Isaiah 42:1-9
Matthew 9:35-10:4
We gather here today, a little more tired than usual from losing that hour of sleep, a little smaller in number than usual because spring break has taken some of us away. Nonetheless, we gather as people aware of the goodness of this season and these days. Lent is not all ashes and gloom—it is the time to open our lives to God’s warm mercy. Our word “Lent” after all comes from the Old English word that means “to lengthen.” It is a name that speaks to us of the lengthening of days, the return of the sun to our hemisphere during these weeks before our joyful celebration of the resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Perhaps as spring draws near you notice that your heart is a little lighter than it was a few weeks ago. And if this is not the case—if you are here this morning weighed down with worry or sorrow or apprehension about the future, it is my hope and my prayer that you will know something of the compassionate presence of God in your difficult times.
Several centuries ago, when Lent was observed with more fasting and penitence than it is today, this fourth Sunday of Lent was referred to as “Refreshment Sunday.” It was a little celebration in the midst of the strictures of the season. It was a day on which the Lenten disciplines would be relaxed, a time when apprentices who lived far from home would return to visit with their families.
Refreshment Sunday. I like that name. We Congregationalists have never been all that big on special seasons and days. In the simplicity that is one of our hallmarks, we regard each Sunday as a little Easter, a weekly celebration of the resurrection. Still, I confess that I like the idea of Refreshment Sunday. I think that all us can use a day like that, even if Lent is no longer marked by the rigor with which it was once observed by some. We can use a time to let up on ourselves, to turn our hearts and our lives once more toward the God from whom all blessings flow.
You probably know that through conversation and art and in worship we’ve been exploring the broken places of our lives and our world this Lent. This morning the scriptures lead us to into the broken places where we encounter the God who is rich in mercy, who abounds with steadfast love and compassion.
In the second part of the book of Isaiah, we hear a series of “Servant Songs” that tell of God’s servant—perhaps an individual, perhaps the entire nation of Israel. We heard the first of these songs this morning. We see a kindness, a gentleness in God’s servant that is shown toward all who are weary, toward those of us who are exhausted: “A bruised reed he will not break, a dimly burning wick he will not quench.” God’s servant is aware of human brokenness, that sense sometimes that we are just barely getting by, just hanging on.
As always, the words of those ancient prophets bring good news: our bruises will not be exploited. Our light—however dim—will not be completely extinguished.
Centuries after Isaiah, Christians saw an image of Jesus in this servant. The words of Isaiah did not “predict” the coming of Jesus, but those words helped early Christians to understand who Jesus is. And they might help us as well.
By faith we claim that the ministry of Jesus incarnates the compassion of God. Confronted with human sickness and suffering, Jesus reaches out, heals, teaches, and feeds. His compassion leads him to bring to other human beings the wholeness that we seek for our lives, the wholeness that God desires for all creation.
Look at Jesus as he goes from town to town. Seeing the crowds of people, he has compassion for them because they are—as we are—like sheep without a shepherd.
When we are wandering and lost, ground down by living or by the often soul-crushing news that we hear—God looks upon us with mercy.
The compassion of Christ comes to us when we suffer.
The compassion of Christ comes to the world in its distress.
In his book Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson writes about his work seeking to exonerate prisoners on death row who had been unjustly accused, tried, and convicted. Reading the book it becomes clear that our legal system is a broken place, our prisons are broken places, and our courts are broken places. We have, in Stevenson’s words, “a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability must be changed….Fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous.”[i]
Reflecting on his long work to exonerate Walter McMillan, Stevenson writes of the lack of compassion felt for those who are convicted as “criminals” and of the transformative power of compassion as well. McMillan “genuinely forgave the people who unfairly accused him, the people who convicted him, and the people who judged him unworthy of mercy. And in the end, it was just mercy toward others that allowed him to recover a life worth celebrating. Mercy,” he concludes, “is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion.”
Compassion in the broken places—who will offer it?
The compassion of Christ comes—and you know this, although in some way it surprises us each time we hear it—the compassion of Christ comes into the world through those who follow in Christ’s way, through people like you and me. As we open ourselves to such compassion we are able to show such compassion to others.
