One at a Time | Jesus Was Moved by Compassion

all right here's how i want to start today i want you to if you came with someone today i want you to turn to them
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and i want you to tell them what emotion in your life causes you to just kind of act out of
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your emotion what's the one emotion that you wrestle with the most go ahead and share that with the person you came with
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okay you know pretty quiet how about okay now now turn to the person you came with and tell them what the real emotion
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is that they wrestle with and that they deal with
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how many of you um anger was one of them
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no i used to be a golfer i kind of i still golf i'm not very good at it now i used to be like able to hold my own but
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one thing i was i was good at in golf was was something i was probably better than most of you at
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and that was throwing my clubs and by all store clubs like there's all kinds of different ways to throw clubs
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but i was a baseball player so mine was always the like the rotating club down the fairway
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sometimes further than my ball went uh but that was just kind of how i responded when i was in high school
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that's what i did okay so one day i went golfing with a buddy of mine and i was coaching helping coach a little
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league team at the time and we took the coach's son with us
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so we're golfing and the kid watches me throw throw the club a couple of times like a professional and uh we're on this this
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par three and he's chipping over the green if you play golf before you know how frustrating it can be when you go to
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chip onto the green and the ball goes over the green super frustrating and i watch him do that and as i got
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ready to hit my own ball i looked up and here goes that kid
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right in the middle of a pond his dad's wedge
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his dad's brand new wedge so in that moment i realized well this
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isn't going to go well at all and secondly i should probably learn to control my emotions maybe a little bit
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better uh on the golf course it may be in life in general like we all have
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emotions we can think of a million different types of emotions that kind of kind of boil up in our lives and cause us to act out of our emotions but
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there's one emotion i want to talk about today that is well it's jesus's emotion
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it's the emotion that jesus changed the world with because he allowed this emotion
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actually become action that emotion is compassion
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now compassion is a hard emotion for us to really define sometimes so i want to show you the actual
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definition of is a sympathetic consciousness of others distressed together
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with a desire to alleviate it so let's unpack this for a moment it's a lot like sympathy
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and you're aware of it and it's about other people's distress not your own
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with and this is the key with a desire to alleviate
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that distress so so that the key for compassion is a desire to do something about it
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it's this compelling feeling that we have within us that i don't want to just feel
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compassion i actually want to be compassionate i actually want to want to allow that
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emotion to turn into action in my life now we've all felt things before right
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we felt um we felt sympathy for people empathy with people we felt sad for
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people happy for people but but many times when it comes to compassion it doesn't always
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doesn't always come out the way that we hoped it would there was a study done by the university of british columbia and
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harvard in conjunction with one another and what they discovered was that the people who posted on social media
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about the subjects or causes that they were passionate about were far less likely than anyone else to
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donate financially or volunteer their time for said cause
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so the very act of posting on social media convinced people that they had been compassionate enough to
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kind of allow that feeling of needing to do something to alleviate the distress to
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be like taken care of right but you and i both know that posing on social media is not it right like we don't like
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posting on social media is just a way for us to say hey this is what i think i'm going to move on in life now but it doesn't actually change the world
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you see jesus was able to change the world through his compassion because he didn't allow compassion to stay a feeling
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he actually acted compassionately like he actually lived his life in a compassionate manner and his
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compassion didn't just stay a feeling it became an action and today we're going to look at
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kind of the story of jesus uh multiple stories of jesus so how that compassion really turned into action
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now compassion and sympathy are very similar right they they feel the same the difference between the two is what
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happens after the feeling like what actually what do we actually do about it we don't do anything it basically stays sympathy
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if we actually act on it and put it into action then we we actually become compassionate
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because compassion i think maybe is more of a a verb than it is anything else so
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one time jesus is walking with his uh disciples and there's a crowd around them and they're they're leaving this
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town these two blind individuals they know that jesus is there so they start crying out to jesus wanting jesus
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to heal them to help them out and jesus maybe heard them the first time but the
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crowd not super compassionate told them to shush and maybe their your personalities like theirs is like they're told not to do
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something so like i'm just going to do it louder so they kept yelling for jesus and then jesus responded asking them
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what they wanted and this is their response it says lord they answered we want our sight
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jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes
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immediately they received their sight and followed him so what's the very first thing that happens jesus has
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compassion on the people he didn't just like see them walk past them he actually felt compassion for
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them and then he acted to heal their sight there's another story that jesus is kind
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of kind of walking with the crowd teaching and and educating and jesus went through all the towns and villages teaching their
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synagogues proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness this is what jesus is doing
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when he saw the crowds he had compassion on them
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because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd so what jesus has compassion this is the
