Radical Compassion // How to Live an Extraordinary Life, Pt 13

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Not all of us are wired in such a way so that compassion is our first thing. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that compassion takes time. And in this day and age, having compassion … well, we just don’t have the time. Jesus … Jesus was a man of extraordinary compassion.

Hey, I have a confession to make. I’m not naturally a compassionate person. How about you? Now that doesn’t mean I don’t care about people deeply, I do. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love to help people when they need help. I do. But I’m not naturally compassionate.

So what’s compassion? Well, my dictionary tells me that compassion is "a sympathetic pity and concern for the suffering or the misfortunes of others". It’s derived from the old middle English word that comes from an even older French word, that’s derived from an even older ecclesiastical Medieval Latin word that means "to suffer with". In other words, to feel someone else’s pain and then to act on that and do something about it.

Now I’m pretty good at the last part – acting on it and doing something about it. I’m not so good at the first part – feeling someone else’s pain. Why? Because of the way I’m wired inside. Because my motivation, my personality type are different. You read Romans Chapter 12 in the New Testament and you’ll find several different motivational gifting. Some of them involve quite a bit of compassion but others don’t.

For example if a leader were overly compassionate they’d never actually lead. They’d never get stuff done. They need some compassion but not too much. On the other hand, someone who’s involved in caring for others, isn’t it great when they have a lot of compassion in their hearts, when they’re naturally good at feeling someone else’s pain and empathising with them. We absolutely love to be around people like that.

So why am I telling this stuff about myself, that in effect I’m compassionately challenged? Because today we’re continuing our look at what it means to live an extraordinary life by looking at how Jesus live his life. And one of the things He had in His makeup, we see it quite clearly on quite a few occasions, is compassion. And I guess as we take a look at this side of Jesus, I want to make the point that just because we don’t all have compassion naturally hard wired into our DNA, well it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t show it from time to time.

Have a listen to one of the compassionate things that Jesus did. Matthew Chapter 8 beginning at verse 1:

When Jesus had come down from the mountain great crowds followed Him. And there was a leper who came to Him and knelt before Him and said, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean”. Jesus stretched out His hand and touched the leper saying, “I do choose. Be made clean”. And immediately the leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to Him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the Priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them.

Great crowds followed Jesus. I mean, He was a celebrity, a megastar. Doing what I do, preaching the gospel, often I’m dealing with crowds, whether here through the radio or whether I’m speaking at a church or a big event. And for someone who’s naturally wired with not a huge amount of compassion, can I tell how safe and how easy that can be. I mean, you detach; you rely on the fact that as the guy up the front you are separated from the crown. My great little radio studio is such a safe, comfortable place, I have to tell.

And that could easily have been the attitude that Jesus took. I’ll stick away from those messy individuals who have all those problems and pains that are going to inconvenience me. I’ll just preach to the big crowds. I’ll do the big gigs.

We all have our ways of isolating ourselves from the pains and the problems of difficult people. Some live in gated communities, some have stopped attending church. We withdraw, we try to make ourselves comfortable. But Jesus met the leper, this leper who was smelly with open, pussy wounds; this leper whom others reviled, whom God’s own law segregated from mainstream society. And when the leper said to Jesus, “If you’re willing you can make me clean”, Jesus did the one thing that no one had done since this man had started exhibiting the symptoms of leprosy – Jesus reached out and touched him.

Touching the leper – that’s compassion. That speaks of the value that Jesus placed on this one man in his isolation and his pain and his suffering. In fact Mark’s Gospel account of this very event tells us that Jesus was ‘moved with compassion’ and that’s what caused Him to reach out and touch this outcast.

And the sense of the original Greek word translated into the English word ‘compassion’ was that it was a deep gut reaction; it was something that Jesus felt in the core of His very being. And it was that feeling, literally that feeling of suffering with that leper in His heart, in His belly, in His gut, that caused Him to reach out and touch the man and heal Him.

One of the reasons, often, that we don’t suffer with people is that we’re just too busy. When I think about who I am, because I’m a driven, outcome-focused, delivery-oriented kind of guy, time is a premium for me. Don’t get me wrong, we need people like that, just as we need people who are nowhere near as time focused but have buckets of compassion in their heart. And what I’ve noticed, when I actually slow down and focus on the individual at hand, when I take the time to understand them and what they’re going through, I can experience that same sense of compassion, that hurt, that empathy just like anyone else. It’s the speed at which we move that often stops us feeling and showing compassion.

See, I want to skip right over the feeling and showing bit to the doing bit. What can I do to help the person. That’s my natural desire, and there’s a 50/50 chance that you might be like that too. But often that’s not what they need. The biggest thing that someone who’s suffering needs is someone else to stop and be moved and be impacted by their suffering; someone to understand them, to listen to them, to hurt with them, to be with them.

I remember a time in my life when I was suffering the biggest thing I’ve ever suffered in my 50 something years. There were some people who wept with me. That’s in fact the most powerful thing that anyone has ever done with me or for me. A truly extraordinary person is someone who shows compassion, whether or not it comes naturally. The truth is, if we’ll just slow down a bit, take the foot off the accelerator, we’re capable of suffering with someone else. We all are. We’re capable of feeling their pain. We’re capable of showing that we feel their pain and that will be one of the most transformative experiences of their lives.

I can tell you that because I’ve had to learn it; because it doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m still learning it, I’ll be learning it till the day I die. The leper – I mean, I am sure the guy was absolutely over the moon at being healed. In fact we know He was. Mark in His Gospel account tells us the guy went racing around showing everyone what Jesus had done. As you know, Jesus had expressly asked Him not to do that. The guy was completely over the moon.

And why wouldn’t he be. I would be, you would be. But I am absolutely certain that in the days, the weeks, the months and the years that followed, as he sat quietly at home by the fire in the evening, remembering that day in His life when Jesus reached out and touched him. That as the love and the compassion that Jesus showed, that would bring tears to his eyes. What do you think?

Compassion is one of things that sets a person apart. Compassion is one of the things that enables an ordinary person like you and me to lead an extraordinary life. Compassion in this day and age truly is extraordinary.