According to
David Desteno in his article “Compassion Made Easy” all religions view
compassion with great importance. The Dalai Lama, he added, would even argue “that individual experiences of compassion
radiate outward and increase harmony for all” (Desteno, 2012,
para. 1). I hope this is true, that compassion is the way to unite the
world. Because the sad thing is, we hear it in the news, we read it in papers. People
are aware of what is going on in the world today. And getting tempted to be
doubtful whether God is affected by these problems in society, will lead us
back to a question, what is really the compassion of God all about? I tried to
explore on it earlier based from selected passages in the Old Testament.
Now I
arrived at my real purpose, to reflect on the compassion of Jesus as the
compassion of God. I will try to arrive at a conclusion that the compassion of
Jesus is a concrete demonstration of the compassion of God. In the Gospel
according to Matthew, there are two miracles of the multiplication of loaves,
the feeding of the five thousand in chapter 14 and the feeding of four thousand
in chapter 15. In both events, the reason why Jesus performed the miracles was
his compassion towards the crowd.
So, how did
Jesus demonstrate the compassion of God when He performed the multiplication of
loaves? As a backgrounder, let us see what happened before the first event took
place in Matthew 14:13-21. “John’s disciples came and took his body and buried
it. Then they went and told Jesus.”
(Matthew 14:12 New International Version). Jesus for sure was saddened upon
knowing that John the Baptist was already dead. And so He decided to withdraw
by boat to a solitary place. But according to the narrative, when Jesus landed
and saw the crowd, He had compassion on them and so He healed their sick. When
evening came later, the multiplication of the loaves took place and Jesus fed
the five thousand. Knowing however, the culture of the Jews, the so called
miracle of multiplication, might sound unrealistic. Biblical scholars would
tell us, that Jews would always bring with them bread to eat when going out for
a journey. As I reflect on this however, whether there was really a miracle of multiplication
of loaves, literally speaking, or the miracle that occurred was actually a
change of hearts of people to share their bread with others, the fact remains,
Jesus had compassion on the crowd and despite his sorrow for John’s death, He
attended to their needs. As Allen Ross would say it “He had compassion on them all, and without
making inquiry or setting conditions He went about healing, and then fed them
all” (Ross, (n.d.). para. 19).
Let us now
proceed to the second event in Matthew 15:29-39. The narrative mentioned how
long the crowd had been following Jesus. “Then Jesus called the disciples and
said, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have already been here with
me three days and they have nothing to eat. I don’t want to send them away
hungry since they may faint on the way” (Matthew 15:32 New English
Translation). It was realistic to say that the crowd had nothing to eat since
they have been with Jesus for three days. Even if they have brought with them
bread, it could have been consumed already. There are two important things that
Jesus did here. First, He remembered that the crowd has been following him for
three days, and He was concerned of them if He would send them hungry, lest
they would collapse along the way. Second, He performed the multiplication of
loaves in order to feed the four thousand because of his compassion on them.
I know God
is never forgetful. And He is always mindful of our situations in life. Jesus
just demonstrated that. Indeed His compassion was a concrete act of providing
the needs of others, a gesture of giving hope to the hopeless and food to the
hungry. I believe it was Jesus who took the initiative to do something for the
crowd. And so it is the same with God, who would always be the one to take the
first step in loving us, and we only respond. For us who maybe are going
through a lot of difficulties and problems in life, let us reflect on the
compassion of Jesus and this will lead us back to seeing how compassionate God
is to us. Indeed, the compassion of Jesus is the compassion of God.
Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of the photos used on this post, due credits go to the owners.
References:
Desteno,
D. (2012, July 14).
Compassion Made Easy. The New York Times Sunday Review. Retrieved April 23, 2013, from http://www.nytimes.com
Latourelle, R.
& Fisichella, R.
(Eds.). (1994). The
Dictionary of Fundamental Theology.
Manila. St. Pauls.
Ross,
A. (n.d.). An Exposition of the Gospel of Matthew. bible.org. Retrieved April 23, 2013, from http://bible.org
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