We want to think about the qualities of Christianity over these few Sundays.
• True seekers of God are people of character, compassion and conviction.
• Last week we talked about character – that’s what we want to build up – a character that reflects the beauty of Christ.
• God is concerned about that, so must we.
Character is WHO we are on the inside, not simply what we say or do, because we can say or do things simply to impress others.
• Character is a CHOICE; it is not a gift or an endowment. It has to be built up over time, by the right choices we made in our daily life.
• We (1) search for cracks (examine our attitudes and behaviours); look for patterns (repeated behaviours that we have); (3) face the music (confront them honestly), and rebuild good characteristics. By the grace of God we CAN be like Christ, because it is not of human effort.
Today we want to talk about another indistinguishable mark of a Christian – compassion. Let’s read Luke 6:32-36.
The Bible paints this one truth with many different strokes and colours.
• To show compassion is a commandment, it is a mark of the new life in Christ, Jesus demonstrated it and talked about it in His parables, and Paul emphasized this when he wrote to the churches in his epistles.
• You can’t run away from this – love is the hallmark and the evidence of true Christianity. John 13:35 says the world will see and know that we are disciples of Jesus because we love.
• John puts it quite bluntly in 1 John 4:20 “anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” The one who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar, he says.
God demands it because this is possible in Christ. We are able to love the way God loves, even so those who are unlovable.
• The love does not come from within us; it comes from God.
• We have to believe, that in Christ we can love beyond ourselves.
I saw on MIO TV a few weeks ago the show “Miami Medical”. It features the activities that happened in an Emergency Unit of a hospital.
• Things are very different in an Emergency room, compared to anywhere else on earth. The mood is different, the atmosphere is different.
• The people are fighting to save lives. They work with each other and for each other, for a grand purpose of saving everyone that comes into that room.
• They cannot seem to do enough for each other. No one is selfish, no one is rude.
• The distinction of race, class, or status melts away. Everyone pulls together for everyone else, to do a good job.
It’s almost like the world changes in this room.
• It seems that loving someone’s life is what life is all about.
• There is no time for quarrel, no room for jealousy, no place for grudges.
• But isn’t this how the Lord wants us to live, to be concerned about loving someone else, saving the dying and nursing the injured?
• To be in a room where compassion flow and healing take place?
We are called to live our lives like these people – passionate about saving lives and showing compassion.
• Rom 5:5 says God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. We can show more love and compassion, because God has given us His love.
• 1 John 4:19 “We love because He first loved us.”
• So we can and we want to SHOW more of His love and compassion. This is our calling.
Loosen the tap more and allow God’s love to flow… out from us and through us.
• Very often we stifle that flow because of negligence (did not notice), our indifference (don’t bother), our self-centredness (selfish). The tap is closed, shut.
• It doesn’t come to us naturally, to love and care for others more than ourselves.
• But God says He is the One who enable us to do that, so we need to trust Him and learn to cultivate a love that is beyond ourselves.
The Parable of the Samaritan Man (Luke 10) showed us even religious people have a problem with love.
• We expect the priest and Levite to know better – having the knowledge of the Scriptures and serving in the Temple, but they failed.
• So having a church title, taking up a church post, doing church things, do not make you a compassionate person.
Compassion must be cultivated. You need to make a conscious effort to grow in love, to be a loving person, to be sensitive to the needs of others.
• How do we grow in love? Jesus says at the end of telling the parable, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37)
(1) Cultivate Compassion by Doing Little Acts of Kindness
Love is cultivated each time we take a step in showing mercy, giving help, comforting someone, showing care and concern.
• It is not something we can learn in a classroom; it is something we do on the road, to someone who is in need.
• We keep doing this and cultivate a HABIT of doing it all the time.
In the parable, doing nothing is not acceptable. They have not committed anything grossly sinful. Simply walking “by on the other side” is not acceptable to Jesus.
I read this the other day: “The Sin of Doing Nothing”
I was hungry and you formed a humanities club and discussed my hunger.
I was imprisoned and you crept off quietly to your chapel and prayed for my release.
I was naked and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.
I was sick and you knelt and thanked God for your health.
I was homeless and you preached to me of the spiritual shelter of the love of God.
I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me.
You seem so close to God; but I am still very hungry, and lonely, and cold.
Rom 15:1-3 “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. 2 Each of us should please his neighbour for his good, to build him up. 3 For even Christ did not please himself…”
Gal 6:2 “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.”
• Do we carry each other’s burdens, or do we, more often than not, lay upon others a greater burden?
• Do we, by our actions, our attitudes or words, cause others to feel more burdened or discouraged?
Compassion says, “I will carry your burdens. I will share the load with you.”
(2) Cultivate Compassion by Identifying with Others
That was what Jesus did – He became one of us.
• Heb 4:15 says we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses; He is tempted just like we are. He stepped literally into our shoes.
• We want to learn to put ourselves in other’s shoes.
• Phil 2:3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
Compassion identifies with the other person’s needs, and does not question his worthiness.
• Jesus says in Luke 6 that everyone knows how to love those who love them or treat them well. You don’t have to teach me to do that.
• But I have to learn to love those I do not like, or are not like us. We find it difficult because we feel they are not worthy of our love.
• But God’s love has nothing to do with worthiness. It has nothing to do with whether the person deserves it or not. God loves us despite who we are.
Harold Kushner in Who Needs God tells of a short story about the wife of a British colonel in India. She was expecting important guests for tea one afternoon. She looked out from her front porch after lunch and was horrified to see that the man who swept the leaves off her stairs every morning had not shown up for work.
When he finally got there, she blasted at him. “Don't you realize what you've done to me? Do you know who's coming here in an hour? I ought to fire you and see to it that you don't get another job anywhere in the city!”
Without looking up the man said, “I'm sorry. My little girl died during the night and we had to bury her today.”
For the first time, the colonel's wife began to see this man as something more than just a device that swept her stairs every day.
[Harold Kushner, Who Needs God (New York: Summit Books, 1989), p. 100.]
Education experts tell us empathy can be taught. You can help children from an early age. Parents can teach them to empathize with others by asking them questions like, “How would you feel if you were in the place of... or when something like this happened to you…”
Asking such questions from time to time will encourage the child to project himself into other people in order to identify with and understand them better.
The child will begin to ask the same question silently in his or her head when dealing with others.
Why are mission trips often so life-changing? Because we get to see people who are in need, who are less well-off than we are, people who are struggling…
• We pray that God will open our eyes to see these, that we may come to understand them and identify with them.
• 1 John 3:17-18 “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”
• We are sons of the Most High, Jesus says. And if He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, so must we. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Conclusion:
Let us leave heart-prints of love everywhere we go… not just words, not just things, but touches of compassion and love and kindness wherever we are.
HEART-PRINTS
Whatever our hands touch - we leave fingerprints!
On walls, on furniture, on doorknobs, dishes, books,
As we touch we leave our identity.
Oh please where ever I go today, help me leave heartprints!
Heartprints of compassion, of understanding and love;
Heartprints of kindness and genuine concern
May my heart touch a lonely neighbour
Or a runaway daughter, or an anxious mother,
Or, perhaps, a dear friend!
I shall go out today to leave heartprints,
And if someone should say “I felt your touch,”
May that one sense be YOUR LOVE touching through ME.
… author unknown
So keep a look out and cultivate compassion by doing little acts of kindness and learn to put ourselves in the shoes of others and identify with their needs.
• There will be surely someone who needs your help today, someone who needs you?
• Let’s bless them with God’s love.
