The “amazing grace” which we just spoke of is God’s grace, the center of a theme that we have been carrying forward through this time of Lent—encountering grace.  Being encountered by grace, it can be said.  It’s partly our action and definitely God’s action.  Today we want to look at how through compassion and the whole concept of compassion we are encountered by God’s grace.  In looking at compassion, it’s a wonderful word to people who use it.  They also use it tied with compassion fatigue meaning somehow you get to the point where you just have given away too much compassion and you get tired of it.  Maybe that is true to a point, but let’s look at a situation of Jesus teaching and showing us what compassion means.  This is going to sound somewhat familiar.  It is the feeding of the 5,000, but not that many.  It’s 4,000 and a few other differences.  So as you hear this account in Matthew different than you follow in the other gospels, the “Feeding of the 4,000” it is called.  Notice the differences of the very classic one with the boy and the loaves and the fish and all of that.  And also even the number of baskets that come afterwards.  You can look at that as the side pieces, but in the centerpiece listen to what Jesus says relative to being compassionate with those who are around him.  Let’s follow along as we see and listen to the Scripture of Matthew found today, “Jesus Feeds the 4,000”:

“Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee.  Then He went up on a mountainside and sat down.  Great crowds came to Him bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others and laid them at His feet.  And He healed them.  The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing and they praised the God of Israel.”  (That’s a good point right there.  When you see good things happen and people are healed and lives changed, praise God.  Remember that piece.)   Moving on, Verse 32, “Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, ‘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 for they may collapse on the way.’  His disciples answered, ‘Where could we get enough bread in this rural place to feed such a crowd?’  ‘How many loaves do you have?’ Jesus asked.  ‘Seven,’ they replied, ‘and a few small fish.’  He told the crowd to sit down on the ground then He took the seven loaves and the fish and when He had given thanks He broke them and gave them to the disciples and they in turn to the people.  They all ate and were satisfied.  And afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken fish and pieces that were left over.  The number of those who ate was 4,000 besides women and children.  After Jesus had sent the crowd away, He got into the boat and went to the vicinity of Magadan.” 

The difference?—we can discuss that later, how many baskets are picked up when the feed 5,000.  Check each other out on your Biblical knowledge.  The point is Jesus could have easily had compassion fatigue.  “I’ve been healing these people for three days now.  I’m tired; I need a break.  I need a sabbatical.  I need to get away and refresh myself.”  Now we know at other times Jesus does that, but clearly here He could not leave the crowd unattended to.  Compassion filled His heart and through the miracle of the division of the bread and fish, they were fed.  All were fed with plenty left over.  That’s the difficulty about compassion as we think it’s a finite amount.  And when you run out of it you are done.  When you are fatigued you just don’t have any more.  “Well, we have given all that we think we can give, how much more can we give?  We don’t have it.”  But if God takes compassion, beautiful things happen. It gets multiplied.  

That compassion is also as low as taking care of the furry friends of our lives.  And I want to tell you a personal story of my own compassion relative to this.  It was when I was a Boy Scout Waterfront Director.  It was the first summer that Joyce and I were married; she’s still married to me after that summer.  When we went there we were promised a trailer, a wonderful place, a new trailer that we could live in.  It turned out the trailer wasn’t delivered and all summer we lived in an old cabin that had to be cleaned out.  They also said you could be first aide.  When we got there they wanted her to wear a uniform as if she was a nurse and she rebelled against that.  In cleaning out the cabin we got the rest of the crew in, the other staff.  They came in and were moving furniture here and dusting that.  And you know what happens; it’s a cabin that’s unoccupied for the winter so little critters started to run out, particularly this mouse.  These are all teenage guys that were there.  We are going to be waterfront directors.  We are going to be trainers.  We’re going to be on the camp staff.  And this mouse ran across the floor and you know what happened.  One guy named Seth, right away he took his pith helmet that he wore that was part of the things that you wear around the waterfront; and he went over to try to trap that mouse.  And he did; then he didn’t know what to do with it.  He said, “What now?”  I said, “Well, you have to lift the hat to get the mouse.”  He lifted the hat, he saw the mouse, and he screamed and jumped up on the table.  Well, by that time after having been chased I don’t know how many times around the cabin, I went over and that poor little fellow was laying over on his side.  I literally picked him up by his tail, laid him in my hand, and he lay on his side almost saying “thank you”.  And his little heart was beating so rapidly.  Well, I released him outside hoping he wouldn’t come back in.  That’s being compassionate for the little furry things.  Well I can tell you some other stories about the snake and a church camp where I yelled at and chewed out the camp counselor for beating this non-poisonous snake instead of just capturing it and getting it away from the cabin.   

