WHY THE MIRACLES To Reach Out With Christ's Compassion
Why the Miracles?
To Reach Out With Christ’s Compassion
Mark 1:40-46
Compassion, Is the word for our focus this morning. Mark says, “Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.” Our goal is that each person may know the compassion of the Lord, and be moved in obedience and praise to reach out with Christ’s compassion.
We tend to think of compassion as a noun, a feeling, that one might have when someone they love gets hurt. The compassion of Christ, however, goes far beyond mere feelings. Christ’s compassion reaches out with action that remedies some need.
Consider how he gives sight to two blind men. Matthew says, “Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes.” Consider how Jesus raised the dead son of the widow of Nain. “When the Lord saw her,” Luke records, “his heart went out to her.” In other words, He had compassion on this widow. Consider also, how Jesus showed compassion on the crowd that had been following him. Calling his disciples to himself he tells them, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.” This comes from Matthew’s account of the feeding of the four thousand. Now, coming back to our text in Mark, we see the Lord’s compassion always reaching out to remedy some need. Not once is the cause of the need addressed by Jesus. It is the need, itself, that moves our Savior to compassion.
It is interesting that the Greek word that translates into our English word, compassion, comes from a root that can mean both, anger and pity. Consider God’s anger over sin. I mean, don’t you just hate it when people take God for granted? Doesn’t it make your stomach knot and your blood boil? So to speak. Let there be no doubt. God hates sin! All, and every kind of sin, He sees as rebellion against His holiness. And the word of the prophets is sure when it says, “The one who sins, shall die.” You see, we all have need of His compassion, don’t we? For we all face death as the result of sin.
God never overlooks sin as though it were nothing; never! But, being unlike us in His compassion, his anger against sin moves Him to reach out in a very positive way to remedy the need. He sends His One-and-Only Son to be with us in human flesh to reveal the other side of His wrath, His pity and mercy. Could it be any more clear, than when Jesus reaches out in compassion to say, “I am willing, be clean!” That is precisely what he does with us. . . . .
What are you feeling right now? What need do you have of the Lord’s compassion? Oh sure, we say with the ease of a yawn, “I am a sinner,” while at the same time expecting God to do nothing about it because we believe in Jesus. How wrong can we be? God, indeed, does something about sin, every sin. The sin of lovelessness, which betrays a dispassionate heart, serves only to condemn evil, while offering no real solution to remedy the need. But there is a solution to our every need. And that solution is carried to us in Jesus Christ.
Consider how He comes to wash away our sins “by the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, … through Jesus Christ our Savior.” Consider how He comes to nurture and nourish our faith with His compassionate assurance through the promise given in His own body and blood that we even now receive in the Holy Supper. Consider how He reaches out to us unworthy sinners, all, to say, “I am willing, … be clean!”
Such passionate expression from God comes to move us out of our inadequacy and depravity, into the glory of His kingdom service. How can we not respond to such love and compassion? Only through unbelief are we rendered useless in the kingdom of God. But it is not for uselessness that Jesus comes to us again through Word and Sacrament. Consider the effect Jesus’ compassion had on the leper. He was moved from his need to the needy. It is the same for us.
Who are these needy? Look around you. Consider the need of those who surround your every-day-life. A real-life illustration might help us get the point. William and Catherine Booth struggled to discover God’s mission for them, during the first ten years of their marriage. One night Catherine, a skilled Bible teacher, is invited to speak in London. While there William took a late-night walk through London’s East End. Every fifth building was a pub. Many counters had steps to allow even children to climb up and give their order. Later that evening, William told Catherine, “I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears, ‘Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for our labors?’ Darling, I have found my destiny.” Later that year, 1865, the couple opened the Christian Mission in London’s slums. Their life vision: to reach the “down and outers” that other Christians ignored. That simple vision grew into the Salvation Army, which now has more than three million members in 90 countries.
Do you get the point? You and I have also been given a mission. You, yourselves came to understand it as this, Reaching Out With Christ’s Love in the Heart of Lansing. Everything that we now do at Trinity is done to support that mission. The Child Care Center; the POBLO mission; the visitation of the sick and shut-in; the distribution of Word and Sacrament; the Women of Trinity; the Youth group; the Lutheran Layman’s League; the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League; the Sunday School; Vacation Bible School; the Choirs; the worship services; these and whatever else we might undertake as a Christian community at Trinity, now have the focus of Reaching out with Christ’s Love, with Christ’s Compassion, in the Heart of Lansing.
This is why Jesus reaches out to touch us in Word and Sacrament, again and again. It is to assure us that our running is not in vain, but as those who have the goal clearly in sight, the crown that lasts forever.
Even the cleansed leper became a testimony to the priests, that absolute love and compassion had touched his life with healing. Why do you think he did not do that? Why don’t we do what the Lord tells us? Is it too difficult, or unreasonable? for us to whom He says: “I am willing … be clean!” Amen.