Under pressure

 Sunday 21 July:  Jeremiah 23:1-6, Ephesians 2:11-end and Mark 6:30-34, 53-end

What happened when Queen and David Bowie had individually booked recording sessions in Montreux, Switzerland back in 1981?

"We were fooling around and then just sort of jamming with tracks, recalled the late Freddie Mercury, and suddenly we said ‘why don’t we just see what we can do in the spur of the moment?’"

The rock anthem “Under Pressure” was the result.  Though they never went on to perform it together, we’ve probably all heard it. 

Still of Bowie/Mercury from BMU video of 'Under Pressure' (1981) 

As a piece of spontaneous collaborative music making, it certainly had impact - not just because of its unmistakable baseline and introduction, but because of the human sentiment of the lyrics: poignant as well as powerful. 

It talks about the pressure pushing down on me and you: pressure which risks splitting families and puts people on the streets. 

People take the streets for all sorts of reasons: campaign groups marching in protest or councillors trying to calm community tension; to gather in vigil, to walk with pride or dance in carnival. Some take to the streets because they have no home or place to rest. 

The world is about all that: people and pressure. Sitting on the fence, according to the lyrics, doesn’t work; and love might be torn; but ‘why can’t we give love one more chance? Give love, give love, give love.’

Queen and Bowie wrote that love was ‘an old-fashioned word’; ‘and love dares you to care for the people on the streets… dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves’. 

People under pressure need love and care. We see that running through today’s readings.

Scattered sheep neglected by their shepherds, left fearful, dismayed and lost. People who needed to be saved, finding care and safety. 

Peoples without hope - divided, othered and facing hostility. People longing for peace and reconciliation, being drawn into one new humanity in Christ.

Friends, family, neighbours bring the sick from villages, cities and farms so that they might touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak, finding compassion and healing. 

And love dares us to care for the people. 

Jeremiah was railing against the way in which bad leaders had destroyed lives and communities - through being self-serving and lazy as much as being corrupt or violent. The prophet not only speaks words of judgement but also promises that God will gather and bind up.

Raising up new leaders who will execute justice and righteousness resonates with hopes for temporal leadership: where power is exercised with accountability, in pursuit of justice rather than oppression. Jeremiah looks to a future where God will raise up those who will enable life to flourish; fulfilling the promise of creation 

Such life flows from obedience to the commandments, that old fashioned word ‘love’. A love which changes how we care for those under pressure, who risk life on the streets: the widow, the orphan, the migrant, the vulnerable. 

Such a righteous branch points us to Jesus: the one who not only deals wisely in love, but who is God’s love made flesh.

It is this love dwelling with us who draws all peoples into a new humanity.  Reading Ephesians reminds us of that uncomfortable experience of otherness - of life lived as strangers, without hope or belonging; life beyond the kinship of covenant. 

And yet, by God’s grace, we Gentiles are also drawn into the promise of peace. The pressures that separate us from God and each other are overcome in a love that goes to the very depths of pain and alienation. 

This is a love that dares to create one new humanity. This was the love that walked the streets of Jerusalem, the via dolorosa; the way of sorrows. This love bears the pressure in one body on the cross in order to break down hostility and division. He takes those things to the grave - and brings forth peace and new life. 

This peace reconciles God and humanity; our identities aren’t given up, but renewed in our shared identity in Christ.  His body draws us into a household of faith, giving us a new foundation. As we hear bread breaking, that life gets inside of us. Though many we are one. 

We are dared to love and dared to care. We are invited to deal with pressures and differences by being present to each other. Hearing each other's stories with curiosity; caring enough to begin to imagine a new future, together. 

We become a dwelling place of God’s Spirit - multiplying life and care and love in the face of pressures; being rooted in love across our cultures and bonds of kinship, to be drawn into a covenant of hope and peace; our torn loves are woven anew into a richer fabric; a reconciling passion and compassion. 

How do we dare to care and are to love? Today’s gospel presents us with glimpses of how Jesus notices the pressures on human bonds and responds with practical care. 

The disciples return from their time on the way - exhilarated and exhausted by all they’ve said and done, speaking words of peace and inviting others to turn back to God’s ways of love.  Perhaps they had shared hard stories too - of rejection and failure; the pressures of expectation. 

He sees this need and invites them to rest; to have some time in solitude. Given all we heard last week of the heartbreak and horror of his cousin, John the Baptist's death, perhaps he too knew he needed to find a  quiet place; to retreat for a while, to recuperate in the face of weariness and pressure. The leaders and the led need a love that changes how they care for themselves too. 

Mark’s gospel is famous for its pace - episodes of activity and moving on to the next thing - immediately and then immediately. It’s significant then that he also leaves us clues of how to respond to pressure - prayer, solitude, sleep, food, rest. 

It points us to the depth of the love at work in Jesus - fully human and fully divine. Reminding us that God also rests. 

Yet the pressure on the people - their desire for safety and healing, for hope and new life - means that they find a way of getting ahead of Jesus. Like crowds on the street seeking out a celebrity, they crash into the quietness of Jesus’ sanctuary.

In response to the pressure of others on him, Jesus doesn’t run or hide. He sees the sheep without a shepherd and has compassion on them. He begins to teach them - to dare to care in that old fashioned word of love.

What we don’t hear of, as our lectionary skips over the verses, is that Jesus also feeds the crowds. Broken bread falling over them that they might be satisfied. Then again, he insists on going away, seeking a quiet moment. 

The people press on. The pressure continues - from towns and villages and farms and onto the streets and into the market places. Those in need are carried by the love and care and hope of friends and neighbours, families and those who have noticed their need. 

They press in. They press on. The pressure leads them to touch just the edge of his robe.

And love dares him - us, you and me - to care for those on the streets. 

There was no passing the buck on compassion for Jesus; nor is he apologetic when it comes to the need for rest. We too live with that tension. How do we turn that pressure into love? 

For Jesus, there was no shame in taking a break, seeking a deeper peace; but he also saw the urgent needs of the crowd and knew what the world was about. He was able to hold his own hunger and yearning for peace together with the pressures of those who were scattered and afraid. We too need to recognise both - resting to restore our capacity to care. 

We live in a world of constant need. The demands are high. We can’t sit on the fence. We can give love one more chance, erring on the side of compassion. 

As broken bread gets inside of us this morning, as words of blessing enfold us, dare we remain hopeful that rested or under pressure our last dance is love: daring to care both for ourselves and those on the streets?

In this place of peace and sanctuary, may the eyes which have seen the tokens of God’s love in Christ, shine with the light of hope; may our bodies which have been fed and refreshed, share the fullness of life in the spirit. On the streets. In our households. Love. Under pressure.

© Julie Gittoes 2024

He had compassion

 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]

(c) Julie Gittoes 2023