Do you have compassion?
Open the Gospel to any point, read a few verses, and you will find yourself caught up in this reality: that Jesus Christ was preeminently a man for others, a man of compassion. For people with anxieties and fears and emotional problems, as well as physical issues, he had compassion. For the crowds who were hungry for spiritual nourishment, as well as physical nourishment, he had compassion.
Jesus has spoken to us about offering it to others. In Luke, there is the story of ten lepers who Jesus cured. Nine were fellow-jews. T he tenth was a Samaritan, an outcast whom no “good” Jew would have anything to do with. But Jesus didn’t see it that way. He didn’t cure just nine. He healed the ten who cried out, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” You can almost hear a voice from the crowd gathered around the group saying, “Look. Do you see what I see. He is going to cure an outsider!”
The point is, Jesus’ compassion cannot be contained by the artificial barriers we use to create categories of persons we call “those others.” When we come right down to it, there is only one question: “Do we havecompassion?” Jesus cured them all. and I am confident we wouldn’t have it any other way. We want a compassionate miracle-working Jesus who will listen to our troubles, have pity on us, and make those troubles disappear. But what we sometimes fail to recognize is that from the moment people identified with the compassionate, miracle-working Jesus, he began to prepare them for a ministry of compassion, a ministry of reaching out to all others.
Years ago there was a “New
York Times” article that read like this….
at a busy New York City intersection, in the early evening, a red, compact car stops at a red light. a yellow cab, immediately behind, stops also. an older woman with a cane steps off the curb and begins to hobble across the street. as she reaches a point midway between the compact car’s glaring headlights, the traffic light turns from red to green. Immediately, the cab driver leans on his horn. The driver of the compact shuts off his engine, removes the keys from the ignition, gets out of his car and walks back to the cab where he confronts the driver. “Here are my car keys,” he says. “You run her over. I don’t have the stomach for it.”
It is easy for us to identify with that poor woman crossing the intersection. We all know the feeling of powerlessness that overtakes one who is in the middle of a busy intersection when the light turns green. You are trapped, helpless, at the complete mercy of the driver sitting behind those glaring headlights. and if your voice is not heard crying out, “Have pity on me,” the plea is undoubtedly reflected in your anguished look. Now, reverse the situation. Put yourself behind the wheel. With whom do you identify more closely -- the driver of the compact car or the taxi driver? So, do you have compassion? It’s not too late.