And I can tell you some other things like that.  And it is easy to be compassionate to the little furry things as well as to the innocent children.  But when it comes to being compassionate to adults, sometimes the attitude is, “Well, they got themselves into trouble they ought to get themselves out of it.” 

Haven’t you had that thought some time?  Well, they got themselves into a mess, why should we even worry about them?  But I offer to you that an act of compassion is a two-way street.  When you do well and good for someone else, it also comes back to you.  And in compassion, God encounters us with God’s grace.   

            Some rules of compassion—it is okay to feel good about doing good.  It’s alright!  Some people feel guilty.  I like doing good and I feel guilty about it.  But also remember that being compassionate may not bring a thank you note or even a thank you.  It’s possible.  In fact, being compassionate will teach you something about other people and about yourself but you don’t know what that will be until you carry out the act of compassion.  And doing the right thing for others might also be a sacrifice for you.  Those are some of the rules of the understanding because compassion, it’s synonym—kindness, understanding, sympathy—we can talk about being kind in one hand, but compassion sounds like a higher level with more energy around it.  “But one suffers long, it is kind,” it says in I Corinthians 13.  And I want you to ask yourself, “What is your kindness quotient?”  You see, I backed away from compassion and I’ve gone back to kindness because kindness sounds a little easier doesn’t it?  But, I like to be kind to people.  What is your kindness quotient for around home?  Do you do things, and this is particularly for children and youth, without being asked?  Do you clean off the table or prepare the coffee without being asked?  At your work or place where you are with friends, which of the persons that seems, in your understanding, to be the most overlooked and unattended to?  And do you continue that overlooking and under attending?  Say students for college or high school or your grumpy employee or a person that just rubs you the wrong way or you don’t even speak their language.  And I don’t mean another language than English, they just don’t communicate with you and you with them.  But are you kind to them regardless of how they act with you?  Maybe the person just doesn’t fit in to your crowd; but do you take that extra step of kindness?  You see, kind hearts usually act quietly and they are quietly kind in their results.  Do you let the car in front of you cut into traffic so it can get by?  I tried that yesterday.  I’m not a kind driver.  Now Joyce says I am too slow, but that’s another matter.  I don’t like to let people in to that place in front of me.  I don’t think they are better and faster.  Yesterday a person came on and I could have done that and no one would have thought any different, but I slowed down safely and let them in.  I didn’t know if they appreciated it or not.  But it taught me something.  It didn’t take any longer to be kind then to go ahead of that person. 

            Do we help a mother with two or three children by letting them go ahead in the check out line of the grocery store?  Do we pick up that trash can of our neighbor that rolled out on the street on a windy day?  Do we do that to those people out there?  And what do we do to the people right here?  We are the Church of Jesus Christ.  If kindness and compassion doesn’t show itself here, how can we blame the world if it is not quite as kind or compassionate as it should be.  We need to understand that the neediest person in our midst might be the very person sitting next to us or in front of us or behind us or the one that we see standing out in the lobby after the service or wherever we may have contact with someone here.  What we need to say to ourselves, as it says in Galatians 6:10, “When we have the opportunity to help anyone, we should do it.  But we should give special attention to those who are in the family of believers.”  Now that sounds like class society in one case, but truth is, that’s where you practice it the best.  You practice kindness and compassion and understanding at home and in the home of this family.  You compass it here with the people in spirit at least should be the most receptive and then they’ll help you prepare yourself for being kind and compassionate in the world.   

            Now some people grow up naturally kind.  I do believe that to be true.  They just have it in them. And maybe it’s reinforced or guided by their environment or their family.  Maybe it is a genetic thing.  And then I believe possibly God gives to them an extra special gift of kindness and compassion and service so that they might carry out what we even call spectacular or miraculous levels of expressions of those gifts.  But for the rest of us, we are just the average people.   We are the ones that Paul talks about living out the average, quiet, almost ordinary acts of kindness.  Nothing too spectacular, just the general types of things but we are called to do them nonetheless.  We may be able to do this on our own, but you know it’s more important to be kind and compassionate and be of service with others.  A team approach is an acceptable way of doing so.  You know the situation is that God’s fear is calling this out of us, first of all.  But when we see the need, God is calling us to respond.  When we feel an urge to become compassionate, it is God’s spirit calling that out of us.  That is when God encounters us by God’s grace.   

