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Imagine you’re out on your own. Maybe you’re in a walk downtown or through a park. Maybe you’re on a hike. Maybe you’re at your home even. Wherever you picture yourself, imagine it is just you and you have no obligations whatsoever.
All of a sudden you turn a corner, or you hear a knock on the door, and when you look you see a massive amount of people.
All these people are expecting something from you. They’re expecting a barbecue too. This is all out-of-the-blue, no prior notice, and an expectation for something you can’t whip up on short notice.
As you imagine yourself in this scenario, think about how you would feel. Are you upset? Are you livid? Do you show it? Do you yell at these people, or do you give into expectation?
I assume that none of you thought to look on these people with compassion, and if you did look on them with any concern, I doubt there wasn’t just a hint of frustration. Because what these people are asking for is, quite frankly, rude.
But Jesus showed compassion on these people. That’s what we see in the Gospel this morning because this scenario I’ve asked you to imagine is what Jesus was living out in the story.
Jesus, like all good ministers and like many of us who are introverts, was looking for some time on his own to recharge as well as to restore and build up His relationship with the Father, and He got as far away as he could to do it. He literally got into a boat and headed to the other side of the shore.
But like a celebrity escaping the paparazzi, Jesus couldn’t but attract attention. People hear He’s in the area. People see where He’s going. By the time Jesus gets to the place He thought was secluded, He looks up to find over 5,000 people waiting there for Him, expecting Him to serve them. How rude can you get?
Jesus’ reaction is different then ours would be though. He’s not mad. He’s not annoyed. Instead, He has compassion on them.
In today’s Gospel, we often look at the feeding as the miracle. While it is miraculous, it’s not the true miracle here. The true miracle is Jesus’ reaction. The true miracle is His compassion.
It’s easy to have compassion when it’s people you like. Paul points this out in Romans when he tells us he would be willing to face damnation, being “accursed and cut off from Christ”, for the sake of his people, his fellow Israelites. Many of us might fell very much the same way about our families, maybe even our friends.
We shouldn’t forget that Jesus for all His popularity, also had a lot of enemies. None of these 5,000 people were there to defend Jesus at His trial. None of them were there trying to prevent His death. We would be hard pressed to say Jesus was having compassion on His friends.
Yet Jesus cares for these people anyways, even if all they cared about is what they can get from Him.
If we are to represent Jesus in this world, if we are to spread the Good News of our Lord, and if we are to be shining beacons pointing back to Christ, then we have to slowly bring ourselves to have this same compassion. We have to move past being willing to be accursed just for our people and those we love, and be willing to do all in our power show love and help bring back all people to God, even those we hate.
This is not an easy journey to make. It may not even be a journey we want to make, but if we are to make Christ Jesus known throughout the world, this is the kind of love we are called to share with all people.
In the meantime, we should do what is in our power to make things easier for us to love others. Don’t be rude to one another. Don’t do things like follow someone when they’re looking for alone time or demand that someone make a barbecue for you out-of-the-blue. Don’t demand things from others you wouldn’t want them to demand of you. Most of all, realize that true compassion is something we all struggle with and that we are all sinful human beings trying to make it through this world as best as we can. Pick someone up when they’re down, and look to others to help you when you’re down too.