Jesus is in high demand in our reading for this morning. His disciples have just returned from a ministry tour. Jesus had sent them out with only the clothes on their backs to teach, heal and cast out demons in his name. Returning from their mission, energized by what they had done, the disciples want to share with Jesus “all they had done and taught.”

In the midst of that moment, Jesus, knowing from experience that these excited disciples would also be very tired disciples, takes them away to a deserted place so they can rest for awhile. Or at least he tries to take them away for rest… but instead of finding a quiet, peaceful place for rest and renewal, when they reach the other side of the Sea of Galilee, they find a crowd of needy people who are waiting for the One they have heard about. All they want to do is touch Jesus’ cloak because Mark tells us “all who touched it were healed.”

Jesus could have resisted this interruption and sent the crowds away telling them they needed rest but Mark tells us that Jesus was filled with compassion for the crowd for they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” They had no one who cared about their needs. Because they were sick or thought to be possessed by a demon, they were outsiders - oppressed not only by the political leaders of the day but also the religious leaders. They were nobodies in the world in which they lived.

Jesus offered them something much different than the religious leaders that were called to shepherd these people. Rather than judging and pointing fingers, rather than telling the people how they must have sinned to be in the situation they were in, rather than pushing the crowds away for fear he and his disciples would be made unclean, Jesus showed them a ministry of care and compassion. A ministry in which they were enveloped in God’s care and loved them for who they were. A ministry that dared to touch the untouchable, not only healing their diseases but also proclaiming their worth. Jesus made the nobodies… somebody.

He didn’t sit in the temple and shepherd the people through laws, regulations and religious codes, Jesus worked amongst the people. Bone-tired, excited disciples watched as Jesus met those in the crowd where they were and had compassion on them feeding them not only spiritually, but also physically (feeding of the five thousand is between our readings for this morning).

You’ll notice that Jesus’ compassion wasn’t from a distance. He didn’t just look at the situation from afar and say: Geez, I really feel sorry for those people who are being excluded and treated unfairly by the religious leaders. I really feel bad the religious leaders are not doing what God has called them to do. No, the compassion Jesus shows is close up. It’s hands-on and active.

From a distance it’s easy to make judgments about people… those unclean lepers or those who are ill or disabled because of things they did.  My father-in-law always used to say: “It’s easy to hate a group… it’s hard to hate a person.” The compassion Jesus showed doesn’t allow us to look at the group we are forced to look at the person.

Having this kind of close up, hands-on compassion for others may challenge your pre-conceived ideas about some things. Imagine Jesus’ disciples – good Jewish boys – watching as Jesus broke all the boundaries of clean and unclean they had learned during their religious upbringing. Having compassion for others as Jesus did might even find us challenging the accepted powers and authority of the day as well.

There is a true story of a boy who suffered under the Nazis during WWII. This Jewish boy was living in a small Polish village when he and all the other Jews in the vicinity where rounded up by Nazi SS troops and sentenced to death. This boy joined his neighbors in digging a shallow ditch for their graves. Then they were lined up against a wall and machine-gunned. Their corpse fell into the shallow grave and the Nazis covered their crumpled bodies with dirt. But none of the bullets hit this little boy. His naked body was splattered with the blood of his parents. And when they fell into the ditch he pretended to be dead and fell on top of them. The thin covering of dirt was so thin that it didn’t prevent the air from getting to him so that he could breath.

Several hours later when darkness fell, this 10-year-old boy clawed his way out of the shallow grave. With blood and dirt caked to his little body he made his way to the nearest house. And he begged for help. Recognizing him as one of the Jewish boys marked for death by the SS the woman who answered the door screamed at him to go away, and slammed the door. He was turned away at the next house as well as the one after that. In each case the unwillingness to get into trouble with the SS overpowered any feeling of compassion. Dirty, bloodied and shivering the little boy went from one house to the next begging for someone to help him. Then something inside him guided him to say something very strange for a Jewish boy to say. When the next family who responded to his timid knocking began to shut the door on him they heard him cry, “Don’t you recognize me? I’m the Jesus you say you love.” After a pause the woman who stood in the doorway swept him into her arms and kissed him. From that day on that family cared for the boy as if he were one of their own.

Having compassion for others in the way that Jesus did will help us to “see the face of the Jesus we love” in those we serve each day. We won’t see them as a group, a disability or an issue but rather a person – a child of God. May we live out Jesus’ compassion in our ministry as God’s people in this world “seeing the face of Jesus” in all whom we encounter. Amen.