Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel lesson from Matthew 9.
You are probably familiar with IQ tests. IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient. It’s one way to try to quantify a person’s relative intelligence – in other words, to try to determine how smart one might potentially be. It’s not a perfect instrument, of course, but it’s been the gold standard for decades.
Lately, however, educators, psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists have come to realize that there is more to life than just intelligence. A new term was used called emotional intelligence, usually abbreviated as EQ to make it parallel with IQ. This is used to not so much measure raw intellectual power but rather the ability of a person to see what is happening in other people around them, to read their emotions and have an empathetic response to them.
Empathy. You’ve probably heard that term before. Empathy comes into English from the German word Einfühlung. Literally, einfühlung means ‘feeling into’ – it’s the idea that you are feeling what someone else is feeling, perhaps not to the depth of breadth of their emotion, but you are at least tracking along with them. You have empathy if you see someone experiencing joy, or sadness, or fear and you likewise have a measure of joy, sadness, or fear along with them. It involves, first, seeing someone else’s situation from his perspective, and, second, sharing his emotions, including, if any, his distress. Empathy is good; it is important to help us gain another person’s perspective, to walk a mile in their shoes and gain some understanding of their zitsenleiben – another good German word - their place in life.
You may be more familiar with the word sympathy. Sympathy and empathy are not the same thing; they are quite different. Sympathy literally means “feeling along with.” It’s a feeling of care or concern for someone, but it stops short of putting yourself in their place. It implies distance. There is no shared emotion, only a personal reaction to what someone else is going through.
Then, of course, there is their close cousin pity. Pity focuses on what you feel, your discomfort and displeasure at the yuckiness you see. Pity acknowledges a situation but is quick to move on – after offering a condescending comment or two. If sympathy implies distance, pity demands separation.
Brene Brown, professor at the University of Houston, explains these words this way: Empathy says I see that you are hurting and scared. Let me sit with you so you’re not alone. Sympathy says yep, you’re in a real pickle here. Well, it could be worse. Cheer up. Pity says you really made a mess of things. What did you do to be so bad off?
So, why the lesson in sociological and psychological terms, huh? Glad you asked.
Jesus is traveling around from village to village, city to city, and everywhere he goes he is teaching, preaching and healing. What he discovers, time and time again, is that the crowd is harassed and helpless. St. Matthew uses a comparison that we can imagine, if not fully understand, saying that they were like sheep without a shepherd.
Shepherdless sheep are in a dangerous situation. Without someone to watch them, sheep are all too soon turned into sheep stew by a pack of marauding wild dogs. Without someone to guide them, sheep wander into thorny bushes that grab them by the wool and refuse to let them go, or wade too far out into the water where their wool drags them under and they drown. Without someone to direct them, sheep will literally eat themselves sick on fresh green grass. Without someone to calm them, sheep startle and spook, running willy-nilly until they are hopelessly, helplessly lost – easy pickings for a dishonest man looking to add another animal to his herd or some fresh meet to the family dinner table.
That’s the point of comparison. The people were a congregation without a pastor – not because the pastors weren’t there. Oh, no – they were there, alright. All of the people whose responsibilities include caring for the eternal souls and welfare of the people, feeding them God’s Word, blessing them with His name, imparting and delivering the gifts of God day in and day out, praying and interceding for them – all of these shepherd-pastors stood by and abandoned their flocks to be consumed by the wolves and bears and lions of the devil, the world, and their own sinful flesh.
And, meanwhile, as the sheep were devoured one by one by being led to take their eyes off of the promise of the coming Messiah, now fulfilled in Jesus, the shepherds got fat and sassy. They debated the fine intricacies of the Law and argued ways people were guilty of breaking the Law…all the while holding themselves up as high, and great, and holy men. They proffered themselves as near divine with practically sinless lives all the while looking down their pharaisaical noses at sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes. Instead of having compassion of their own for these people of God, these sheep, who were wandering and in danger of being forever lost and damned, they passed by, lest they dirty themselves in the process. They were compassion-less for those who needed compassion.
Jesus sees the crowds and their sheep-like situation. What does He do?
