, we all do that from time to time. But if you want to stop being lonely, if you seek those friends that can help you up after you fall, as I do, then we all need to walk with purpose toward God, and a little less self-condemnation and excuses about how we’re not worthy or we’ve gone too far the other way. Jesus made you and I worthy to walk towards the throne of God, what we have to do now is be willing to accept that we can, that He welcomes us, and is ready for us to be at His table. When we do that, we are no longer only ‘One’, we’re mishpachah, home with family.

Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12 (AMP)

"Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified^® Bible (AMP),
Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation
Used by permission. www.Lockman.org"