Title: Compassion and Grace
Word Count: 1748
Summary: With difficult, unrelated scripture, can we see the influence of the Holy Spirit at work, and hear what he has to say. His message in this these verses are clearly ones of compassion and grace; a message we need to be aware.
This sermon was delivered to the congregations in St Oswald’s
in Maybole, Ayrshire, Scotland on the 28th June 2009.
(A Scottish Episcopal Churches in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries).
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 Psalm 130 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 Mark 5:21-43
“Please join me in my prayer.” Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen. (Ps. 19:14)
Introduction:
When Ian asked me to do the sermon, I was assured that it would be straight forward with a nice wee reading and a nice simple message.
But those readings this morning were long and difficult to decipher; 12 verses from the book of 2nd Samuel … 7 from the Psalms … 23 from the Gospel of Mark, and … 9 verses from 2nd Corinthians. All on different topics and all apparently unrelated. But are they?
If you ask yourself the question, “who wrote the bible?” you will probably answer with names like David, Mathew, Paul, James, and John etc. and you will be correct, but under what influence did they write their particular chapters. Well I firmly believe they were written under the influence of the Holy Spirit, in fact all of these authors and more besides, wrote the bible under the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit.
So, can we see the Holy Spirit at works within these verses? Well yes but it was a quite a challenge, so let us have a look to him at work.
In 2 Samuel we see David making a lamentation for Saul just after his death and it is a nice lamentation from David to Saul. It is an elegy however … not a divine hymn nor a Psalm as it does not mention God in it, nor does it claim to be inspired from God.
It is a lamentation to honour the life of Saul and I found this very strange as Saul was the sworn enemy of David, yet here David is praising Saul’s name. Very strange indeed, but it does make sense if you considered the fact that David always considered Saul as God’s anointed, even though Saul was rejected by God, and hated David so much so that he plotted and tried to kill him many times.
Yet here we see David not only praising Saul’s name to himself, but declaring it to the nation; even to the extent of stating that this lamentation is to be taught to the children of Judah. We are even reading it today and we can conclude therefore that David had great compassion for Saul, and … undeservedly we might say.
In today’s Psalm we heard: “O Israel, wait for the LORD, for with the LORD there is mercy; With him there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.
I think it is safe to say that if God is going to rescue Israel from their sins he has great pity, or great compassion for them. Here we see the word compassion arising again; and again we could say undeservedly.
Now in the Gospel message this morning we read of a man named Jairus, one of the leaders of the synagogue, who came and fell at the feet of Jesus. This man Jairus an enemy of Jesus: he viciously opposed Jesus, and one of those who eventually engineered the death of Jesus on the cross. But here this Jairus begged Jesus repeatedly to save his daughter from the point of death, and this time Jesus showed compassion and went with him and healed his daughter. Again we could say this undeserved but Jesus rose above the situation and showed grace. Grace is that merit without favour. Grace is totally undeserved or it would not be grace, it would be by works.
To continue on this same passage, we also see woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years; and whose condition was growing worse. Now we do not know if this woman was a Jew or a Gentile but we do know that her illness made her ceremonially unclean; and this disqualified her from mixing with the crowds under strict Jewish law.
Jesus however did not rebuke her as was expected, but showed great compassion, and encouraged her to make a public confession of faith. Then he rewarded her testimony with the assurance that she could go in peace, and be healed of her disease. And here again we see compassion and grace clearly being administered.
We now move on to our New Testament passage in 2nd Corinthians where we read in verses 13 and 14 “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance”.
What Paul was saying was that the Corinthians had at that present time, more resources in their church than the Christians had in Jerusalem; and Paul is implying that they had more resources than the Macedonians; who had already given the Corinthians so generously. It was only fair therefore that the Corinthian’s show compassion to the Christians at Jerusalem and help them out as they had been graciously helped out by the Macedonians in the past. Notice the compassion and grace again.
Compassion is therefore defined as a feeling of distress and pity for the suffering or misfortunes of another. Compassion is from the Latin; “com” meaning “with” and “pati” meaning to “suffer”. It is a deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with a wish to relieve it.
God's character embodies the definition of compassion and his desire to free others from their suffering. God has compassion for people that are lost; he has compassion for people that repent, and compassion from those who have a true desire to turn away from their sin. God basically has compassion for people that have a love and faith in Him.
As our Creator, God desires us to be as compassionate as Him and show human kindness to others. To be compassionate we must have love in us that compels us to do good deeds. If we just do good deeds for someone, but we have no love for that person we are therefore not compassionate.
Let us now see if we measure up with this simple illustration.
During the American Civil War there was this story of two women who arrived at the Whitehouse and asked Abraham Lincoln of the well being of their relative General Lou Wallace who had been reported missing. General Wallace had been involved in a vicious battle, and they had heard there was a fatality named Wallace in dispatches.
But after learning that the Wallace mentioned, was a different Wallace, and that their Wallace had survived, they spoke rather glibly of their gladness being thankful that it was not “their Wallace". Lincoln responded soberly, "Yes, but it was somebody's Wallace, wasn't it?"
I have two separate messages I want to highlight this morning, the first being the authority of the Holy Spirit, and how he is present throughout scripture. I think we can safely say that the Holy Spirit was present while these 4 passages were written, don’t you; giving clearly a theme of compassion and grace. So when you read your bible, be particularly aware of his presence throughout. In fact, make a point and look for look for his presence and influence, asking him what exactly what you need to hear.
My second message this morning was that of compassion and grace; which is a very big issue for the church today.
The church is a community of people who present living proof of a loving God, to a watching world. … A living proof to a watching world! So we have to ask ourselves individually, and as a church, how are we a living proof of a living God. It is a fair question, and one that will challenge us if we take it seriously because the world looks for God through us.
We are not too just point at things which we see as wrong like some armchair expert; we are to be part of the solution to these problems we see. A solution we can only achieve if we but submit to the will of God, with the outward signs of caring, strength and forgiveness.
And to do that we need to know God and his ways. We need to draw on his power, and we need more than anything to know that what we do is within his will for us, and with in his will for those we intend to help.
So the first place to start on any mission of compassion is to seek God and his take on matters before we do anything. If we do not have the ability to commune with him then al our efforts will be feeble without him. So it is with him we seek, it is with him, we speak, and it is with him we await our instruction.
So let pray this simple prayer:
Father we thank you for Jesus and we thank you for this your word; and we pray that as we think about helping others, we will respond with the obedience that comes through our communion with you. For it is in you we thrust and it is in Jesus name we ask that your will, not our, be done on this earth. Amen.
