The Compassionate Gaze of Jesus

The Compassionate Gaze Touch of of Jesus

Rev. Wilfredo J. Baez

7/31/2011

Jesus was in his hometown, Nazareth, when he heard the news.  Herod had executed John the Baptist!  He immediately withdrew by boat from Nazareth to a deserted place. 

John, considered by the Jews to be a great prophet, had a large following.  When the crowds heard the news of John’s death, they sought out Jesus, leaving their towns on foot to find him.

When Jesus returned to shore, he saw the great crowd that had assembled.  He had compassion for the people and cured their sick. Jesus had compassion for the people.

Why had the people turned to Jesus?  They had suffered a great affront; the unjust murder of their Prophet who provided them with hope for their future.

When Herod had heard reports of Jesus exhibiting great spiritual power and receiving favor from the people, he concluded that Jesus was John the Baptist, raised from the dead, and this alarmed him.  It is likely that the Jewish people thought that Jesus was John raised from the dead.

Jesus saw the people’s pain and responded to their need by healing them of illness and feeding them.

Today, we witness a world whose spiritual bearings have been lost.  As the result there is great spiritual, existential angst everywhere we look.  People are afraid and insecure.  They are grieving the loss of meaning that they once found in God.  They are grieving their loss of sanctuary once provided by the Church.  They are forlorn because of the loss of God’s Word as foundation for their lives.  And they are angry over the loss of communion with God and others that they have found no replacement for.

As you look out at the world as the Body of Christ, can you do so with the same compassion that Jesus did, when the Jews lost John the Baptist?  Do you see the force that is Herod that has been unleashed on the world out of loyalty to family, friends, flesh, and earthly profit and power as opposed to the spirit of God and goodness that is our essential nature?  Do you see the hopelessness of a world that has lost its innocence and belief in the essential goodness of life?

Not a day seems to go by where we are not faced with horror, whether it is acts of violence by individuals, groups or governments or natural catastrophe.  Evil, attitudinal, behavioral, and natural seems to be overloading us and the world we live in.  The weight of evil seems too much to bear.

I was reminded of this just last Sunday, right here in Church, when someone asked me a question about forgiveness of the terrorists in Oslo, Norway.  What a great question! 80 youth lost their lives at the hand of a gunman in their school, and at least 10 others lost their lives as two car bombs exploded destroying a building.  How do you forgive people who do things such as these!

These events, combined with Columbine, Oklahoma City, and 9/11 in the United States alone, not to say all of the equivalent events worldwide, leave us all besieged by waves of anger, outrage, sadness, and fear.  The idea of forgiveness that Jesus calls us to seems to be an ideal, unattainable by all but the greatest of saints.  Perhaps, before we can forgive others, we have to still the troubled waters of our hearts.  And then there are the countless small but hurtful acts of injustice we experience on a day to day basis.

The Christian writer Henri Nouwen wrote: “You wonder what to do when you feel attacked on all sides by seemingly irresistible forces, waves that cover you and want to sweep you off your feet.”  You know how that feels.

“Sometimes these waves consist of feeling rejected, forgotten, and misunderstood.  Sometimes they consist of anger, resentment, desire for revenge, or self-pity and self-rejection.  These waves make you feel like you are powerless….”

“What are you to do?  Make the conscious choice to move the attention of your anxious heart away from these waves and direct it to the One who walks on them and says…”Don’t be afraid.” 

Keep turning your eyes to him and go on trusting that he will bring peace to your heart.  Look at him and say, “Lord have mercy.” Say it again and again, not anxiously but with confidence that he is very close to you and will put your soul to rest.” (The Only Necessary Thing, 111)

Keep your eyes on Christ, as we walks upon the water, and like Peter step out on to the waters yourself, knowing your faith will take you over the turbulence to your desired destination.  Look to Christ, for Christ is your peace! Christ is your confidence!  Christ is your deliverer!  Christ is your hope!  Be like him until you are like him!

Rabbi Kushner, in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People wrote: “Human beings live in a world of good and bad and that makes our lives painful and complicated.”  He goes on to talk about how God created humanity with free will and the freedom to make both good and bad choices, saying “if we want to hurt someone, God will not intervene to keep us from doing it…[God] will not intervene to take away our freedom, including our freedom to hurt ourselves and others around us.” After reflecting on the Holocaust, he concludes: “I have to believe that God was with the victims…I have to believe that the tears and prayers of the victims aroused God’s compassion… I would like to think that the anguish I feel when I read of the sufferings of innocent people reflects God’s anguish and God’s compassion… [and] is the source of my being able to feel sympathy and outrage, and that [God] and I are on the same side when we stand with the victim against those who would hurt them.”

God doesn’t cause evil or cause our pain!  But God is with us against evil, in our pain.  By God’s presence, we shall overcome, as millions before us have, and millions after us will. 

When Jesus sees us, he sees our pain, our anguish, our anxiety and our fear.  And he touches us with his sight, his listening, his words, his touch, and his heart and relieves us of our burden, quenching the burning we feel inside and satisfying our hunger not only with food for our bodies, but food for our sense of righteousness and justice. Can you feel Christ touch you where you need to be touched?

Indeed, as Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words!” 

He continues, We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose . . . and those he has called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. 

What are we to say about these things?  If God is for us, who can be against us? 

Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  No!  In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 

Indeed, there is nothing in life or death that will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!”

The Jews overcame the death of their prophet John the Baptist.  A new prophet, one greater than he, the Messiah, came to serve in John’s place.

Christians overcame the death of Jesus, and the Church stands as Christ’s Body to the World, a light to the nations when she remembers her first love, that undefeatable love of God in Jesus Christ.

Herod continues to be a force of separation and destruction in the world, but Christ remains a greater force of healing and reconciliation.

What the people of Oslo need, what the people of Columbine, Oklahoma City, and New York, and people throughout the world who have experienced disaster and loss is the compassion of Christ from each and every one of us.  They need the friend that Jesus was, one who laid down his own life for them.  They need that friend called Christ from each of us.  They need the healing that comes through love, like that Jesus provided the people in Palestine in their loss of John the Baptist.  They need you and me, Christian, to be more like Jesus.