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INJ
St Mark 8:1-9
'Compassion'
Divine Service
The Seventh Sunday after Trinity Sunday | July 6, 2008
Dear Saints,
Jesus came to preach and die. He had to do His preaching and teaching first so that His followers would know why He's dying. This is Jesus plan to deal with our sin and our death, and it will come to it's glorious fruition in the resurrection. It is in the resurrection that every disease will be healed, every blind eye opened, every cancer ridden body healed, every sick mind clear, every tear dried, every body made perfect, every dead person raised.
The resurrection is our great hope. We know that some day all this sickness and dying and death that we see all around us and in us will be done with, finished. In fact, the Lord has arranged this life as a school house of hope, the more we taste and see and know sickness and death, the more we hope for the resurrection and pray for the Lord's return.
The Lord wants to perfectly and permanently heal everyone, and through His death and resurrection and future second coming He will give this perfect and permanent healing to all His church. But when He came almost 2,000 years ago He didn't come to ring this healing, this gift that will come in the resurrection.
He came to teach and to die.
But Jesus is surrounded by sickness and death, and He cn't help Himself. He heals everyone who asked Him, and there is only one person that we know of who dies and stays dead between the time that Jesus is baptized and crucified. The one is John the Baptist. Everyone else who dies is raised from the dead.
Now there's a little tension between Jesus teaching and healing, and we see this especially in the Gospel of Mark. Consider this passage from the beginning of the Gospel,
35 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, 37 and they found him and said to him, "Everyone is looking for you." 38 And he said to them, "Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out." 39 And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. [Mark 1:35-39]
The healing that Jesus does limits the teaching He can do. He would only heal one at a time, but many could listen to His teaching. And, because of the crowds that pressed in on Him for healing, Jesus couldn't go everywhere He wanted to; He even had to go out into the wilderness.
But still, and this is the point I'm getting at: even if it was an inconvenience, even if it would cause Him trouble, even if He would have to change His plans Jesus healed people, He cast out demons, He fed then bread and fish in the wilderness. Jesus can't help Himself. He looks at us in all of our trouble, and He sees us in all of our sin and sickness and death, and He has to do something about it.
It's like the man who, even though he's late to his own appointment, will stop and help you with your flat tire. It's like the person you know (and let this be understood) who will loan you the money even if they don't have it. They can't help themselves, they just have to help. And that's how it is with our Jesus, He has to help, He's compelled by His own compassion.
That's the word that describes all this: “compassion.” It's the word at the heart of our Gospel text, Mark 8:2. Jesus says, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with Me three days and have nothing to eat.”
Now we hear the word “compassion” and we think of an emotion, a feeling. In the Bible it means more.
When we were up in Oregon a few months ago Pastor Matt Harrison (of LCMS World Relief) was there talking about this word compassion. In the Greek it is an onomatopoeia, a word that sounds like what it means. The Greek word for compassion is splanchnizomai. It means to spill out your bowels. If you are hunting and you hang up a deer, and you cut it open to gut it, splanchnizomai. It's a sound that you would hear in the temple, as the sacrifices are brought to the altar, and the throat was cut and the blood spills out, splanchnizomai.
It's the sound of bleeding and dying, that's what compassion is, the pouring out of your life for the life of another. The feeling of compassion, then, is always followed by action.
Mark 1:40-42 And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will, you can make me clean." 41 Moved with pity splanchnizomai, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, "I will; be clean." 42 And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.
Luke 7:12-15 As [Jesus] drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her splanchnizomai and said to her, "Do not weep." 14 Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." 15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.
Matthew 9:36-38 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them splanchnizomai, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
So when Jesus sees the crowd there with Him in the wilderness, He has compassion. splanchnizomai, and He does something about it, He feeds them. Four thousand in the wilderness are fed by the Lord's compassion, for when the Lord turns His eye of mercy upon us, there is no stopping His love. And that, dear saints, is how it is with us.
Jesus should look upon us and (because of our sin and death) He should be disgusted with us, want nothing to do with us, be repulsed with us. But no. He has compassion on us, and is willing to be poured out for us. His blood and His life and His everything, splanchnizomai. He has compassion for us. And dies for us. He offers Himself as the sacrifice that appeases the wrath of God.
And from this, His death on the cross come all the benefits of His mercy and compassion. He feds us with our daily bread, He provides all that we need for this body and life, and He has made provision for us in the life to come. He has baptized us in His mercy, absolved us from all offense, and He feds us now His own body and blood, the meal of His compassion, where we taste and see that the Lord is good and merciful.
So we feast on the Lord's compassion; we know it. We are the people created by the Lord's compassion, and we rejoice to have compassion on one another. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO
More texts on the Lord's compassion:
Matthew 9:36-38; 14:13-21; 15:32-39; 18:21-35; 20:29-34; Mark 1:40-45; 8:1-10; 9:14-29; Luke 7:11-17; 10:25-37; 15:11-32
See also “Christ Have Mercy, How to Put Your Faith into Action” by Rev. Matt Harrison (CPH, 2008)