Each kind or compassionate thought or action in a moment is God, first of all.  And here is why—all good things come from God.  But there are people who are emotionally and mentally unaware of a creator or God or a savior.  They don’t believe God is in them or with them or important at all in their lives.  And yet they can be compassionate too.  Have you ever noticed that?  There are kind people who do not carry the Christian banner around at all, any faith or religion at all.  Are others that we think are so strange and different and then we see them become compassionate—we sort of write them off.  When they carry out that kindness, that compassion, that service, they are responding to God’s spirit also whether they know it or not.  We can call all this spirit action based upon the truth by something that is foundational to God’s spirit.  Remember, all good things come from God.  If something good takes place, it is from God.  It is a righteous thing.  It is pure.  For God can do no evil only good comes from God.  And when we see good in action in anyplace, first of all in our own lives and in someone else, then we need to recognize God’s presence. 

As far as the good that is done through these acts of kindness and compassion and service, the only difference between the people who are non-believers and us is the awareness factor.  We know that God is in our lives.  We believe in God.  We trust God. We put our faith in God.  And people who do not, they can still be kind because they were created by God also for a direct purpose and reason to glorify God’s creation, to respond to God’s call whether they know it or not.  And that’s an interesting thing because we have categorized ourselves and we as Christians are a little proud because we are the compassionate crowd on the earth.  And all those others of different faiths, they can’t be quite as good as we are.  But we forget this is God’s creation, not ours.  And one of the reasons we are Christians is because we’ve become aware that God loves us and has forgiven us.  Remember the only difference between the person who has accepted God’s salvation and those who have not is the acceptance.  Otherwise, God has said, “You are my children.  I have created you in my image.”  God has said, “You are made for a purpose.  Not those who believe in me, but all creation is made for a purpose to glorify God.”  Jesus Christ died for all people at all times in all places—no exceptions!  Either the salvation is through Jesus Christ is available to all and that’s our primary responsibility to tell the Good News and the story and be a part of that, or we have a misunderstanding and we have a class society that God has said, “I love those who’ve accepted me but I don’t love those who have not.”  That doesn’t make sense when you see the true, full nature of God that is explained in Scripture and also displayed in our relationship with God. Jesus Christ came that the world might be saved through Him and that His full and purpose will be accomplished in that way.   He has come to save and not to condemn and it is God’s goal and purpose and hope that all of God’s creation will be reconciled to God and be made new through God’s Spirit.  That’s the goal and the end time in God’s words will make that so.

We as those who know of our forgiveness and the power of God’s love and grace in our lives through Jesus Christ, those of us who have been encountered by God’s grace must do all that we can to be agents of God’s reconciliation and forgiveness.  Not dividers of society.  Not separators of those that we like and those that we do not.  You and I of all people, who have known in our hearts and minds that God loves us, you and I of all people who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you and I of all people who have declared Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to be our leader—we should be leaders of compassion and service and kindness.  It should become second nature for us.  There are times we fall back and do not which keeps us as rebellious human beings.  We still struggle with an inner nature that says, “But I really want to be in charge.”  And we defy God by trying to be our own God.  But God forgives and we move forward and we recognize that.  We should cheer for the kindness and the compassion and the service wherever we find it and mark it as God’s spirit action.  

Now some things that we are doing here at Grace Church are ways for us to be compassionate.  People who are in the near future, when Christian Help Incorporated offers a trailer to us, we will be refurbishing it so that a family that is currently homeless will have a place to live.  We are going to be offering soon in April English as a Second Language.  You see, there are people who speak Spanish around here and don’t speak English very well.  And we need to offer that as kindness with compassion to help them be a part of our community, to learn a language that is a basic one here, English.  We are offering it without question. Not whether they are legal or not.  By the way, we are also in partnership with a bank locally that is going to help us in sponsoring them.  And our desire is to follow Hebrews 13 where it says, “Do kindness to those who are strangers and even aliens among you for you don’t know when God will provide an angel in your midst through those people.”  A heart of kindness and compassion is to see God’s spirit in other people.  Habitat for Humanity is before us and we can participate there.  The youth have gone to the Juvenile Center and other mission areas.  We have had three couples that have been down in McCurdy School for one to three months this summer offering service and compassion to people there.  The Food Pantry is both a service place, a place where you can give to do good things and kindness to other people.   

