Trinity 2 - 18 June 2023: Exodus 19:2-8a, Romans 5:1-8 and Matthew 9:35-10:8
Jesus saw the crowds.
He had compassion on them.
They were harassed and helpless.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr Sarah Chaney notes that the word compassion is everywhere in modern healthcare. Often it is described as an awareness of someone else’s distress and a desire to help relieve it. Her work on the history of nursing talks about altruism, sympathy, tact and diplomacy and the impact of class or gendered care.
It is perhaps easy to talk about compassion as a set of individual values, behaviours or character traits. However, she also asks if there are certain conditions which make compassion more or less possible.
That is certainly something which emerges in the work of my former colleague Ann Gallagher, Professor of Compassion and Care at the School of Nursing at the University of Surrey: she is concerned to explore how compassion is cultivated in relation not only to patient care, but also working environment and leadership.
The King’s Fund also places compassion at the heart of their work on leadership - to engage and motivate staff with higher levels of well-being, which in turn results in high quality care. This might look like empathy in relation to challenges - supporting others to cope and respond well. It might look like enabling others to thrive as well as to be effective - it’s about trust and mutual support.
Indeed, Ann’s work seeks to counter short term answers and instead take a positive stance in relation to “crisis”. In conversations we had ahead of the publication of her book on ‘slow ethics’, the teaching and parables of Jesus were one of the influential threads of thought - recognising that to be motivated by compassion means our actions don’t just benefit ourselves but a wider circle.
As we hear in today’s gospel, for Jesus, compassion begins by being present: observing, listening, noticing, being attentive.
He saw the crowds.
They were harassed and helpless.
There was no one alongside them, leading them, caring for them.
He had compassion.
Jesus' work is a work of compassion: binding up and strengthening, seeking out, bringing back, inviting to rest by still waters.
He sees that the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few: so he draws the disciples into this compelling calling of compassion.
They become the answer to prayer; what he has done, they will do.
He gives them authority to liberate and enliven the harassed and helpless. They will proclaim the good news: coming alongside to teach, heal and raise up; noticing the struggle, casting out what is harmful and making peace.
We should not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate; for it is not necessarily our instinctive or spontaneous response. As Henri Nouwen writes: What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.
In Ann’s work, we see compassion emerging from the risk of slowing down - being attentive to the situation and understanding the struggle before helping. As Nouwen puts it: Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken.
Jesus sends the disciples to those places. They go so that they can make the compassion of God visible, credible, believable, knowable.
They go to proclaim a kingdom of justice and mercy, of life and hope. The earth is the Lord’s as we hear in Exodus, yet our Lord also works through human beings so that others might rise up on eagles’ wings.
The disciples go: without payment, having received without payment. What does this way of compassion demand?
Certainly, there is a level of risk, cost and vulnerability; to go amongst the harassed and helpless is a courageous as well as a compassionate act.
The disciples went with both simplicity and dependence: going with what they had, taking no more than they needed, expecting no payment but trusting each other and those they met on their way.
They were not alone. They had each other - but also the Spirit of God expressed in Jesus’ words of authority as he commissioned them to compassion. No doubt they would have to be wise and careful, as well as full of care: noting the complexity of the world and human dynamics.
Their way of being faithful - as they sought to make God’s love visible and credible in a world of pain - may have echoes with the King’s Fund vision for compassionate leadership.
They were present on the road and in the towns, on the doorsteps and in the households: listening, attentive, taking in where people were hopeful or harassed; helpless or hospitable.
They would have had to have wisdom to understand the situation - the struggles, longings, needs and possibilities. They would have had to empathise - without becoming overwhelmed themselves by the joys, grief, distress or expectation.
And then, and only then, helping the helpless, healing the harassed through their action. That might have been in releasing some from burdens and barriers; it might have been giving to others consolation and strength.
In all this: in words and deeds, presence and action they proclaim that the kingdom of God is near. They made God’s love believable by going to the broken middle, by bringing the margins to the centre, by dwelling in that place.
Jesus looked on the crowds and saw their need. His response to brokenness was to send others in his name and in the power of the Spirit that they too could participate in acts of compassion and peacemaking, in bringing life and meeting needs, in doing what was just and merciful.
Such a way is not just about behaviours, values or character; it is also about changing the conditions in the world so that compassion becomes more possible. So that, in the words of our post communion prayer, people are fed, sustained and drawn into service.
Yes, there is the hope of a joyful, heavenly banquet: but there is also the ‘slow ethic’ of an earthly movement towards God’s kingdom. Paul is radically honest about a trajectory that moves from suffering to endurance and only then to hope. This isn’t cheap optimism, a passive consolation or the demand to put up with a status quo.
It might not be instantaneous, but it is a trajectory rooted in God’s love for the world: for in Jesus, that love is purer out whilst we were still harassed and helpless, separated from others and unable to cherish ourselves, carrying burdens and seeking hope.
Therefore, he says, because we are justified by faith we have peace with God through Christ. Therefore, we are forgiven and stand in grace; therefore we grow in character and hope, in defiance of all we endure. Because God’s compassion is seen in love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
That is today’s prayer. That we might receive that most excellent gift of love. The true bond of peace and all virtue. The gift that gives all our doings worth, and draws us into the fullness of life.
We are commissioned to be agents of compassion; to take responsibility for the credibility of God’s love. In the words of Etty Hillesum, who was aware of God’s place in her life despite the horror of occupation and concentration camps: there must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness [cited in Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust]
