Good morning and welcome to Tuesday’s foundation podcast. Today’s passage is Matthew 9: 18-38. We are going to focus on verses 35-36:

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

REFLECTION:

I have an on/off relationship with the news. Perhaps you do too. I often hear things like – just don’t watch the news. It’ll just depress you. It’s all bad. And I’ve had periods during this last 6 months where I’ve actively sought to try and distance myself from it. The problem is….you can’t. The great theologian Karl Barth famously said that as disciples: ‘We must hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.’ Our faith doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We navigate, we make sense of and we speak into the times we live in by keeping ourselves informed, but also by keeping ourselves grounded in the Word.

I’m in a cycle where I’m watching the 10’o clock news again…if I’m honest it feels a bit like Groundhog Day except there isn’t Bill Murray, there’s Hugh Pym telling us again how much the infection rate has gone up, or Fergus Walsh and his graphs.

And it’s weird…because I view all of this with a certain degree of detachment. Sat in my comfy living room, listening to the students next door laugh… And occasionally I catch myself and I think…’ Is this all real?’

Compassion.

In today’s reading, which I’d encourage us all to read again later, we see Jesus ushering in the Kingdom of God with beautiful miracles – a woman who has suffered 12 years of marginalization due to bleeding, two blind men, a demon-possessed man and even a dead child  – all healed, restored, raised. It’s utterly incredible. Sometimes we forget just how powerful our God is. The Gospels remind us again that he is Lord. Nothing is impossible for Him. And that sickness has no place in the new kingdom he is building.

But, as I prayed, I was drawn to the end of the passage which in effect summarises much of what is happening at this point in Jesus’ ministry. Wherever he goes the Gospel is proclaimed and broken and hurting people are restored and healed. And then we read verse 36….

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them….

The word compassion is actually a Latin word. It literally means ‘to suffer with’. To literally feel another’s pain and anguish. The Greek actually takes this word even further still – to be moved in one’s bowels. Like when we see another human being’s situation, experience, or feelings and we literally have a bodily reaction…we are moved by them. We feel their suffering. We suffer with them.

This is the response of Jesus to the pain and the brokenness that he saw around Him. I’m reminded here of Jesus’ response to his friend Lazarus dead in the tomb – he wept. Jesus takes upon himself the pain and suffering of those around him. It burdens Him. It wounds Him. And of course our minds then move to the cross where we see our saviour – bearing upon himself the weight of our sin and shame. The prophesised suffering servant in Isaiah…and by His wounds we are healed.

There’s one other verse that really leapt out at me as I read this passage and it’s verse 22. Jesus is on the way, pushing through the crowd, to see the synagogue leader’s daughter who is very close to, maybe already dead. And a woman grabs the edge of his cloak. And we read that…Jesus turned and saw her.

He saw her. And in that moment Jesus sees the shame, the isolation, the burden this poor woman has carried for so many years. Something within Him is moved to the very core. He feels the weight of her suffering. He connects with her pain. And in that moment we see both the humanity of our saviour and the divinity...