For compassion

In seminary, we learn a lot about the ancient languages of Hebrew and Greek. One of the words I became so fascinated by and attached to is the Greek word for “compassion.” And honestly, translating some parts of the Bible into English does a disservice to the beauty behind those ancient languages.

Today, when we say someone is compassionate, we often think of them having pity—that they are sensitive to the state of their neighbor. I think that is fine enough, until we hear how compassion is used in the Bible. Over and over again, we see Jesus looking into the crowd following him; we see Christ looking at the disciples; and we hear how Jesus is moved with compassion for them.

Jesus isn’t just having pity on them. Jesus doesn’t just care about them. Jesus has deep compassion for those he encounters, and it is more than an external feeling. If we look at the Greek word for compassion and translate it literally, it means something close to “to be moved to one’s gut.”

This literal sense of the term means that Jesus did not just feel compassion in his head or mind. He didn’t just think about compassion. The compassion described toward the crowds came deep within his body—it came from his gut. Compassion is a gut reaction that moves us, makes us uncomfortable, and draws us deeply toward God.

Compassion in the Bible is about more than simply seeing a person in need and recognizing that need. That would just be awareness. Compassion is the next step. We learn the way of compassion through Christ here in our gospel. Jesus looks out at the crowd and something moves in his gut. The knot in his stomach tightens, and he must act; Christ cannot send the crowd away.

The disciples urge Jesus to send the crowd away. They are in a deserted place, they know their food is limited, and there is no logical way to feed all these people. With just that context, we might think the disciples are naive in their faith and failing to trust Christ. But if we carefully look at this story in the larger picture, the disciples are also trying to protect Jesus a little bit.

Jesus and the disciples have not just happened into a deserted place with limited food. Christ deliberately went out there to get away for a moment. John the Baptist has just been executed. The cousin of Christ and close prophetic friend to Jesus’ ministry was brutally murdered by the Empire. Jesus’ heart was aching, so Christ and the disciples tried to retreat from their ministry. But the crowd followed.

The disciples’ hearts were likely broken, too. They were probably fearful, knowing that if John could be executed, so could Jesus and they. So, with fear and anxiety clouding their hearts, they urge Jesus to send the crowd away. When Jesus refuses, they tell him their resources are scarce. But the compassion sitting in Jesus’ gut is pulling and tightening. Christ cannot let these people go. Perhaps in this moment of caring, Jesus is honoring the late prophet John and restoring his own heart through acts of compassion in word and deed.

The disciples, however, don’t have that same gut pull toward compassion at this moment. They are operating out of emotional weariness. They look at the massive crowd, calculate their capacity, and say, “Send them away.” And if we are honest, how often do we want to say the exact same thing?

We live in a world overflowing with endless demand and staggering statistics. According to a report published in the 2023 World Food Program, approximately 733 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy, active life. That is about one in eleven people on earth. We know the devastating ripple effects: hunger leads to chronic illness, developmental disabilities, and empty stomachs that make it nearly impossible for a child to focus in school.

When faced with numbers like 733 million, a quiet exhaustion sets in. We suffer from compassion fatigue. Our emotional bandwidth gets overwhelmed, and our immediate instinct becomes self-preservation.

So, we guard our hearts. We harden them just a little bit to survive the daily onslaught of world pain. We, like the disciples, fall into the trap of scarcity, assuming that if we cannot solve a massive problem all at once, our small offering is pointless. We hold up our tiny resources—our small amount of energy, our modest budget, our busy schedule—and say, like the disciples, “We have only five loaves and two fish. What is that among so many?”

But look at how Jesus responds in our gospel today.

Jesus doesn’t shame the disciples for their exhaustion, nor does Christ dismiss the reality of the crowd’s deep hunger. Instead, Jesus takes that gut-wrenching compassion—that deep ache pulling from within God’s body—and issues a radical charge: “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

Jesus doesn’t ask us to provide a miracle of infinite wealth, energy, or answers on our own. Christ simply asks us to stop sending people away and stop discounting what we have. For, by the grace of God, what we have is enough to help this world.

In the hands of Christ, small offerings undergo a holy transformation. When we bring our “little” resources—our five loaves and two fish—and place them into God’s hands, God blesses them, breaks them, and brings forth an extraordinary abundance. The best part is that after Christ brings forth abundance, he hands it right back over to the disciples to share with the crowd.

In this moment, the disciples learn to listen to the hunger pangs of compassion deep within their bellies. They learn to keep their hearts soft even when the world tries to harden them. An open, soft heart in a needy world doesn’t mean bearing the weight of 733 million people on our own shoulders; it means trusting that what we have to offer is significant in God’s economy. Nothing we offer is ever too small in God’s Kingdom.

• It looks like making meals on a Tuesday morning for Father Bill’s.
• It looks like bringing school supplies for backpacks.
• It looks like planting a community garden.
• It looks like giving out of our excess rather than hoarding out of fear.
• It looks like advocating for and supporting local and global programs that feed the hungry.

When we give our small, ordinary, and seemingly insufficient work to Jesus, we step out of the trap of scarcity and into the Kingdom of abundance. We discover that love and mercy in God’s hands are never exhausted—and that when we offer what we have, there are always baskets of grace left over. The disciples handed everything out and still had plenty, leaving 12 baskets of leftovers behind.

Even with a grieving heart, Christ still listens to the compassion unsettling his spirit, showing us that God’s compassion moves toward grief and weariness, not away from it. Jesus teaches us that the work of God keeps moving and is deeply active in love. God’s grace doesn’t wait for us to be “enough”; God’s grace invites us to bring what we have, place it in God’s hands, and wait to see how those prayers and gifts are transformed.

Remember: you are enough today and every day. Stop discounting your acts of mercy, your quiet prayers, and your gifts of grace. For in your body, you house God’s mercy. Your hands and feet are God’s hands and feet in this world.

The world can never tire of receiving God’s love and mercy—there are always baskets left over. The work continues, and may we continue to show up for the work of the Kingdom. May we feel God’s compassion brewing in our bodies, pulling us to love more tenderly and justly.

Compassion is not just a passive emotion to pass by; compassion is the work of God. Be transformed by Christ’s compassion, bring all that you have to God, and allow God’s grace to transform you into instruments of life-giving abundance for our neighbors—this day and always. Amen.