Moved by Compassion

Think of a time in your life when you have been most moved looking upon some dire situation. Maybe looking upon victims of war, poverty, natural disaster, disease, or famine. Or maybe it’s something a little closer to home. As a volunteer police chaplain, I often ride with officers. Every time I ride with an officer for the first time, I ask my first-time questions. One of those happens to be, “what’s the toughest thing you’ve ever had to deal with as an officer?” There’s a reoccurring theme amongst the officers. The theme that comes up most often is kids. Kids that get caught in the middle of their parents’ bad choices and are helpless to do anything about it. Maybe a child lives in unspeakable conditions because parents are controlled by drug addiction and everything that goes along with that. These kinds of situations move the officers, not just emotionally, but to thorough follow-up.

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:35-36 ESV).

Matthew uses these versus to summarize the content of Jesus’ ministry. As creator, he works hard toward righting things that are wrong. Preaching to bring people to the living God and healing disease and infirmity. He seems to be standing in a place where he has a bird’s-eye view of a crowd of people. He looks upon them and sees the harassed and helpless, sheep without a shepherd. 

These words are strong. The words here translated to harassed and helpless could be literally translated to flayed (i.e., to strip off the skin) and thrown down. This is what he sees. This is not the way he created things to be. There’s another strong word here: εσπλαγχνισθη. This word means to have a feeling evoked deep down within you...in the gut. This word is a passive verb, meaning that it’s the feeling that moved Jesus. In a sense, he was not the active one, the compassion was active, moving him along.


Throughout the first three Gospels, we find Jesus and Jesus-type parable characters moved by this compassion:

• Moved by compassion, when the crowds were hungry, he multiplied food and fed them.
• Moved by compassion, Jesus healed two blind men near Jericho.
• Moved by compassion, Jesus touched a leper to heal him.
• Moved by compassion, Jesus cast a demon out of a boy.
• Moved by compassion, Jesus raised the son of a widow at Nain.
• Moved by compassion, a Samaritan helped a wounded Jew along side the road.

After looking upon these sheep without a shepherd, sheep that he was ready to take into his own fold, he was moved by compassion. What does it move him to do? I suppose that it moved him to proclaim the good news some more and heal some more, but more immediately, it moved him to look at his disciples and say, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest (Matt 9:37,38). Another strong word here, εκβαλη, is translated “send”. This is the word used when speaking of casting out demons. Important enough to him, that he’s saying that he will send out forcefully, thrust them out. He asks us to pray, pray that he will thrust out many more good Samaritan’s into the harvest.