Moved by Compassion

“When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” - Matthew 14:14

Before Jesus feeds the five thousand, he sees them. Before there are loaves and fishes, Jesus sees the crowd.

That may sound insignificant up against one of Jesus’ most famous miracles, but it is not. And we (color me guilty) too often brush past the opening of this miracle and miss that Jesus is moved by compassion.

Jesus does not see the people as a problem to manage. He sees the people. He sees the hungry, the hurting, and the frightened. And he has compassion on them.

Biblical compassion is more than feeling sorry for someone. It is a love that moves. Jesus sees the suffering of the crowd and is moved by it. And because the Church is the body of Christ (no matter how often we forget), this is our calling.

We are called to see the people others overlook.

We are called to notice the lonely neighbor, the exhausted parent, the frightened immigrant, the person choosing between medicine and groceries, and the friend carrying a grief they can’t yet name.

We can’t heal every wound or solve every problem. We just can’t. The disciples certainly could not feed the five thousand on their own. But Jesus did not ask them to save the world. He asked them to place what they had into his hands.

And the same is true of the Church today.

We offer meals, make phone calls, visit the sick and incarcerated, speak out against cruelty, welcome strangers, and refuse to look away. We do these things not because we are the Savior, but (and this is the big but) because we belong to the Savior whose compassion is stronger than our scarcity.

The body of Christ begins its ministry the same way Jesus did: by seeing the people in front of us, being moved with compassion, and trusting that Christ can use what we place in his hands.

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