Compassion for the Needy

There are so many endearing qualities that draw us to the person Jesus was while here on earth but one quality you can’t miss about him as you read through the gospels is his compassion.

I sometimes imagine Jesus as he walked through a town. People were excited to have him in their midst. They were awed at his miracles and deeply impressed with his teaching. People were clamoring to be around him. The city officials and the influential no doubt often approached him to rub elbows with the popular rabbi. They invited him to dinners and came to talk with him because they could. How frustrated they must have been when the attention they sought from him and possibly felt they deserved was interrupted by the pleas of the poor, the sinful, the sick or the handicapped of the town. It is so interesting that the attention of God in the flesh was so easily distracted from the powerful and influential by the cries of the hurting.

A perfect illustration of this is found in Luke 8:40-56. Jesus had been summoned by Jairus, a powerful Jew in town; a ruler of the synagogue with the authority to say who can or can’t worship at the synagogue (see: Jn. 9:22). As he is hurrying to save this man’s dying daughter, a woman with serious and personal health problems approaches trying to stay below the radar and touches the edge of his garment. Jesus stops with the synagogue ruler’s daughter hanging in the balance, and engages this woman in conversation praising her faith for making her whole. You get the sense that Jesus’ disciples are caught up in the urgency of Jairus’ crisis and are surprised and even frustrated with his taking time for this seemingly insignificant woman.

The message is clear and repeated time and again. Zaccheus in the tree, Bartimeus’s appeal from the alley, lepers shouting from afar, a weeping sinful woman, and a poor woman with two small coins capture the fascination of the creator of the universe and incite him to action.

If we are to be Jesus to our world there is no way that opportunities to help the downtrodden can be ignored. As we work to have his eyes we will find them fixed on the needy with a heart to help.

At Northeast, we are preparing to undertake an effort to help the needy in a way that we have never done before. We will join a local effort to reach out to the homeless in our community so that we can be the healing hands of Jesus to some grateful people. We will never be Jesus to the world until they see his compassion living in us.