Matthew
9:35-10:8
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
“When [Jesus] saw the crowds,
he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep
without a shepherd” (Mt. 9:36). Crowds. Crowds of people. Hundreds?
Thousands? We don’t know. But lots of people followed him, attracted to
his message of hope, proclaiming good news, the euangelion, the evangel, the evangelical message that God’s kingdom,
God’s realm—the radical, life-giving, justice-bearing realm of God—has come near—to
them!
God’s realm has come to them, to those
needing healing and liberation, to people harassed and helpless, victims of political
and societal oppression, subjugated by forces and powers (spiritual, political,
religious) weighing them down, breaking their backs. Jesus came for them. His message was for them. His ministry, his life, yes, he was sent for
them, “the least of these” (Mt. 25:45).
Compassion. This is
our theme this summer. It’s here in the
text, front and center. Esplagchnisthe. It’s a form of the rare Greek verb
splagchnizomai, meaning something
like “torn up in the gut.” Splagchnon is the Greek word for viscera,
internal organs, intestines and bowel. When
Jesus looked out and saw the faces in the crowd, when he saw that they were “harassed”
and “helpless,” it tore up his insides.
The Greek even suggests that they were at the point of fainting and being tossed about. It made him sick to
his stomach. It was gut-wrenching. That’s exactly where compassion
originates—in the gut.
Today, science has shown that we both think and feel with
our stomachs, through the Enteric Nervous System. Michael Gershon
is professor at Columbia University, and chair of pathology and cell
biology. “The gut,” he says, “can work
independently of any control by the brain in your head—it's functioning as a
second brain. It's another independent center of integrative neural activity.”[1]
The Enteric Nervous System (ENS) has 100 million
neurons—more than in the spinal cord but a lot fewer than in the brain—arrayed
over an intricately folded surface area more than a hundred times greater than
that of your skin. The ENS can work all
on its own, without any input from the brain, to control the movement and
absorption of food throughout the intestines.[2]
“The nervous system [which includes the brain] actually
started out in the gut,” says Emeran Mayer.
He’s the director of the UCLA Center for Neuro-visceral Sciences and
Women's Health as well as of the UCLA Center for Neurobiology of Stress. “Most
of my patients,” he says, “have a very good understanding that there is a close connection between their emotions and
their guts. But there are still very few neuroscientists who understand the
complexity of this enteric nervous system and its links to the brain.”[3]
Contemporary science is
verifying what the ancients knew. What
they knew is embedded in language, in the etymology of the Greek word for
compassion, esplagnisthe/ splacghnizomai. Powerful emotional states are felt in the
stomach. Jesus’ emotional response to
people in need originated in his stomach.
His interaction with what was going on around him, his response to what
he saw, were all registered there, in his gut.
His gut felt something, received something. He couldn’t stomach what he saw. This depth
of feeling made his stomach turn, and from that internal turning, he acted—and
so changed the lives of these people, so changed the world.
That’s where compassion begins to emerge, not in the head,
through thought, but in the gut. We don’t
think our way toward compassion. We can,
of course, choose to be compassionate—and we certainly need more of this these
days. But I’m not sure we think our way
toward being compassionate. Jesus didn’t
say, “I think I need to be compassionate toward these people,” and then tell his gut to turn in knots. Jesus’
response was not orchestrated or calculated or strategic.
Compassion flows spontaneously, naturally from a deep place,
in response to a felt experience in
the moment. Compassion flows out from a feeling. That’s where and how compassion is born.
The English word compassion,
means “with passion,” and passion means “to suffer.” When we suffer, we feel. And to feel the way Jesus felt in that moment
encountering human desperation, seeing his people harassed and helpless, was a
form of suffering. Feeling this way is
to suffer. And, suffering,
in a way, is required to be compassionate.
I wonder, are we less compassionate than we could be because we’re
unwilling to suffer?
To suffer means “to undergo.” It often has negative connotations, of
course, but we can suffer joy or love as much as suffer pain or sorrow or loss. To suffer is to undergo a felt
experience, one that touches us deeply, which affects us, infects us, washes
over us, maybe even overwhelms us; it stirs us, excites us, disturbs us, moves us. The feelings come upon us. We might resist them, fight against
them. There are times when
we want to deny or resist or contain a feeling; perhaps we’re afraid where it
might take us. Perhaps we will be overcome,
perhaps we will go under as we undergo a feeling, whether joy or sadness. To suffer means we allow the feeling to flow
over and under and through us.
We can either acknowledge the feeling or we can ignore
it. We can either honor
what we’re feeling when we’re confronted with joy or pain or grief or we can
deny it. Sometimes, to be
honest, it’s easier not to feel, to keep our distance from feelings. Sometimes we think our way out of feeling by
being too rational or critical or analytical, which can be a kind of defense. Or, we judge.
Judging is often a defense.
Judging people or judging a situation is often a strategy that we use to
protect ourselves from suffering with or for others. Perhaps that’s why theologian Dietrich
Bonhoeffer (1909-1945) wrote in 1943, from Tegel prison in Berlin, “We must learn to regard people less in the
light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they
suffer.”[4]
Sometimes we prefer to intellectualize everything (which Presbyterians are good at), keep it all up in our heads, and never allow our humanity and the humanity of others who stand before us to touch us and shape us. It can be a defense mechanism our egos use to prevent us from getting hurt. Such a strategy might keep us safe for a time. But the defense mechanism cuts us off from the rest of the world; it separates us from our neighbor, it distances us from the masses of people who are harassed and helpless and desperate.