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first thing so then he he begins to care for them and to tend them like a sheep without
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a shepherd but there's another story that one of jesus's close friends like john the baptist
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is dead and he hears this news and he's obviously like like you would be filled with grief and
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sorrow and he needs to go find some time to mourn and process these emotions and deal with the loss and hops in the boat
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and goes across the lake gets the other side and lo and behold what does he see a crowd of people
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a crowd of people that were just simply waiting for him in the midst of his grief he didn't act out of frustration
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or anger or hurt or pain jesus acted out of compassion when jesus landed and saw a large crowd
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he had what compassion on them and he healed their sick
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so jesus lands on the shore and instead of dealing with his own grief in that moment he had compassion
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upon the crowd so he acted so he spends the day healing them and and tending to their needs and comforting them and then
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the end of the day comes along and what happens at the end of the day they're hungry so he sits them all down in groups and
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he takes a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish and he multiplies it miraculously and and feeds everyone to
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their fill like he did this all day and he tended to them and had compassion
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on them and then when it was all over the end of the day he finally had time to tend to his own grief and his own
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sorrow and his own mourning over losing a friend the first thing we should see a pattern at this point
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the first thing that jesus does is he has compassion for people
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and then there's always a then with jesus and then he acts
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there's another story in the gospel of luke and uh in this one jesus is traveling there's a crowd around them
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like usual and they come up to another crowd and this crowd is a different type of crowd
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because this is a funeral procession for a young man who has died and this was the only son of a widow now this is
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important because this isn't 2022 for them this is the first century and this woman has lost her husband
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and has now lost her only son so there are no males in the household anymore and in the first century
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that was not a good scenario she's not allowed to own property as a woman she's not allowed to do a lot of
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stuff like like her future well there's no real discernible future for her
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so not only has she just lost her son but but in a way she's lost her own life
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so you can imagine what it must feel like like like the world's just falling down around her like everything's collapsing
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some of you have been there before some of you have been in this situation where everything has gone wrong
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and no matter what you do how hard you try just everything seems to go wrong
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maybe so much so that you've even questioned the existence of god himself because
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everything has gone sideways and if you haven't been there you've
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known someone who has you've known someone who have lost loved ones
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gotten that horrible cancer diagnosis lost their job
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where the world just was crumbling down around them like you you don't have to stretch very far to understand what
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desperation looks like pain and sorrow and helplessness
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and this is what jesus has come in encountered with in this woman is this just helplessness and this desperation
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in her life because again not only has she lost her son but she's lost her life and this is how jesus engages
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when the lord saw her listen to these words his heart went out to her
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and he said don't cry then he went up and touched the buyer that they were carrying him on and the
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bearers stood still he said young man i say to you
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get up the dead man sat up began to talk
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and jesus gave him back to his mother now i know the scripture didn't use the
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word compassion but what happened here jesus he saw distress
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his heart went out to her and then and again there's always a then with jesus and then he did something
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like his heart broke for this woman and he had compassion on her and he acted
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now here's the thing about compassion that we see in jesus story compassion is meant to be seen
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not just felt i think too many of us have just allowed compassion to be this this thing that we
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feel we feel sympathy we feel empathy we feel these things we don't actually do anything so we don't actually have the
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compassion that jesus had the compassion that jesus had was something that was seen
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it turned into actions that should require that we do something to alleviate the distress
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you know strangely enough in all these stories there's something in common jesus didn't have a pre-existing earthly
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relationship with any of them he simply saw people in front of him
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who had a need maybe physical or spiritual or mental or emotional or relational and
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and he had compassion on them and he did something for them
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and that's how he changed the world and we've been talking throughout this series you've heard this this language
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of the one when we talk about the one it's really just our way of talking about the the
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person or the people that jesus has put in your life for you to be the love of jesus for
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for you to be the the compassion of jesus for and what we begin to discover in jesus
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story is that maybe just maybe the one that he puts in your life is not someone that you know
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it may just be some random person that shows up in your life who serves you lunch today after church
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it could be someone you run into at the store or at the lake or wherever you may be that jesus puts in front of you who's
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in distress and doesn't need your sympathy but needs your compassion
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so we've been praying this prayer throughout this series we continue to ask you to pray this prayer lord
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give me your eyes for the one and this is our way of saying lord would
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you break my heart for what breaks yours like help me to see people the way that
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you see people help me to to see the widow the way that you saw the widow that your heart went
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out to her so much so that you had to do something like lord you break our heart for what
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breaks yours because the jesus kind of compassion
