What Is Compassion?

 Mark 6: 30-44 

Feeding the Five Thousand

30 The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things. 35 When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; 36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” 37 But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” 38 And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” 39 Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. 41 Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to set before the people, and he divided the two fish among them all. 42 And all ate and were filled, 43 and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44 Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

MESSAGE 

“What Is Compassion?” 

Where do you see God?

In preparation for this week’s sermon, I floated that question by friends and family, and I adored their answers.

“In a homeless family in the Home Depot parking lot. An employee brought them water, held their baby, and talked to them in their native language.”

“In the eyes of my grandchildren.”

“The first time I went whale watching.”

“Whenever anyone laughs.”

“In the beauty of nature.”

“In the shower.”

“In my car.”

“In human kindness.”

“In a Pride parade!”

“In ALL children.”

“In the relationships I have with other people.”

“In last week’s tornadoes.”

“In school teachers, nurses, and drag queens.”

“In folks that exude peace, love, and grace.”

“In what brings us all together despite our differences.”

“In the Force”--from a Star Wars fan.

There were answers there that I expected, answers that brought me a lot of amusement, and then answers that I wouldn’t have thought of in a million years. All of our experiences of seeing God are personal, and unique. I haven’t seen God while whale watching, because I’ve never been. But I do experience God in some of the most sacred experiences of my life: in playing my violin, in writing, and every time I see my Grandma’s face in my kids. You’ll hear plenty more about Grandma, trust me. But she passed away 22 years ago, and yet my daughter has her chin. It’s God’s way of telling me that no one is ever really gone, and that eternal life means something much bigger than I have any ability to comprehend.

One of the last answers that I got to the “where do you see God” question was the perfect segue to this morning’s Gospel reading: “I see God in food! When we all come together for a meal, there is God.” Yes, there is.

This morning’s Gospel story is an ultra familiar text that a lot of us heard for the first time when we were very small. I even learned a bouncy little tune about it in Sunday School:

Five little loaves and two little fishes

Five little loaves and two little fishes

Five little loaves and two little fishes

Jesus fed five thousand!

The woman who taught me that was another one of those earthly portals through which I saw God. She directed something called the “cherub choir” at the church I grew up in. She passed away last year, and I’m sure she’s now teaching the loaves and fishes song to actual cherubs. Maybe one of them will point out that the plural to fish is not, in fact, “fishes”, but that’s beside the point.

This is also a story that shows Jesus teetering on the edge of something we in the various helping professions call “compassion fatigue.” It’s what can happen when you, like Jesus, keep trying to sneak away from the people, noise, and work to get some rest, and every time you lie down, the phone rings, you get 10 urgent emails, dinner boils over on the stove and one of your kids yells “MOM I NEED A SNACK.” Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything. It’s what happens when taking care of others takes up your every last drop of energy.

But when Jesus is convinced he has nothing left to give, another group of folx in need come up to him, and he starts teaching them, not out of some sense of obligation, but, according to Mark, out of compassion. Literally “suffering with”. He helps them because they’re hurting just like he is.

I’ve done some work with the Poor People’s Campaign, and one of the most important things the PPC emphasizes is the difference between charity and mercy. A lot of us are more comfortable helping others through acts of charity–giving cans of soup to a food drive, mailing a check to UMCOR, or running in a 5K to raise funds for cancer research. All good and worthy uses of our time, but charity keeps people in need at a distance from those trying to help, and adds to the us and them divide. Mercy meets folks eye to eye where they are, brings us together, and acts with compassion.

Perhaps the most important thing that happens when we act with compassion is that folx who haven’t had many good experiences of seeing God finally have one. They see God through us. They see God in love and togetherness. They see God in the breaking of bread.

When Jesus discovers that the masses around him are as hungry as he is, instead of shooing them into the village to buy their own dinner, like the disciples suggest, he directs the disciples to hand him the food they had on hand and to share it. The disciples initially balk at this, clutch their bread in their fingers, and act from a scarcity mindset–If I share there will be nothing for me! Compassion unwinds that anxiety, because it teaches us that we’re all in this together.

After Jesus fed everyone, the entire crowd was satisfied at once, because compassion fills our stomachs and our souls. When was the last time you saw a group of 5,000 people who were all satisfied? Have you ever? Jesus and his disciples did. For a moment, everyone stopped complaining about the ants in the grass and the sand in their shoes and the wind blowing their napkins away. More importantly, that big group of people stopped bickering for a few minutes about 

their differences, and instead focused on the one thing they had in common–they needed food. Compassion teaches us solidarity. When we aren’t busy squabbling amongst ourselves, we can work together and start solving the problem of hunger.

Also, did you notice that when the disciples counted how many people were fed they only counted the men? Compassion moves us past that nonsense, and gives everyone equal humanity.

As we go from this place, we’ll keep looking for the face of God in all the ways we already see the Divine–while holding a baby, or singing in the shower, or in a beautiful sunset. But I hope every one of us has a moment where we see God because we helped someone whose struggles were not all that different from our own. Because the moment we see God in that person’s face, they’ll see God in ours.

Amen.