Jesus looked at the crowds and had compassion for them because they were troubled and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. That’s Matthew 9, and yeah, it’s beautiful. But here’s the thing about compassion—it can get out of hand.
When Jesus saw the damage, the lostness, the mess of people’s lives, he felt this overwhelming need to gather them all up. I mean, he wanted to hug everybody to him. He saw people who were physically sick, emotionally distressed, grieving, in anguish. And he felt it. But here’s what struck me: in the confines of his physical body, he couldn’t be everywhere at once. He knew that when his time on earth was done, there would need to be other people—flesh and blood people—who could do what he’d been doing. Who could love people the way he’d been loving them.
So he told his disciples: the fields are ripe. There’s so much need. But the workers are few. And you know what? Choosing to do what Jesus did, choosing to leave that kind of life, choosing to have that kind of compassion—it goes against our nature. Our nature is to take care of me and mine. To be closed in. To not want to worry about all those people.
This gets worse for the tender-hearted. They don’t just feel compassion—they feel the pain. They want to adopt everybody. Bring them home. And sometimes that overwhelms them right out of the game. Nope. I’m not going to be part of that. It’s too dangerous. It’s too messy. Too smelly. Too dirty.
But here’s what Jesus teaches too: be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Compassion without wisdom isn’t always helping. You have to ask yourself: is what I’m doing actually going to help, or am I making things worse? Is my compassion based on my own health staying intact? On my home? On my money? Jesus knew that sometimes the obvious problem isn’t what someone actually needs. He’d ask people: do you want to be healed? He’d ask instead of assuming.
A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope