Compassionate church?

Imagine you are snoozing away, in that lovely land of Nod when suddenly the phone rings and you are called out of sleep to deal with stuff. Your rest is over and the demands of life crowd in. It happened to me a bit ago – I went for a nice lie down about 5pm after a long day, indeed a very long week. At 7pm the phone rang and I suddenly had to respond to a crisis.

That’s where Jesus is in the lectionary Gospel reading for this week.                                                            (Mark 6: 30 - 34 and 53 - 58)  

He has decided the disciples need a break and something to eat, they had no time, like many pressurised workers today to take a lunch hour. So he says “the busyness must stop, you need to sit down and be for a bit.”

But soon, like my phone call, the people come… And Jesus is moved to be amongst them. The break, the sleep is soon over.

This passage in Mark’s Gospel is one that summarises for me the heart of Jesus, and therefore the heart of what we should be about. So, I want to use three words I see in it, to help us try and work out how like Jesus we are. He calls us to rest, but then to respond when the need is there in front of us.

First, verse 34 of Mark 6 – for me what we are as a church: he had compassion for them. Compassion. Literally suffering with people. No wonder if Jesus is compassionate he wakes up and goes back to work.

I don’t know if you heard the maiden speech in Parliament this week of the 20 year old SNP MP Mhairi Black. I am not about to suggest we all vote SNP, but it was a passionate speech about not just sitting there but about compassionate politics and opposing what is simply wrong. She quoted Tony Benn:  in politics there are weathercocks and signposts - weathercocks will spin in whatever direction the wind of public opinion may blow them, no matter what principle they may have to compromise. "And there are signposts, signposts which stand true and tall and principled.”

Let’s make that quote about Christianity shall we? We need to be signposts for people, to stand true and tall and principled. People need to see us do something. I am tired of sitting listening to great speeches telling me why nothing can be done. In my past I have had people say to me when things have gone wrong as a minority who make a noise and are making life difficult seem to win and things go pear shaped: “we didn’t do anything” like they are being punished. But it is precisely that that is the problem. Jesus is a signpost, true, tall and principled. He is moved with compassion. Note that word – moved.

Who are we moved to be compassionate about in our church today?

Secondly, Jesus cares in this passage. Why? Because there are sheep in his world without a shepherd. Both us in the community and people outside of it who need bringing into the fold.

We need to know that compassion, that shepherding for ourselves before we can do anything else. If we don’t take it in, then we will have nothing to give anyone. If we don’t feel safe, secure and loved, how can we give to others safety, security and love?

I went to Edinburgh last month to hear my heroine in contemporary spiritual writing Barbara Brown Taylor, a priest in the Episcopal Church in America and a University lecturer. Some of us have studied her writing in our spirituality writer. In her lecture, she spoke about Jesus being there for us when we need him most. And she had a phrase that has stayed with me since I heard her. She talked about suffering and hurt and emptiness in us and reminded us there is nothing we face that Jesus hasn’t faced first.

She talked about communion and the cup, and said always remember “there are other lips on the chalice.” The compassion of Christ leads to him getting up, suffering with, dying for, getting messy and bloody for us. This is the grace of God and it is mind blowing. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, present in all circumstances, with transforming love. For sheep without a shepherd. We are those sheep and we need him today. So as well as thinking about our world we also need to think about what builds us up as a people in order to be useful in it.  

Then finally perhaps something about touch. There is a lovely hymn from Iona called “A touching place” – to the lost Christ shows his face, to the unloved he gives his embrace, to those who cry in shame or disgrace, Christ makes with his friends, a touching place. To have your hand held is a sign of solidarity and loving presence. Two elderly people in one of our residential homes have started courting, one is a resident, the other a volunteer. They sit holding hands in the service – it is so sweet! People want to touch the presence of Christ – the passage tells us people wanted to touch even the fringe of Jesus cloak, and all who touched it were healed. Perhaps this isn’t about people coming to church, it is about the church allowing people to touch it by it entering the world, to wake up, to put our own cares aside and get on with engagement.

Pope Francis has a radical view of church and I wonder whether he was thinking about this Gospel passage when he shared these words in his writing: The Joy of the Gospel.

“I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. More than by fear of going astray, my fear is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us “Give them something to eat.”

What difference having found compassion and a shepherd will we make? How credible is our church today? We have to make a difference. And it is about relationships and being where people are, more than expecting them now to enter our strange world.

A week last Friday I went and did some chaplaincy at the Kent County Show at the church tent. In the tent were all sorts of activities, but in the main people weren’t going in it, and some of the folk staffing it were bemused. There was nothing to attract them in and what was offered was a bit deep really. Meanwhile I was outside the tent chatting to people. Most weren’t interested in the theology and evangelistic methods within the tent, more wanted to chat about life and the day and their story and what was going on in life. I larked around with one lady and she said, “If you were my vicar, I would come to church.” All of our work, all of Jesus work is relational. He loves people, chats to people, and takes people seriously as he takes us seriously. The unloved, the unwashed, the different, the starving, the lonely, the difficult. He takes on the things that need a different approach – benefit sanctions, the gap between rich and poor getting bigger, a tabloid press that is scandalous and needs dealing with if you saw The Sun on Saturday, (Surely if we all stopped buying the Sun it might go away - 7 pages of nonsense) might be things he would tackle today and invite us to. Healing the streets is where this Gospel passage ends.

In Jesus’ concern for the well-being of the people he encountered, in his meeting us at his table of welcome and plenty, we learn that the whole of creation lives from the inexhaustible generosity of God. And we discover that in this Shepherd who feeds us, himself the sacrificial lamb who lays down his life for us, we lack nothing.  

And through us, and our work, knowing that, we have to make a difference to others.