“At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them.” “Moved with pity” …not exactly the way I think it should be translated into present day American English. Miriam Webster says that pity is (1) a: sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy b: capacity to feel pity 2: something to be regretted, e.g. it’s a pity you can’t go.  There is something soft and passive about the way we understand “pity” in our modern milieu. Not exactly a clarion call for action. Yet that is exactly Jesus’ immediate reaction.

“Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers…” And so the apostles are sent out on mission. They are given the power of the Spirit and authority.  From the very sight of seeing the people “troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd” Jesus moves to an immediate sending of people for aid, comfort, healing, and pity – at least if you understood pity from its Latin root, pietas, right relationship. A consequence of loving God, is that your pietas move you to action at the sight of suffering you are moved to right action. Like a parent. Like the dads we honor on this Father’s Day.

When you look underneath “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them.” to the original Greek, you find something – I think – very different. The underlying Greek contains a very unusual verb which is derived from the Greek word for intestines, entrails, or in our slang, your guts. And that sense is not lost in our American idioms. “When I heard the news, I felt that someone had hit me in the gut.” “I was sick to my stomach” “My insides just ached.” We can all understand such a visceral reaction. The sight, the sound, the sense perception of something that just wrenches us in the deepest recess of our soul, our being. Our reaction is instinctual, immediate, and raw. May it is better said, “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ felt like he had been punched in the gut.”

It is with good reason that more recent translations use the word compassion, from the Latin com+pati, the bear or suffer with another. Webster’s says, compassion is a sympathetic awareness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

In the Christian understanding, to truly, deeply feel compassion is to be wired into the love of God poured forth into the world. How else can you explain that among those who Jesus sent was Simon from Cana, Simon the Zealot, those folks who advocated for violent revolution to throw off the yoke of the Roman Empire. Those folks responsible for the assassination of those Jewish lackeys who worked for the Empire — people like Matthew the tax collector. Such is compassion.

It is the profundity of a connection borne in love that is at the deepest meaning of compassion in the underlying Hebrew – compassion is derived from the Hebrew word for womb… a woman’s womb. The word compassion itself, literally translated means “trembling womb.” Something that bespeaks of that ideal maternal bond with a child – somehow an experience of the very other – present and available in solidarity and communion. A compassion that springs from the heart of a parent, a loving parent… that is compassion. That is what moved Jesus. That is how we are called to be moved.

It is the compassion that moves a mom or a dad to pick up and tend to the bumps and bruises of their children. The compassion played out in the story of the Good Samaritan. As God our parent has done for us, so we are to do for all God’s children. Compassion.

It is also the compassion present when we children fail our parents, when despite all their efforts, we in our headstrong independence, choose poorly. And somehow our parents are still there to embrace us, to hold us and to move to help us fix our problems. The compassion played our in the story of the Prodigal Son, whose father, as it says, “moved by compassion” ran out to meet his son. Compassion.

It is also compassion present when dad took off the training wheels on our first bike – knowing it would be a work-in-progress. Or like when I had first gotten my driving license as a teenager and I was asked to go to the store to buy some things needed for supper. Even though I had been a passenger many times, I had never driven there. I actually did not know the exact way to go. It was Dad’s compassion that let me figure it out, experience it myself. That same compassion which plays out when Jesus sends out the Apostles.

It is time. They have watched Jesus pray, heal, preach, cast our demons and all the rest. And now it is time to let the Apostles feel the love of God pour through their lives into the world as they pray, heal, preach, cast out demons and all the rest. To experience the compassion of God and so be ever more converted to a compassionate person. To be called to action in the world.

God was moved with compassion for us. He came to us in the person of Jesus, a participant in history, entering into our human history and destiny. The fullness of compassion is known in and through Jesus, who discloses the compassion of God. In his person, God truly enters into creation, into the fabric of human life in all its contingency, frailty, and tragedy. To follow Jesus is to accept the invitation to the practice of compassion. Christian discipleship brings us face to face with human suffering and pain of enormous proportions, it should, from time to time, punch us in the gut.

There is a world out there which does not need pity. It needs compassion. The compassion of the God who loved us so much that “while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” The compassion of God experienced in our Eucharist. This Eucharist today. Our Eucharist.

 The harvest is abundant but the laborers few. Will you let the compassion which stirs your soul flow into action? Because here is the question for each of us who dares to enter the dangerous memory of the Eucharist. How will you be the compassion of God in the world?

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