Sermon - 2d Sunday After Pentecost (6/14/2020)
Exodus 19:2-8; Psalm 100; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8
“When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
Back in February, before Lent and Easter and before many other things, we were taking our Sunday gospel readings from the gospel of Matthew. And now we pick up where we left off, after the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus travels through the Jewish cities and villages of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, announcing that the Kingdom of God was at hand, and enacting that Kingdom by healing people suffering from every kind of sickness and disease.
And, Matthew tells us, in city after city, Jesus saw the crowds who came to hear him and to be healed by him, “he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” As is often the case, our English translations soften the emotional charge of the original Greek text. Jesus had compassion for them: the Greek word is σπλαγχνίζομαι, which you may remember is the word used in the story of the Good Samaritan, from which we get the English word “spleen.” It’s a compassion you feel not in your head, but in your spleen, a deep and visceral empathy. Because they were harassed – the Greek is σκύλλω, literally “skinned,” to have your skin torn off. And helpless, from ῥίπτω, meaning thrown to the ground.
Jesus saw the crowds coming to be healed of every sickness and disease, coming to hear good news that the kingdom of God’s justice and healing and peace is finally at hand, and he saw a people torn open and cast aside, a people deeply hurting and disrespected, and Jesus was deeply moved in his spleen. These were a people called from the days of Moses, as we read in the first reading, to be part of God’s own people, the sheep of God’s flock, as the Psalm puts it. Yet to Jesus they seemed like sheep without a shepherd, knocked to the ground, ripped open, and Jesus felt for them a profound compassion.
I don’t often tell personal stories in sermons; in our tradition church services are about the good news of Jesus, not the pastor. But this week as I have reflected on this gospel text, in this season, there is one experience that I’ve had that keeps coming to mind, and so perhaps I can share it with you.
It was about 25 years ago, in the mid 90s, and I was serving at a Roman Catholic church about 45 minutes outside New York City. It was the night before a funeral was to take place at our church. One of the other pastors was going to lead the service, but he asked if I would go to the funeral home during the calling hours, where our custom was to have a short 10-minute prayer service. The person who had died was quite young, I think around 40. He grew up in our area but had been living in New York for some time. His parents didn’t attend church, and I had never met them, but apparently they had arranged for the funeral to be at our church.
So, knowing no more than that, I arrived at the funeral home. As is often the case when someone young has died, it was very crowded. And as soon as I went inside, I immediately recognized that something was wrong. People either refused to look at me, or stared at me with anger, and no one would talk to me. I knew it wasn’t personal, they had no idea who I was, but they were reacting to the collar. But it’s still unsettling. I awkwardly made my way through the crowd over to the family. They wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Usually at wakes people are eager to tell stories about the person who had died, to introduce important people in that person’s life, but this time, nothing. I gently asked if he had passed away suddenly, and someone said, “No, he was sick,” and that was all anybody would say. Everybody seemed ready to explode, and my presence wasn’t helping.
As I led the wake service, looking around the room, all of a sudden it became clear to me what was going on. The man who had died was probably gay, he had probably died from complications from HIV and AIDS, which was unfortunately still quite common in the mid-90s. He had probably left home and moved to New York to get away from a non-supportive family, to find a community more supportive than the church he had grown up in. I assume there had been some division among his family and friends about him and his life, which played out in a division over having a service in the church, which would explain the tension my presence was causing. And if you didn’t live in the New York area in the 90s, you can’t imagine how bad the relationship was between the Catholic church and the gay community during the AIDS crisis. There were demonstrations in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, angry insults from leaders on both sides, everybody felt that they weren’t respected by the other. And I assume some people reacted to me out of that background.
And as I began to understand a bit of what seemed to be happening, I felt a profound sadness and frustration. Sadness for this family that didn’t know how to grieve such a tragic death, because it had stirred up so many other losses that they also didn’t know how to grieve, sadness that their church had allowed itself to be drawn into ugly debates about issues and so couldn’t speak the good news to hurting and vulnerable people, frustration that there were layers upon layers of stuff that no 10-minute wake service could possibly begin to address.
Experiences like this are one reason I am so grateful to be serving now in this congregation that has taken a strong position that everybody, and we mean everybody, is welcome here. And we don’t hide that position under a bushel basket – hopefully, to reassure people looking for a safe place before there is a crisis. And so that, when we mess up as human beings do, and we act less welcoming than we wish to be, people won’t just walk away saying “Yeah, that’s what I was expecting,” but they’ll actually feel free to call us to accountability, so we can be better.
But the real reason I kept coming back to this experience during this past week is that it gives me a very inadequate glimpse into what Jesus must have felt in city after city, meeting one crowd after another of people with every kind of suffering and sickness. People who were torn open and cast away, and Jesus was deeply moved. And more than a little frustrated at the scale of the work to be done to bring healing and peace. “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few; there is more work to be done than we can handle.”
That feeling of empathy and compassion at the scale of a neighbor’s pain that we can barely begin to imagine; that feeling of frustration that there is so much work to do and so little difference any one of us can make – these are feelings that are not far away from many of us these days. What did Jesus do when he had such feelings?
Well, first he prayed that the Father would send more workers into the harvest. And then he became the answer to his own prayer; he chose twelve, gave them the same authority he had to cast out evil spirits and to heal every kind of suffering and sickness. And he sent them to the lost sheep of God’s own people, to multiply his presence and his work in more places than one human being can be at one time. Authority and a mission that has been handed on to us, in our time and in our place.
The twelve Jesus chose were an odd lot. On the main political issue of his day – what to do about the Roman Empire? – he chose Matthew the tax collector, who had worked for the Romans, and Simon the Cananean, who had been an armed insurrectionist against the Romans. I’ll bet it got very interesting when their coffee hours turned to politics! Yet Jesus sent all twelve out with the same mission, and the same instructions.
And of those instructions, the one that to me is the most crucial is in the final sentence of today’s gospel passage. What you have received as a free gift, give as a free gift. What you have received as a free gift, give as a free gift. God’s love, God’s forgiveness, the compassion of Jesus, these things are given to us not because we deserve them but even though we don’t. Paul said it in the second reading today: Christ died for the ungodly, for those who were still sinners. And what you have received as a free gift, give as a free gift.
So when I see a neighbor in need – and I need to remind myself of this as much as anybody else – when I feel myself saying, “I don’t understand why you feel that way,” or “Why don’t you do what I would do in your situation?” – I need to remind myself that’s not the call. I received the compassion of Jesus when I didn’t deserve it; and my marching orders are, What you have received as a free gift, give as a free gift. The point is not to win the argument, as if God will reward us for being right. The point is not to prove to anyone, much less to God, how tolerant and compassionate we are. The point is that we already have been made right with God as a free gift, and now we get to participate in the mission of God which is all about receiving free gifts and giving free gifts.
Last Sunday, Bishop Eaton said that until we have the compassion of Jesus, until we feel the pain and the suffering of our neighbors as if it were our own, we not only will continue to endure suffering and division in our country and our world. But we will also miss out on the chance to participate in the life and the mission of the Triune God, which is all about receiving free gifts and giving free gifts. In today’s gospel, Jesus invites the twelve, and he invites you and me, to receive the same authority Jesus has over suffering and sickness and the evil spirits of the age. He invites you and me to have the same compassion, down to our spleens, for the pain and suffering of our neighbors. He invites you and me to freely give what we have freely received, the mercy, love, and compassion of God.