Passage for reflection: Mark 6: 30 - 34 and 53 to the end of the chapter.
In the chapel I grew up in, Folly Methodist in Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, there was a little brass plaque in the pulpit. It reminded Sunday’s preacher of his or her task: it was put there in pre political correctedness days. It said “Sir, we would see Jesus.” That little plaque challenged me years later when I became a Methodist local preacher. It wasn’t easy preaching to your mother and your aunts and uncles. Mum used to say to me on the way home “why did you say that?” and “why did you pick that hymn?” Despite the challenge of preaching to your relatives, for most gathered in that little chapel were related to me, that plaque helped me as I started worship why we were there - to meet Jesus.
I wonder what picture of Jesus you have as you hear the Gospel for this Sunday. What does he look like? What’s the expression on his face? What draws you to him? For me, the passage from Mark in the lectionary this week sums up for me what Jesus is all about.
“ As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
It’s a lovely image: a compassionate Jesus. Before we go on, we need a Latin lesson. What does compassion mean? Com passion - suffering with. How comforting pastorally is it to know Jesus suffers with us? We talk at Christmas (which is five months and one week away :) ) of Jesus being incarnate, one with us, born amongst us, in poverty, in chaos, identifying with our pain and suffering. Then in January we forget all of that! For me, as a Christian minister in the Methodist Church, whose doctrine and theology says all matter and all are welcome and all are encompassed by the grace of God, a Jesus who is compassionate is a Jesus I find attractive and who gives me energy to do what I do. The ordination charge of a Methodist minister is to care for the flock. The thing I find amazing about Jesus is how much time he spent with people, often on a road, or changing his agenda as he visited a town to minister where ministry was most needed and that ministry was often to people folk around him would avoid.
Compassion to sheep without a shepherd. Where have we seen that? Last Sunday evening, many of us watched the Euros final, which of course ended in a penalty shoot out. The last penalty taker was 19 year old Bukayo Saka. He missed, and we had this image of Gareth Southgate consoling him and counselling him, and trying to put him back together. That was before the disgraceful racist attacks on him, and Marcus Rashford, and Jadon Sancho. The manager showed compassion. He knew what a penalty miss in a huge tournament was like. He put his arms round his young suffering team, and he felt their pain…
Compassion - suffering with. Ministering to sheep without a shepherd. We know don’t we what sheep are like. I drive up to Dallowgill chapel, and have to be patient as sheep wonder all over the road at their own speed and often they go to the opposite place to where it’s safe and you aren’t going anywhere until they decide to shift!
“As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
What are sheep without a shepherd like? They go all over the place. They go where they want. They sit on the road stubbornly. They get into dangerous places. They get lost. It is the vocation of the shepherd to lead them patiently and sacrificially as Psalm 23 says into “green pastures” and onto “right paths.”
The shepherd is compassionate. He or she suffers with the lost sheep.
Are we at the moment like “sheep without a shepherd”? In a week where post that football match we’ve seen unacceptable racism, a reduction in how much aid we give to suffering people in the world, flooding causing death in Germany, and restrictions around Covid being lifted because “if not now, when” but the lifting of those restrictions while cases are on the rise leaves a clinically extremely vulnerable group in a pickle as we are told to not mix with anyone who hasn’t had two vaccines. Where’s the compassion to those who are really struggling with so called “Freedom Day”?
All of us need that assurance that whatever we face we do not face it alone. All of us need to know however hard and uncertain today is the compassionate Christ takes time to lead us to a better place. I read an article in the Saturday Times by the Labour MP Jess Phillips. She sees a disillusionment in people especially with politics and that people have “stop believing anything will change.” I sense two things going on at the moment: people are exhausted. Like the white rabbit in the Alice stories we say “it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.” This pandemic and now pingdemic has left so many people desperate for a different narrative. But here’s the other thing - I sense unlike Jess Phillips, people are looking for change, for hope, for compassion. For someone to say “it’s going to be okay.” People soon got to hear Jesus offered that.
No wonder at the end of the Gospel passage people rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.” For the first time in their lives people found a God of compassion. A Jesus who knew their story and invested in it. You know people say to me when I visit them pastorally I must be too busy to sit with them. I always say I can only be in one place at once and today I’m with them, no one else. With eight churches I sometimes wish all my poorly people would be in one area but hey, that’s life! A Jesus who showed compassion, a church that is compassionate. That’s his call and ours. We need to take time to be there for shepherd less sheep. We are to be at the service of all, not just some. There’s a lesson for a Church which at times can be judgmental, unkind and discriminatory.
One of my friends sent me a verse from 1 Corinthians from the Message version of the Bible. Is this the call of a compassionate Church, in July 2021?
“Looking at it one way, you could say, “Anything goes. Because of God’s immense generosity and grace, we don’t have to dissect and scrutinize every action to see if it will pass muster.” But the point is not to just get by. We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.”
Helping others live well. Challenging injustice. Making sure everyone is safe. Reassuring people who are anxious. Loving as though there is no one else to love. Being kind. Suffering with people who share our road.
That little brass plaque on the pulpit said “Sir, we would see Jesus.” What sort of Jesus do we show? I pray we will work hard to be compassionate, sheep by sheep by sheep.
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