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doesn't just break your heart it moves your muscles like the jesus kind of compassion just
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stirs us to action maybe one of the ways we can look at it is that the compassion the feeling of
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compassion within us that the feeling of not just sympathy but sympathy that makes us feel like we want to do
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something about it is the holy spirit's way of saying hey this is kind of what i want you to do
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maybe it's the holy spirit's prompting to tell us that this is how you can change the world
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and even create a ripple effect i mean think about the blind guys that jesus healed not only did he restore their sight but
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an entire crowd of people witnessed a miracle when jesus was walking through towns
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teaching and healing people had compassion for people not just did he impact their lives but he was able to
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train up and be an example for a bunch of disciples that he would later send out to do the exact same thing when he
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fed 5 000 people with just a little bit of bread and a little bit of fish when he was in the midst of grieving because
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he had compassion on people the bible tells us that many people were convinced that jesus was the
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messiah when jesus raised that boy from the dead not only did he restore life to the boy
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he restored life to his mother and there's this like ripple effect that
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happens when we just simply show compassion the way that jesus did and it's not just jesus's show
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john chapter 15 says it's ours my command is this love each other as i have loved you
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show compassion on one another as i have shown compassion on you
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look i don't know what yours looks like i don't know what your next step is to
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to step into compassion maybe for you it's just to finally put some action to that feeling that you've had within
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yourself or maybe for you it's to actually i don't know take some steps to just act
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compassionately even if you don't feel it in 1971 there was a a study done at
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stanford university where they they created a mock prison in the basement and undergraduate students served as
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prisoners and as guards and they were just kind of monitoring what would happen if if we lived this out for a
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while and about a day into it the guards began to demonstrate authoritarian behavior
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and they began to even humiliate and harass the prisoners and the prisoners the remember not real
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prisoners these students playing the role began to become passive and quiet and
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begin to demonstrate signs of depression in their lives and the experiment had to be cut short after six days because of the
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depression that was setting in with the prisoners and what they concluded in this whole study was that there's a relationship
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between our actions and our emotions we know that right but we often think that we have emotions
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and we act out of those things like when my daughter would get in trouble when she was little we'd send her to her room to decompress and we thought she was
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stomping on the floor but what she was really doing was chucking things against the wall and we finally realized that when there were
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there are nicks all over the rental wall that we had because that's what her emotions were
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doing was causing anger like she's young she's learning how to deal with those things but what that study and so many other
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studies have shown us is that it works in the inverse as well that if you don't feel love
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but begin to act love you'll actually begin to feel it
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but maybe for some of us what we need to do is start acting compassionately and then we'll start feeling some compassion
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because some of you may have been sitting here like oh tony i don't i don't feel compassion am i dead inside no you just you start acting
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compassionately start loving people the way that jesus would
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and friends i don't know again i don't know what that looks like for you i don't know what your next step is maybe maybe your next step is your neighbor
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who's going through a really hard time right now just need somebody to listen
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just need you to take a little bit of time out of your day and just listen
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or maybe i don't maybe it's bigger than that maybe what god has laid on your heart is
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something actually quite huge like what god did in lisa's story
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so i work in the medical field i deal with a variety of patients and some of those patients include
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patients that are going to be going on dialysis or are on dialysis and there were three patients
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back to back that i just felt this like tug
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at my heart [Music]
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i genuinely care for people and i want to help people but i would have never thought to
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donate an organ to go through a major surgery but i didn't pursue it i just but i
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thought about it every day since then it was always on my mind and so i had never talked to my family
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about it because i wasn't doing anything about it and then came the no needs project at
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church and i thought well we could help somebody out with something and i got to the very
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bottom of the list and someone needed a kidney and i'm like what are the chances that
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this has been on my heart for a year and a half now and here it is right before me
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when i first told my husband and my youngest we had just previously lost my
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father-in-law so we were still dealing with that and you know of course my husband's
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reaction was you're crazy we can't do this right now and and uh my daughter was in tears
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and she said we just lost paw and i don't want to lose you you know she's given a a part of her
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body to some to someone else you know and
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it's been it's been kind of tough [Music] over time we kind of talked about a
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little bit here and there here and there and then ultimately it just came down to me
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um who am i to to deny her what she really feels listening to my family
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and not being prepared to answer back but just to hear what they have to say
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respectfully taking in their feelings and their emotions
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i think small group has been an amazing experience for me i've never been in a small group before and i was
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always a little intimidated by it just listening to their stories their own personal stories and their
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like stories of faith has been tremendous for me because we're all on different journeys and we all are
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on these faith journeys and we all have different stories and none is one less important than the other
