The word PATHOS, from the Greek, is usually meant to convey the feeling of sympathy, or even pity. From this we get our words of “passion” and “compassion”. Texts to be explored on the upcoming weekend address God’s direct encounters with the comings and goings of humankind. Here is a God who’s not an absentee landlord on a cloud somewhere, but has specific concerns with people and joins with them in their perplexities.
JEREMIAH has some pretty tough words for the rulers of Judah in 23:1-6. He accuses them of being careless with the sheep, even to the point of scattering them to other pastures. God expects more. There is a divine pathos/compassion expressed here to restore the holy fields and to fill them with justice. “I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.” And there’s always a promise involved: we are to look for and welcome the Great Shepherd, emulating God’s protection and justice.
EPHESIANS 2:11-22 speaks about the human barricades we’ve constructed to separate “our own” sheep from “those others”. “The peace of Christ is a shocking new reality in which former enemies who would not touch or eat with one another now reach out to one another in recognition of their common humanity.” (Edwin Searcy, in FEASTING on the WORD, B 3:257) “Our reunion in Christ reunites us not only to one another. It is the path to our reunion with God.” (op.cit.) The Holy One continues to seek us out, to be involved with our human wanderings.
The Gospel, MARK 6:30-34, 53-56, tells us many things surrounding the Feeding of the Multitudes, the “missing” passage. “(Jesus) saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd…” This compassion could be said to be the center of Creation, and the life force of holy humanity. Cheryl Bridges Johns indicts us all by claiming that Holy Compassion is to “people who are weak, overwhelmed by evil forces, and unable to sustain a viable existence.” (ibid.,261) Who, me?? Here Jesus is more than a dispenser of Grace, he actually joins this crowd of directionless and desperate people.
Our God is an empathic God, one who will stoop down to the dust from which we were Created and get God’s hands dirty along with the people. We also are supposed to go to the wandering and bring them home to safety.
In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King
Please join us each Tuesday to explore scriptures to be presented on the upcoming weekend–and pass this on to your friends!
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