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As they walked behind Jesus, Phillip and Bartholomew were confused. Not that this was new to them. In the time they had been following Jesus, they had found that the things he did and said were often confusing at first. Phillip and Bartholomew had learned, though, that if they discussed these things together, they could often work them out. So that’s how they usually occupied themselves as they walked behind their rabbi on the long dusty roads between destinations. And that’s why they didn’t mind being at the back of the line, out of earshot of their teacher.
Today they were puzzling over what had happened a few days ago in Capernaum. Jesus had healed the slave of a centurion there and now Phillip and Bartholomew were trying to work out why Jesus had done it.
Phillip felt that the centurion wasn’t very deserving of the miracle.
“Why would Jesus help a Roman soldier, let alone a centurion?” Phillip asked. “He’s the enemy. Isn’t the Messiah supposed to come and destroy him and all his kind in the final battle? It makes no sense. I thought we were supposed to be gathering our own people, not helping the likes of him.”
Bartholomew reminded Phillip that the elders of the town had come to Jesus and pleaded with him on the centurion’s behalf. They had told Jesus that the centurion was a good man. After all, he’d provided the money to build the synagogue. Bartholomew said that if he’d done that, he couldn’t be all bad. If the elders said he was worthy of the miracle, he must be worthy.
Phillip wasn’t convinced. He reminded Bartholomew that the centurion himself had admitted that he was unworthy of the miracle. He said he wasn’t even worthy to have Jesus set foot in his home. By his own admission, the centurion had no business asking for the healing. So why did Jesus grant it?
This was a good point. After Bartholomew had turned it over for a while, he said, “You’re forgetting that Jesus himself said the man was worthy. He said that in all of Israel he had not seen such faith! It was his faith that made him worthy.”
Philip didn’t like this. The man was a Roman pig, not to mention a slave owner. He had probably killed many Jews. He enforced the taxes that kept them on the edge of poverty. He and his kind were the reason Phillip’s people weren’t truly free. No amount of money for synagogues— no amount of piety! —could erase that. Could it? It couldn’t!
“Maybe we should just ask him why he did it.” Phillip said.
Bartholomew agreed but he wasn’t hopeful Jesus would clear things up. Often their rabbi’s answers just led to more questions. Lord help them if Jesus decided to answer them with a parable.
How quickly it is that they, that we, decide who is worthy and who is not worthy, who deserves compassion, kindness, community, or healing.
Did the disciples’ occupiers, their oppressors, their abuser, even if, maybe especially if, they are just following orders, did the Romans deserve compassion? Do those who move without compassion, deserve any compassion? And I think we would want to say yes. In our best churchy Christian attitudes we would say yes. When we’re watching the news… maybe not. In the face of injustice… maybe not.
Sometimes we’re committed to karma, or help karma along with actions. There’s a whole section of the internet of folks responding in spite, returning evil for evil, or anger for anger, or disagreeableness with disagreeableness
Gamaliel’s Parable
Rabbi Gamaliel was once asked why God sometimes healed unbelievers of their sickness. Gamaliel responded by telling the following parable.
In a certain village there was a banker known by the people for his honesty and integrity. He was so trusted in the community that everyone who came to deposit money with him, did so privately, as if leaving money with a member of the family.
Except for one villager. This villager was suspicious of everybody and doubly so of the banker. Whenever he deposited money, he always brought a witness with him in case he ever had to take the banker to court.
One day, the suspicious villager had to deposit money in haste and went to the banker without a witness.
When one of the banker’s friends heard about it, he said, “You should deny the man ever made a deposit with you. It would be your word against his, and he has no friends in town because he is so untrusting. That would teach him a lesson!”
But the banker replied, “Why would I do such a wicked thing for short term gain? By continuing to be honest and generous even when he doesn’t deserve it, I may yet win the trust of this man who does not believe in me.”
~ Jewish Parable
As they continued talking, Phillip and Bartholomew look up and they were stopped.
Jesus and the disciples have reached the gate of a town called Nain. There is a crowd of people leaving. It’s a procession of mourners. They are carrying a young man on a stretcher. He’s not much older than the disciples. But he was lying there. Pale and lifeless. Stiff as a board.
The whole town is following, chanting and wailing, but there is an older woman following just behind the stretcher. Her cheeks are streaked with tears but she looks straight ahead. The disciples recognize instantly without having to be told. She is the young man’s mother. And she is alone. No husband. No other sons.
