Miraculous Compassion

Luke 7:1-17

“Miraculous Compassion”

05 February 2017 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Today we dedicate our entire offering to one organization helping numerous people in Singapore. Willing Hearts Soup Kitchen was founded in 2005 to provide meals throughout Singapore every day of the year including Christmas Day and Chinese New Year. In fact, Willing Hearts provides around 5,000 meals a day for the elderly, the disabled, children of single parent families, those in poverty, and migrant workers.

            Willing Hearts expanded into other areas of care for those living in Singapore. Not just content to provide a warm meal they provide dental care, Chinese medicine treatments, eye care, legal aid, bereavement services, and tuition assistance for primary school children.

            It is an honor to partner with such an organization here in Singapore. Not only does the chapel provide funding throughout the year through our mission giving and designated offerings such as today, service members and their families from across Singapore volunteer at Willing Hearts helping prepare meals for distribution. Their care and compassion for those in need runs deep, so much so that all the meals are halal to ensure all are able to receive the help they may need.

            Though it isn’t affiliated with any religious organization, Willing Hearts is full of compassion to everyone in Singapore. Sounds a bit like the story we just heard today where Jesus is filled with compassion to two unlikely recipients. 

            The centurion is a Gentile, a man of power and prestige in the Roman world, who has many benefactors and friends to approach Jesus regarding an ill slave. He understands what it is like to have wide authority over people while also being under the authority of someone or something greater than one’s self. In Nain, there is a widow who has lost everything because all of the males in her family have now died. Back in that day, she would no longer have a voice in the community and would have to rely on charity for any additional income and protection from the social rules and regulations of the day. The powerful and the powerless both receiving compassion from Christ.

            Jesus is a popular man with large crowds following him wherever he goes. In fact, Jesus is known for his healing and miracles more than his preaching. A large number of the people following him are tagging along to see another miracle or perhaps looking to receive a miracle of their own. Sometimes they get so annoying he has to sneak away for a moment to pray, just to get some peace and quiet to recharge and have just one moment to himself. I’m sure all parents can relate.

            But, what if the real miracle for these two families isn’t the healing? What if the real miracle is the compassion of Christ towards everyone, regardless of their position on the power or social scale, their tax bracket, their appearance, their gender, or whatever other means of dividing people we want to list?

            What does true compassion look like? Typically, we define compassion as caring for someone “less fortunate” than us. But, if that is how we define and view compassion we inject a power dynamic into the relationship where the one providing help is in a powerful position over the recipient. This removes dignity making it harder to show compassion to someone.

            Others may define compassion as the act of being charitable to others. Again, there is a power difference in that approach but something lurks behind compassion masked as charity; a lack of understanding. One model for aid organizations is to identify a solution and then provide said solution to those in need. Often this is done from afar to provide aid to people in countries around the world.

            Many of us have dealt with Project Handclasp. It is a great program within the Navy that has enormous potential to not only improve relationships, but to directly impact lives in a meaningful way in underserved communities just around the corner. Like any charity, when not done in a deliberate and compassionate manner, one can definitely do more harm than good. Those who have worked with the program can tell stories of schools for mentally challenged children receiving mouthwash that the students accepted as Gatorade. Or all male orphanages receiving female specific items in the box the US Navy delivered with great fanfare.

            Glen and I have heard these stories as well and plan out what items get sent to which location. Sometimes we have to go to the warehouse or intercept the goods on the pier so we can open them up and repackage the items to fit the receiving organization and their individual goals. We know what fits because we have sat with and listened to the recipients well before we deliver the items. We strive to make our charity truly compassionate.

            The only way to show true compassion is to sit with and get to know those who may need assistance. That is the true gift of compassion that we see in these stories. Christ didn’t just swoop in, offer healing and leave. He learned what was causing the suffering of the centurion and the mother, listened to what they were asking, and then met their need. He didn’t come with a solution to a problem. He learned the problem and then provided the solution.

            Knowing Jesus’ story and the divine power that he possessed, we know that healing wasn’t the true miracle. Healing was a result of the miracle of God physically sitting with those in their suffering. Learning on a deep level what caused worry and fear in those God loves. The miracle is someone coming alongside us in our suffering and stopping to talk with us, to hear us, to empathize with us, to be compassionate with us.

            Think back to the times in which you remember suffering in your own lives. If you are like me, the most vivid memories of that time, beside the myriad emotions that go with suffering, you have vivid memories not of the action or chain of events that led you out of the time of suffering, but rather the people that came alongside you when you needed them. Those people who sat with you, many of whom probably never said a word or did any one thing to solve the problem, are the ones to whom you can never say thank you enough. Because in that moment they were Christ, showing you compassion that is unfailing and miraculous.

            We can all be miracle workers. It doesn’t take a healing touch or some special gifting from the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to start a soup kitchen and feed 5,000 to bring a miracle to someone’s life. But, we can’t just give money in an offering plate or blindly deliver goods the Navy puts on our ships either. We are called to not let suffering go unnoticed. We are called to be like Christ in the face of suffering. To stop and listen, to be with those in their suffering, to hear what they need and long for, to acknowledge that pain, and then help them get relief, to show true compassion to all of humanity. That is the miracle of compassion and that is within each and every one of us.