Well, he could have had pity on them. “Poor people,” he could have said. “If you had only paid attention to all of the prophets that my Father sent you, you wouldn’t be in this mess.” He could have had sympathy. “Yeah, you’ve got a real situation here. You need to figure something and find someone to lead you out but, hey, at least you have each other.” He could have had empathy. He could have wandered around with them, listening to their concerns while also feeling lost and empty, just like them.
But He doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, He has compassion on them. The Greek word for compassion is splancthon. In ancient literature, the word was originally used to describe the guts of an animal, but it came to mean the feeling you have in your guts when you see something. But it’s more than just a gut feeling. Compassion is a visceral reaction, meaning your guts hurt and you have to respond. Compassion is mercy put into flesh-and-blood action. But compassion also means getting dirty, getting down on someone’s level where they are. Compassion moves you from inaction and into action and it leads you in the dirt – figuratively or literally – down in the ditch in the dust or the muck. Compassion inserts you into their pain, in their misery, whether it’s in the unemployment office, in Christ’s kitchen, at the death-bed, or in the funeral home as they stare down the valley of the shadow – getting down eyeball to eyeball with them and be with them in that hard, difficult place and time. Compassion puts you on their level. Compassion says “I’m not better than you…I’m with you, and I won’t let you be alone, and I will help you in this.” Compassion is visceral.
Jesus has compassion. He isn’t some distant, far-off and aloof Divinity. This Jesus is God-in-flesh, perfect God who comes to dwell among His own dear people. This same Jesus, who was with God from the beginning, now stands as a man among people and what He sees hurts. His pain is so deep that His guts hurt.
Remember: He’s been performing miracles all through Capernaum and the surrounding area. Go back and read the three chapters prior to this morning’s Gospel lesson. He’s been busy: from healing Peter’s mother in law, to calming the storm threatening to sink the disciples’ ship, to raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead, Jesus acted with mercy. But, St. Matthew never says that these things – not even the death of the little girl – caused splancthon, compassion, His guts to hurt.
But the shepherdless people whose pastors failed them, they make Jesus’ guts hurt. So, Jesus reacts and demonstrates His compassion. But how Jesus demonstrates compassion might be a bit surprising.
He tells His disciples to pray. Isn’t that remarkable? He tells them to pray to the Father that He sends out workers into the harvest field.
And, then to further demonstrate His compassion, He sends out the 12 disciples – for the first time identified as apostles, meaning “sent ones” – out into the harvest field. They are to be instruments and vehicles of His compassion, delivering it to those who were shepherdless. “And He called to Him His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.” The miracles they perform, the raising from the dead, the exorcisms, and the healing will all be demonstrations of His power, yes – but more than that, of His compassion.
Yet, His compassion is found, chiefly, not in miracles, or exorcisms, or even the raising from the dead in this life. His compassion is found in the cross. The Kingdom is at hand, Jesus said – the time for His Cross is drawing closer. Because of His great compassion, He will suffer and die and rise for the entire world. His guts will hurt – so much so that he sweats great drops of blood. But it’s not just his guts…it’ll be his back from the whips, and his face from the slaps, and his head from the crown of thorns, and his spirit…his spirit as He realizes that even His Father in heaven has abandoned him in the face of hell on earth as the entire sin-filled burden of the world is emptied out upon Him. He takes it all, out of His great compassion for you.
Ours is a world that needs compassion now, more than ever. Our problems in society, they’re not about black or blue, brown or white, rich or poor, inner city or out in the country. It’s that people are acting like sheep without the Good Shepherd. So, demonstrate Christ’s compassion to anyone and everyone. In His compassion, pray for those around you. In His compassion, speak the name of Jesus without shame and without bashfulness. In His compassion, confess the truth that there is salvation in no other name under heaven. In His compassion, be bold to invite those who are like sheep without a shepherd to the fold so that they, too, may receive the compassion of Jesus in Word and Sacrament.
This week, I pray your guts hurt for others. And, as your guts hurt, I pray you are filled by the Spirit of God with compassion to show them Jesus.
