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