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and so just to hear them and then to have a community of people that are standing by my side through this
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[Music] is amazing and it's been so wonderful and i'm so glad that i have their
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support i wanted to donate to the person on the
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no needs list but i wasn't a match so it could have ended there [Music]
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but i was offered the opportunity to then go into the paired kidney program
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which allows me to donate to a random person with the end goal of getting the kidney
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back to the person on the no needs list so it starts this chain of events
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and it's a lot of work and a lot of trying to figure out how to piece it all
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together about two and a half no just under two weeks prior to surgery
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i just have such a great support system through family and friends in the church and
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it just it's just been the most rewarding
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i've been on so far so we're about eight days out from surgery had pre-op today at u of m
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um nerves a little bit more didn't sleep last night had a great small group yesterday though
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um so i had a really good meeting with the pa for the surgical information
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it's great that bob could be there so he could hear everything and ask questions and it's day before surgery i not only have
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support of family and friends i have support of an army and there is
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no greater feeling of peace and love when you have
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that behind you it all started with a visually striking billboard in virginia an artist in
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search of a kidney donor that started a chain that would pass through six states across the eastern u.s we gathered most
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of the participants together on a zoom so because of garrett seeing that billboard jason
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you have a kidney now i received an awesome gift yeah thank you lisa klaus had heard about jason in her
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church newsletter when she wasn't a match for him she had agreed to help form a chain whatever we need to do
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let's do this so you gave your kidney to brian at wake
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forest have you met brian yet i have not hey brian hi friends
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good how are you i'm great bless you thank you so much it's a pleasure to meet you
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i'm so happy that so many people were helped out but i cannot explain what a blessing this has been for me
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i've been waiting to see what my angel looks like and so it's uh it's a honor to to finally see you i
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want to say to all of the donors because all of you may made this happen for each of us
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not just one of you all of you this chain would not exist without you so thank you and thank you is way too
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small of a word people like lisa are just awesome because she didn't know who i was she didn't know who i voted for
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she doesn't know what my beliefs are she just wanted to be able to change somebody's life for the donors it's been
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life-changing too it took less than a month to choreograph all this that is really fast the donors
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say that they bounce back quickly they're really hoping that this chain story inspires other people to donate oh
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let's hope so i didn't really i didn't know about this i think this is a phenomenal idea hanging forward what a great story thank
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you [Music]
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i grew up in the church and it was always there with me i always
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believed but i was always one of those people that well god doesn't talk to me why doesn't he talk to me
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you always hear people saying that he talks to you well i just wasn't listening
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and this was something that was so clear as day
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and once i started listening and following it was like a whole new world opened up and my faith has just grown tremendously
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in these past few months just going through this process and seeing the works at our hand and the people that are involved in
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i just feel like this has given me such great purpose there's been such a peace and a comfort
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and i think that's the thing i've been looking for for so long and this is how i found it
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[Music]
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so after service um as you leave here what we're gonna a couple individuals at both doors have
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a clipboard with a um a piece of paper on it and you can just kind of write your name down on it and
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tell us what organ you're gonna donate that's such an awesome story um just an
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amazing story of one of the the people who call 242 home and
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this is what god did in her life and i love i love the end of that that story
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where she found what she was looking for through through the act of compassion you see compassion isn't
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just about the other person it's about you too it's about living in the fullness of what god has created you
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for i think like we we often stop short and we think that like hey our relationship with jesus is about just having a relationship with jesus and
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he's like no no it's it's much bigger than that it's about changing the world
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one at a time by just having compassion like i've had compassion on you
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and maybe maybe for some of us one of the things that we need to kind of wrap our minds around is that the the
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key this is it like this is the key to showing jesus compassion in this world
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is to experience it it's to receive it
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like if you haven't experienced the compassion of jesus in your life you will never show it you'll never live it
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out but when you experience it when you when you receive the compassion of jesus in your life that
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man it just overflows out of you in a way that actually changes the world
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what we see in the story of jesus is that it starts with compassion
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and then it turns into action that's how jesus changed the world and
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that's how he wants you to change the world but first he wants his compassion to change your
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world some of us here today
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you you've never experienced that before you've never really received the compassion of jesus you've you've you've
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heard about jesus you've learned about jesus you know about jesus you might be able to quote scripture to
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me all day long but maybe you've never actually like really received
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that compassion that that love
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you see i i think we have to remember the the father god like when he when he
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looked upon humanity you and me and saw us as broken and lost and sinful and in
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desperation in despair
