Lent: Compassion & Weakness
The story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 is one of the better-known stories from his life. Many great sermons have been preached on it and many leadership tactics have been sourced from this story.
But I have never heard anyone make the connection of what took place just before this miracle occurred. Just before this Jesus had heard of the death of his cousin, John the Baptizer. Matthew records after hearing this news, “Jesus withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.”
Jesus was grieving. He was mourning the death of his beloved family member. Think about that. The Son of God, the God-Man, withdrew to a desolate place to process the loss he had just experienced. I can only imagine this involved tears and shouts of angst and sorrowful frustration.
Jesus was heartbroken.
Then we read, “But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
The crowds had been looking for Jesus. When they finally found him, he didn’t send them away. He didn’t tell them to come back later when he felt emotionally strong enough to be with them and serve them. No, Matthew writes “he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
Remember, Jesus had just gotten away from everyone to grieve the death of his cousin. I highly doubt that Jesus was over it and had suddenly bounced back to serve these people.
You can’t turn off grief.
Here we see Jesus serving and healing these people, not from a place of strength, but from a place of brokenness. His compassion for the crowds flowed from a place of brokenness. In this moment his humanness and divinity met to meet the needs of those around him.
Every teaching I have heard on this passage skips over these first few verses and focuses on the exciting part of the story. The fish and bread being miraculously multiplied for the crowds. And there are some beautiful and true things to pull from that part of the story.
But what if to get to the place where we can truly trust in Jesus’ abundance…
To get to a place where we actually believe Jesus can use us to do miraculous things in this world…
The invitation isn’t to get our life together and serve from a place of strength. What if the invitation is to let compassion flow through our weakness?
Perhaps our brokenness isn’t something to run from, or even nurse alone by ourselves for extended periods of time. Perhaps our brokenness is the place by which we can actually find the strength to show compassion to the people around us.
In my former life as a songwriter, the joke was never to let a good tragedy be wasted. The hard parts of life were often the most inspirational moments for a good song. I have found it interesting, though I shouldn’t be surprised, that the posts I create and the sermons I preach that are honest about my brokenness resonate the most with y’all. Why? Because y’all are suffering in your own unique ways. Suffering is one of the few things all humans have in common. We are all broken in some way.
As we enter into this Lenten season we identify with our suffering servant, Jesus. To identify with suffering is how we identify with Jesus. There is no other way. So, may the suffering we endure not make us become angry and bitter, and jaded. May God use it to form us into the kind of people by which his compassion for us overflows into the lives of those around us.
Grace and peace ‘til we rise in glory.
