A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, 21 July 2024

I have to admit, I was uncomfortable this morning reciting the line from the Psalm that invokes – or evokes – a phrase that has become a tinderbox in today’s conflicted society. But if David’s realm once extended from the Great Sea to the River (Psalm 89:25), God’s reign is greater. Jesus, Son of David, is not confined by any borders drawn or redrawn on a political map, nor did he confine his healing activities to one side of the Jordan or the other, nor did he despise nor reject the Gentiles, the Syro-Phoenicians, the Canaanites, the Samaritans, the inhabitants of the lands that have been complicated and contested, it seems, since before time lifted them out of the ocean. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Ephesians 2:14)

If only we had Jesus’ compassion for one another.

When his disciples returned from their travels around the region, where he had sent them to heal and to cast out demons and to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom drawn near to them – when his disciples returned full of good and weary joy at all that they had seen and done and wrought, Jesus had compassion on them. He knew what it is to be worn out even by good and faithful and rewarding work. He knew how the Holy Spirit can fill and can wring out a soul, overwhelm one with its power. He told them, come away and rest awhile. For he knew that there would be more, so much more, to follow.

And the crowd saw them going, and because celebrity-spotting is nothing new, they sprinted around the sea to meet them on the other side, so that when they landed, they were not in a quiet place but one of commotion and clamour and a mess of human need. And Jesus had compassion on the crowd, too, and tended to them.

Filling everybody’s needs, he healed, and he fed the thousands that had gathered, and he shielded his disciples from the extra work – he sent them back out on their boat into the night, to be at peace upon the water. He took upon himself the burden of the shepherd, because he had compassion for the sheep.

Even so, even Jesus did not put off forever his need for private prayer, for quiet communion with God. When everyone was fed and healed and put away for the night – we didn’t hear this part this morning, but it’s there, between the lines that we did read – in the night, he went up the mountainside alone, to pray.

No one can keep the well of compassion full without refreshment, without leaning into the providence of our shepherding God, who leads us beside still waters, and in green pastures, who feeds us and anoints us with the oil of gladness and of healing. Even Jesus did not put off for too very long his need to be apart, and to pray.

Provocatively enough, Martin Luther once wrote, “The Kingdom [of heaven] is to be in the midst of your enemies. And [t]he [one] who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ.”^[i]

The people who raced around the countryside to cut off Jesus and the disciples’ access to solitude were not their enemies, but they were the enemies of their intentions and desires for solitude, and of their peace in the moment. In order to have compassion upon them took the love of God made manifest in Christ.

Another way of saying this might be that we cannot will ourselves toward compassion for our fellow human, especially when they are at their least convenient, or most demanding, sheepish, or bestial. Yet if we belong to Christ, that is the compassion that is available to us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that, while “human love is directed to the other person for [their] own sake, spiritual love loves [them] for Christ’s sake.”^[ii] Bonhoeffer argues that because human love desires to bind itself to the other, or rather to bind the other to oneself, by persuasion or coercion, if fails in the face of the enemy; human love cannot abide rejection, nor resistance. But the love of Christ can overcome all. “Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ”^[iii] It’s a kind of letting go and letting Jesus love them.

The most direct path towards the compassion of Christ is prayer. The most essential action of love is prayer. Jesus knew it, practised it, modelled it in the night, on the mountainside; and his compassion was such that it overcame even death.

The compassionate life is tricky enough in the everyday, and my guess is that even the least political among us will find our last nerve twanged by the rhetoric and anxiety and all that will pile onto the social psyche in the coming months. We may be tempted to try to love our enemies into submission. We may be tempted to try to grind out compassion through our clenched teeth. We will not succeed unless we are grounded in the love of Christ, in letting God love those whom we cannot stand, made as they are in the image of God; unless we abandon ourselves to prayer. Unless we abandon ourselves, our preferences and prejudices, and hand the whole lot over to Jesus for healing.

And when we seek Christ, we will find him ready to shepherd us, full of compassion for us, ready to feed us with bread and fill us with stillness and anoint us with healing oil. We have only to reach for him. For he is our peace. (Ephesians 2:14a)

May [the peace] and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore (2 Corinthians 13:14). Amen. 

^[i] Quoted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together (Harper & Row, 1954), 17

^[ii] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 34

^[iii] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 36-7

2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56