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in distress he looked upon us and said not just i love them but i'm going to
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i'm going to do something so he sent his son to die for you
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to alleviate that distress in your life and when jesus was on that cross like
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the gospels tell us like the things that he said from the cross and and one of those in the gospel of john he looks
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down upon his mother and the disciple he loved presumably john and and he said
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hey john take care of my mom like in his distress
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as he's hanging on the cross in pain about to take his last breath the only thing he thought about was hey
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john we could take care of my mom like he had compassion on her why because she was going to be left alone
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and the gospels also tell us that when he hung on the cross dying a death at the hands of humans
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he looked into the heavens and said to the father father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing
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they were killing him and he said god forgive them why did he
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do that because he had compassion on us
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and friends when he was on that cross like he wasn't thinking of himself he was thinking of you
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[Music] he was thinking of you
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so we're going to enter into that time of service that's just set aside for you to just encounter god
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just receive his compassion experience his compassion and there's multiple ways that we offer every week to do this
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there's tables in the back with candles on them that prayer warrior would love to pray with you maybe for you it's just like
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hey i don't know if i've ever experienced this compassion before or maybe it's i don't know how to step
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into compassion right now like we would love to support you in prayer in that way
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or maybe for you it's communion when you came in you received communion this is more than just uh some sort of
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symbol of what jesus did this is um experiencing the grace of jesus in your
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life experiencing the compassion of jesus in your life that when his body was broken and his blood was shed
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for you it was the greatest compassionate act that you will ever experience in your
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life and it will change your life or maybe for you you're like you know
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i've never experienced that compassion [Music] like i know about jesus but
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i just never received it i want to encourage you we have some phenomenal leaders right over here who
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would love to just have a conversation with you about what your next step might be but what might it be for you to just
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step into that compassion and experience it and receive it in a way that will that will transform your life
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and cause you to show compassion to others maybe it never looks like lisa's story did
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maybe it looks like listening or being present for someone or is doing some simple acts that
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radically change lives i remember the first like pastoral care uh job not job
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but in interaction i had in ministry fresh out of seminary no idea what i was doing
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and i remember like meeting with this this gentleman um whose world was falling apart
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i met with him a couple times and he came to me the third time and i remember him saying very distinctly he says thank
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you so much you saved my marriage and in my head i was like i did nothing
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no idea what i was doing but what it came down to is you had a person who just needed someone to listen
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someone who cared and someone who showed compassion maybe maybe that's what it is that just god put someone in your life
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that you just need to show compassion to well friends the only way you'll be able to do is when you experience the
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compassion of jesus [Music] i'm going to pray in a moment we'll step into that time but i want to share um
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i think the moment that this became real for me
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we just had our first child and uh look i was a seminary student like look i had a relationship with
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jesus but i don't think the compassion thing ever really sat in like sunk in for me
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until one night our um daughter who was was an amazing baby like sleeping through the night after
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like two weeks and it was like we were spoiled and this night she was just crying just
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crying and we had like everything we did like we couldn't fix it turned out she was just gassy but we were new parents
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we had no idea and we were like trying really hard to do everything we could and i remember 2
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a.m 2 a.m my wife who was sitting on the floor
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and i was standing behind her and she's rocking back and forth
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holding our little girl just like this and as we're both on the verge of tears
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because we don't know what to do for our little girl all i heard my wife say was i just love
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her so much i just want to fix whatever's wrong
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and in that moment i heard the holy spirit tell me tony that is how i feel about you
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i just love you so much i want to fix whatever is wrong
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friends i know you came in here with baggage i know you came here with stuff and
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anxieties and fears and angers and frustrations and pains
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and you have you have a god you have a savior that looks at you and says i love
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you so much i just want to fix whatever is wrong
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so these next few moments as we continue our worship would you just um
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would you just come to jesus and let him show you the compassion that he desires to show you
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so that you may know that he loves you so much that his compassion compels him
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to fix whatever is wrong would you pray with me
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lord god we so often in our lives we forget
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we forget the level of compassion that you have shown us
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sort of these next few moments i know it's only a few moments god but you are an awesome god you can do amazing things
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in a few moments holy spirit would you just
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remind us of that compassion and for those of us who have never felt it never
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experienced it god would you give us a taste of what it's like to be loved like that
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and lord i pray that all of us every single one of us are so filled with the compassion of jesus
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that we have no other choice than to show compassion
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to others because that god we know is how we will change the world
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it's in christ's name amen