But I will now take you from Grace Church, because I can list many others, and talk about an international situation.  Too often we are categorizing and dividing people into camps.  This comes out of an article in the 50^th anniversary of the Christianity Today.  It’s about the Lebanese Christians last summer when Israel and Hezron were fighting in the southern part of Lebanon.  This is from a Christian’s voice.  It’s told by a gentleman named Costa and it is his story.  “All of a sudden,” he said, “we had refugees from different religions in our homes and in our schools and our institutions.  Of course, Muslims have always studied in our schools but this was different.  We fed hundreds day and night, sat up bathrooms and showers, provided everything from A to Z for them,” he explained.  “It would have been natural to run and hide ourselves, but we were challenged to go on the offensive, not militarily or politically, but spiritually and humanitarian grounds.  Twice daily as Christians we gathered together for prayer and worship and we prayed for each of the people that we were serving by name.  And then we went out into the different refugee sites to serve those who had to leave everything behind.  The Baptists worked along side the Church of God, the Armenians, the Evangelicals, the Brethrens, the Alliance, the Presbyterians, and others when these leaders came together to reach as many of the needy as possible.  And they found it wasn’t easy ministry to desperate people who had lost everything.”  Continuing he says, “We helped them solve their problems, we earned credibility.  We didn’t just bring food and water and say goodbye.  We wanted to make a difference in their lives.  Besides offering relief, volunteers listened, offered Christian-based entertainment, and provided counseling.  A pastor recounted a story about a Baptist Youth Minister who met the father of a 17-year old Shiite youth who was killed in an air strike on a southern Beirut suburb.  During the burial ceremony they were even attacked again by the jets and mourners had to scurry to safety.  Later the father asked the minister, “Why are Christians helping Muslims?”  The minister shared the story of the Good Samaritan and asked, “Who was the neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  The father responded, “The one who had mercy on him.”  The youth minister then recited the words of Jesus in Matthew 5 when Jesus said, ,”But I tell you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”  Touched, the father of the deceased boy said, “Well, we had many Christian friends, but we never knew that you had these teachings.”   

What a powerful witness.  Did the man become Christian?  That’s not our purpose necessarily.  It’s whether we are Christian, whether we are compassionate, whether we are kind.  That’s what God calls us to do, to be.  And by that witness God’s spirit touches people’s lives.  It touches ours first for compassion is a gift to us, a gift to be used.  Kindness is a gift to us that God says, “Use it well, frequently, in great abundance.”  We touch others lives and then, therefore, we become a gift to them.  See too often we categorize people before we even come into contact with them. We look at them and we sort of say, “Well, I don’t know where they are from.”  I saw a lady the other day and I had to be very careful because she had a lot of these things here and she had other things stuck in other parts.  And she looked like she had been through a long, hard winter.  And yet I’m not sure she was that old.  She had a tough life and I found myself distancing myself from her.  Because you see, I’m no different than anybody else.  We don’t like some people—either the way they look or the way they act, the way they speak.  And we separate, we draw back.  But that’s the way we do it.  That’s not the way God does it.  For God has no thermostatic control that measures how close or hot or cool God’s going to be with the impact of his love for us.  The love of God is born from within God.  It is a natural outpouring.  God is love.  And with God he finds in us no reason to separate.  There is no uncaused or spontaneous decision that, “Well, I created that person but I don’t want anything to do with him.”  

Does God love us because of our kindness and our goodness and our compassion or because of our great faith?  No!  God loves us because of God’s goodness and kindness and faith in us.  Think of that.  I want you to seriously look this week, look to the opportunities to practice the acts of kindness, compassion and service that will be available to you.  We walk through blindly each week not seeing because we don’t want to or we are too busy or whatever reason.  But let me challenge you and challenge myself that when God says, “I will provide opportunities for you to be kind and be compassionate and be service because that’s what I made you for. Now go do that even if you are tired, even if it has been a long day.”  Now you won’t get them all but watch.  God will provide opportunity but will you respond?  That’s between you and God.  

I want us to go through the Call to Awareness that we had at the beginning of the service. It’s a litany and I want us to ask those questions again and go through those and give those responses because I believe it will help to reinforce that kindness and compassion is God’s way of encountering us and it is to be a natural part of who we are as God’s people.  So as we see it displayed on the screen, I’ll ask you the questions and ask you to respond again. 

Pastor:  Why are we here? 

Congregation:  We are here in the service and the love and mercy of God.

Pastor:  What do we celebrate?

Pastor:  How do we worship?

Pastor:  How do we serve?

Pastor:  With God’s help, we can respond especially to the most vulnerable with kindness and compassion and service. 

All:  We show our love for God and our responses to all who hurt.  Let us now praise the God of love, mercy, healing and hope. 

In a moment of silence, ask God to help you to see this week.  Also to recognize acts of kindness in someone else and maybe encourage them by saying, “I’m glad to see God’s love in you.”  It could surprise them.  Encourage and support and do for worship is not a passive, worship is what we do in our lives.  Let’s take a moment of silence as we consider.  “Gracious, loving, kind, compassionate God, forgive us, each of us, when we have missed those opportunities.  Help us to see those which are still going to be before us and then give us the strength to act, to do what your spirit pushes for us to do that we can be a part of your spirit action which precedes us.  And may we see it in others and be an encourager as we recognize your spirit action in their lives.  Thank you, Lord, thank you that Jesus didn’t get so tired that he just went home, that as he fed the 4,000 may we be fed by His compassion.  In Christ name we pray, Amen.” 

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman

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