Looking at the harassed and helpless crowds, Jesus doesn’t say, “O.K. I’ve got this one. I’ll take it from here,” setting out to make everything better.
No, he gathers his disciples—that is, those who have been taught, those who have been following along for a while now—and he sends them out.
That is both a troubling and an empowering reality, isn’t it?
Troubling because it means that it’s up to us.
Empowering because it means—well, it means that it’s up to us.
God sends us out so that we might be compassionate. In its strongest sense, the Greek word that we translate as “sending,” suggests a kind of banishing. Remember that story about Jesus, alone in the broken places, that we heard on the first Sunday of Lent? The Spirit “drove him out” into the wilderness. This morning we watch as the apostles are sent out, driven away from the One they sought to follow, away from their teacher. They are banished even from the small community that they knew for the sake of the world, for the sake of the lost sheep.
They don’t have to go alone, however, and that’s encouraging. It’s always good to have company, especially in the broken places. Matthew lists the Twelve in pairs, suggesting that they went out together, with mutual support. Peter and Andrew. James and John. And there at the end of the list we learn that even Simon the Cananaean had a partner—although, of course, his partner was Judas.
Well, we don’t always get to choose who we hang around with in the church.
Hang around Jesus long enough—listen to him, watch him, be one who is taught—and you know this, don’t you?—you will become one who is sent out as well.
Peter and Andrew.
Simon and Judas.
You and me.
God sends the most unlikely people.
In our deepest discontent, when we are least satisfied with life as it is, when the pain of the present is finally too much we hear the simple but straightforward call: “Go.”
When we look at this city, this nation, this world—when “compassion fatigue” looms at the edges of suffering—at just such times we, too, hear “Go.”
“Go,” Jesus says, and gives us a message of good news: God’s rule is in the midst of being established in the world that God created and loves. It has come near.
We are called to announce this as good news. And because it is good news, because the realm of heaven has come near, we are called to act in certain ways.
“Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”
Of course, it’s quite clear that very few of us are involved in doing any of these things. We have no “board of exorcists” here—and we can only imagine the difficulties the nominating committee would have if we did. The women of the church don’t gather once a month to go out and raise the dead—they just eat lunch together.
So we shouldn’t let those first-century specifics become rigid requirements. These are actions that show God’s compassion. They are signs that the living God is establishing a new realm in the midst of a broken, decaying, and dying world.
And this is the point.
Many voices are ready to say that God has abandoned this world and so it doesn’t really matter what we do: we can structure our economy and our society to let the ranks of the poor swell in our city, state, nation, and world as long as our comfort is assured; we can continue to follow the path of ecological destruction for the sake of just such an economy; we can let guns and violence proliferate as we seek our own personal safety.
From Jesus we hear just the opposite. Not only has God not abandoned this world, God is drawing nearer than we would have expected. So, what we do matters. How we act matters now and it matters for the realm of heaven that is being established on earth.
Will we solve all the problems? Of course not.
We are called not to be solutions, but to be signs of that God has come near—to point to what is happening all around us.
When we stand with people seeking a just wage…
When we provide one meal to hungry people at the Free Lunch Program…
When we celebrate the equality of all people and proclaim the love of God for all people as we do here all year long…
We will not solve all the problems. By the grace of God we might solve some and others will be solved by other people. And some will remain. By our actions we can be signs to the world of a new way, signs to the world of God’s compassion.
We are sent out, bruised and barely burning, to lost and wounded and exhausted sheep as sheep ourselves. We are sent out like sheep among wolves. In this situation, we need practical wisdom and a sense of peace.
In the other gospels, after Jesus sends his disciples out we later read of how they returned, filled with wonderful reports of what they’ve done. Not so with Matthew. Oh, we know they must have come back, but there are no glowing reports, no news of success. Instead, we’re left with the sense that, once sent, the followers of Christ are still out there announcing good news. We get a sense that they are still out there, showing compassion with wisdom and in peace.
And—good news, amazing news—you are one of them—in wisdom and in peace, a sign to this world of the compassion of the Christ.
There is compassion.
There is refreshment for all of us, not just in these late-winter, Lenten days.
There is God’s refreshing compassion for all of us, all of our days.
[i] Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy, pg. 313-314