Sometimes we prefer to intellectualize everything (which Presbyterians are good at), keep it all up in our heads, and never allow our humanity and the humanity of others who stand before us to touch us and shape us. It can be a defense mechanism our egos use to prevent us from getting hurt. Such a strategy might keep us safe for a time. But the defense mechanism cuts us off from the rest of the world; it separates us from our neighbor, it distances us from the masses of people who are harassed and helpless and desperate.
If we’re going to truly regard
another’s suffering, then we need to be present to them, and we can’t be fully
present without feeling. The poet
Christopher Fry (1907-2005) once said, “The human heart can go the lengths of
God.”[5] When we are fully present to the moment,
fully present to the suffering of others—not running from it or
judging it or becoming numb to it—fully present to the pain and
suffering in our own lives, and then respond to each situation from our gut in
a loving, life-giving way, something miraculous occurs: we become more human! Jesus is continually saying, “Look at
me! See how I live. This
is what being human looks like. A human
being responds to the needs of the world through compassion. A human being allows oneself to be touched by
the suffering of the world.” And, as
Jesus showed with his life, the divine becomes even more apparent—when we
become more human! The divine emanates
in and through and with our humanity.
This was true for Jesus, but not only Jesus. Our lives become Godlike, they become divine,
the divine emanates through us when we are truly, authentically human.
The
turning of his stomach moves Jesus to act.
He summons the twelve disciples.
And then he gives them authority.
He sends them out to preach the good news. What is the good news? “The Kingdom of God has come near.” How do we know where the kingdom or the realm
of God is? Wherever you see healing and
liberation. “Heal the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have
received; freely give.”
Jesus gives them authority.
He authorizes them. We need to
understand this authority as power. He
gives them power, muscle, agency, the ability to act, to make something
happen. Jesus gives them power over other
lesser powers or principalities. That’s
what it meant in the ancient world to have authority over “unclean spirits.”
Their world was charged with the belief that spirits, powers, principalities
in the cosmos, in society, were oppressing their lives, actually possessing
people, leaving them helpless, powerless, without agency, without options,
without freedom; these forces were making the people depressed and sick and
helpless. This is how we should
understand release from “unclean spirits” and all the exorcisms that Jesus
conducted in his ministry.
Now, it’s easy for us to think that the ancient world was
so primitive in their thinking, that we have moved beyond them, and that,
therefore, this commission to heal, which Jesus gives his disciples, is just a
fantasy. We need to think symbolically,
not literally. When we view this
symbolically, we discover that we are not unlike those harassed and helpless
people in the crowds. We, too, are
struggling in a turbulent sea of currents and forces and philosophies and
economies and ideologies that are oppressing us, possessing us, leaving us
helpless and powerless, making us feel that we have no agency, no options, no
meaning, no hope—and it’s making us depressed and sick.
Greg Carey, who teaches New Testament at Lancaster
Theological Seminary, insists that this is how we should read Jesus’ command to
drive out demons. “Many (all?) people,” he suggests, “find
themselves bound by behaviors, patterns, or structures they cannot escape,
often cursing themselves when they repeat the same behavior time and again.
When we imagine the realm of exorcism, let us imagine liberation, freedom from
powers that constrain us and prevent us from living full human lives.”[6]
So, Jesus sends us out to preach good news. What is the good the news? “The Kingdom of God has come near.” How do we know where the kingdom or realm
is? How do we know when we’ve stumbled into God’s domain? Wherever you see healing and liberation—God’s realm is near. Whenever you help in the healing and liberation of God’s people—God’s realm is near.
If you’re standing in the way of healing and liberation, then God’s
realm is very far from you. But, when we help
in the healing and liberation of God’s people, you can be sure God’s Realm is very
near indeed. We
might not be able to raise the dead, but through compassion we can bring about
new life.
How do we offer
healing and liberation? This is a tall
order. This isn’t easy. There isn’t one way. You need to figure out what that looks like
where you live, where you work.
We start with
compassion. We start by paying attention
to our stomachs. Our stomachs needs to
turn.
Where is your stomach turning? Where is it getting torn up? We need to stomach the suffering in the world. This is a radical call to the Church, radical, as in radix, meaning cutting to the roots, for we get to the root of things here when we consider what compassion as felt experience will do in our lives and through us for the world.
Where is your stomach turning? Where is it getting torn up? We need to stomach the suffering in the world. This is a radical call to the Church, radical, as in radix, meaning cutting to the roots, for we get to the root of things here when we consider what compassion as felt experience will do in our lives and through us for the world.
Compassion requires
being open to the needs of the other, willing to receive the suffering of
the world or your neighbor or your soul, to be present to it. To suffer with. To undergo.
We don’t have to take on all the suffering of the world or alleviate all
the suffering of the world—this is not our task—but we can be moved by it. We can allow the suffering of the world to
touch us. We might be surprised that
we’re able to stomach more than we think.
Maybe we Christians need to move even more in the direction of what we cannot
stomach, to listen to our guts, to feel, to allow ourselves to be touched,
influenced by the suffering of God’s children, and from that tender place discern
what we’re being called to do.
We have the authority
to be healers and liberators. Healing
and liberation flow from feelings of compassion. To have compassion is to suffer with, to
undergo in some capacity the suffering of the world. Jesus sets the pattern. We work, with Jesus, in the alleviation of
human suffering, only after we have noticed the faces of those in need and
share in their suffering.
And so, Jesus
sends us, not away from, but into the world.
He sends us deeper and deeper and deeper down into the human condition,
to announce and to embody with our lives God’s good news. God’s healing and liberation are real—and near.
[1] Dan Hurley, “Your Backup Brain,” Psychology Today (November 1, 2011), https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201111/your-backup-brain
[2] Hurley.
[3] Hurley.
[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (Touchstone, 1997), 10.
[5] Christopher Fry, Sleep of Prisoners (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1951), 47.
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