She walks solemnly, quiet and composed, keeping a waterfall of emotion pent up behind a quivering lip. Until she can’t any longer. The tears come flooding. Her voice breaks as she sobs over and over, “My boy… my boy… my boy…”
Phillip and Bartholomew look at Jesus.
Their rabbi has his own tears welling up in his eyes. Jesus seems deeply and profoundly moved by the sight of a woman he’s never met burying her only son. They also know, without having to be told, that Jesus is thinking of his own mother now.
As the woman passes Jesus, he gently says to her, “Don’t cry.”
Then, unable to restrain himself, he walks up and puts his hand on the stretcher and the proceedings ground to a halt.
Now it is silent.
All eyes are on Jesus.
He wipes a tear from his eye and looks at the kid on the stretcher. Then with a voice of authority, he says, “Young man, get up!”
With a loud gasp, the young man suddenly sits up. “What… what’s going on?” He asks. “How did I get here?”
Jesus helps the man out of the stretcher and gives him to his mother. He smiles as the two hug each other and weep. Everyone is amazed. They are saying things like, “This must be a prophet!” and, “God has come to help his people!”
Part of what makes healing stories so hard is that there are so many people who weren’t healed, who aren’t healed. Not only was that young man going to die again someday but there were people all over the Galilee who died that day. Babies, children, young and old. We are still finite creatures, made of flesh and atoms, cells and neurons, and these miraculous healings seem to be by chance, by Jesus stumbling upon them. Maybe the point of these stories for us these days is not so much about the healing, maybe it’s about something else.
Later, as they are walking from the village, Phillip and Bartholomew are silent for a long time. Finally, Phillip speaks.
“She didn’t ask,” he said.
Bartholomew asked him what he meant.
“That lady. The widow. She didn’t ask Jesus to do anything. She didn’t say ‘I believe you can heal him.’ No one else asked either. No one came up to us and said you have to help this lady because she’s a wonderful person and everyone looks up to her. She was just on her way to bury her son. Jesus didn’t know anything about her. Just that she was grieving and that she was about to be on her own. Jesus didn’t see her worthiness or her unworthiness, he just saw her pain.”
Bartholomew smiled. “Jesus doesn’t much seem to care who is deserving and who isn’t, does he? It’s like it’s not about who they are; it’s about who he is.”
Phillip shook his head in disbelief.
This wasn’t the last time the two of them would be confused about something their rabbi did or said. There would be plenty for Phillip and Bartholomew to discuss along the road together in the days ahead. But they both left Nain a little wiser. Because from that day on, they began to understand their master’s heart.
The heart of Christ is compassion. From the translations backward, compassion is a guttural feeling. It’s visceral. You feel it in your stomach, your guts, your body responds physically to the emotions around you.
And that visceral internal response comes out in action.
Theologian David Grant Smith once said: “Compassion is a quality which calls us to become partners with God in effecting creative transformation in our world.” (David Grant Smith, Process and Faith)
He went on to say:
“We may not be called on in our daily living to resuscitate someone from death or life-threatening conditions. But we are called upon daily to live in solidarity with those whose life circumstances are more vulnerable than our own, and to help make their lives better in some way. To pray for the discernment to see things that way, and to act accordingly, is at the center of embodying compassion, and being a partner with God in the ongoing work of creative transformation.” (David Grant Smith, Process and Faith)
Even in times when it doesn’t seem like a crisis every day, the world can be overwhelming. The needs, the lives of the vulnerable, those who are moving without compassion, those were are suffering under the weight of the lack of compassion, can be too much, can paralyze us with how big the need is and how small we are. My guts can wrench, my heart can break a hundred times every day, and then I remember I can’t bring world peace, feed every child, bind every wound, clean all the waters, and my heart breaks again.
Written in the Pirkei Avot, an ancient Jewish commentary:
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it”.
We have to remember, we are not in this alone. It is a relay race. It’s all of us, and our ancestors, and those to come for whom we are the ancestors. It is a group project. We worship, serve, and love in community, as part of a denomination, and the universal church so we can do more than we could alone. Because the large arc of the universe bends toward justice because we are reaching up and pulling it, together. We are called to be moved with compassion, to use that feeling to do something.
Mis-attributed John Wesley, but clearly part of the Methodist tradition:
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
We do what and as we can because we can’t do it all. We trust in each other to care for us, to be moved in compassion, do some of the work we can’t. We each bring a piece of the food we gather, so we might be part of feeding those who need it. We carry the baton as long as we can. We do our part of the group project. We do the next right thing in love. We carry in us the heart of Christ, we don’t decide who is worthy, we care for the vulnerable, in all things-we move in compassion.