Compassion: the language of heaven
Commentary
Object:
Ian Maclaren tells the story of a young woman in his book Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush. She was raised in a Christian home but left it behind in search of a better life, a freer self. She found the kind of life she thought was free, and she got for herself all that she had ever desired.
But it was never enough, and what she possessed began to possess her. Finally she didn’t even know what it meant to be free.
One day she decided to go home. When she got near the cottage of her birth, she wanted to turn around. Her footsteps faltered. She began to turn her body. But then the dogs in the yard caught scent of her. They had not forgotten her, even though it had been so long.
Suddenly the light came on at the door and the porthole opened. All she could see was her father, bathed in the light. He called out her name, even though he could not see her face. He called out her name, even though he did not have a reason to expect her. He called out her name, and suddenly her feet were running toward him.
He took her into his arms. He sobbed out blessings on her head. Later, when she told her neighbor of that night, she said, “It’s a pity, Margaret, that you don’t know Gaelic. That’s the best of all languages for loving. There are fifty words for ‘darling,’ and my father called me every one of them that night I came home.”
The language of love. The dialect of compassion. The speech of reconciliation. It is all an echo of eternity. David heard it in the voice of Yahweh as they shared the throne of Israel. Paul wrote about it to the Ephesians who were trying to build a community of heaven in the nasty places of earth. Most of all, Jesus expressed it even when he didn’t use words. He still does. And so can we.
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
David was on the rise, and Saul was a lame-duck, brooding has-been. In the end, David became king not because he was so clever or capable; he was raised to leadership precisely because he knew that he was not in charge. The true king in Israel was Yahweh. This is a lesson that Saul never fully learned.
Saul was savvy enough to recognize David’s trajectory, and the fact that Yahweh was with him. So Saul competed with both, seeking to destroy David, and trying to usurp Yahweh’s place as Israel’s rightful king. He failed miserably in both attempts. When Saul brought David into the royal palace to claim David’s reputation and prowess as his own, David’s goodness stole the hearts of Saul’s son Jonathan and daughter Michal (1 Samuel 18). When Israel’s armies continued their winning streak against the Philistines, all praise shifted from Saul to David. When Saul tried to kill David, David not only escaped numerous times but actually turned the tables and refused to harm Saul twice when the opportunities presented themselves. When Saul tried to marginalize David, David built a new community of misfits and castoffs who would eventually become the leadership team in his new administration. And when Saul found himself spiritually bereft, he turned to witchcraft rather than Yahweh and found himself rejected by both.
One of the last stories in the transitional narrative of Saul’s downward spiral is that of David defeating and destroying the Amalekites (1 Samuel 30), the nasty enemies of Israel that Saul had earlier spared (1 Samuel 15). Saul failed; David succeeded. Saul’s big-bang beginning whimpers into a battlefield suicide. David’s obscure origins rise quickly into shining salvation for Israel, clearly tied to complete devotion to Yahweh, the nation’s true and only sovereign.
It is for this reason that David ties his reign to the restoration of the centrality of Yahweh and the visible indications provided by the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 5-6). David is playing the political game with rules not appreciated by everyone, even in his own society. Within remembered history the nation had emerged from its own “Dark Ages.” Grandparents (and even some parents) could remember well the times during the judges. Israel was at best a loose confederation of bickering tribes, each handicapped by inconsequential leadership. Now and again internal threats or neighboring nations would stir the political blood long enough for a savior to be identified (and sometimes martyred). These “judges” brought a bit of regional stability, but national unity and direction were more distant than the patchwork of a gaudy quilt.
As David consolidates his rule he makes a singular move on the national chessboard, which defines the character of his administration. In a stroke of genius which arose from the unswerving commitments of his heart, David brought the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem from its forgotten and tattered site at Shiloh. Prophets and press would quickly point out to the people the remarkable history of this portable throne of the Creator who had become Israel’s chief resident at Mount Sinai. David’s design was to restore national unity, but clearly mark it as solidarity under Yahweh rather than under himself.
Who could deny that Israel’s glory days were those of Moses and Joshua, when Yahweh was openly proclaimed as national king, and the Ark of the Covenant paraded through the deserts of the Sinai and the battlegrounds of Canaan as the visible symbol of the unconquerable power of the great God who had claimed Israel as a divine possession? This is the theological and historical background which David claims as he brings the ark up to Jerusalem. Rather than quibble about whether he is a suitable replacement on a weak and challenged throne, David portrays himself as the servant of the one who rules beyond question among the tribes. Even if the religion of Yahweh has fallen onto hard times, it carries the great myth by which every Israelite stands tall and proud.
The brief setback experienced in David’s plans (2 Samuel 6:1-11), when proper protocol for transporting the ark is not followed, only serves to reinforce all of these themes. At first David tries to haul the ark up the rugged paths to his new and somewhat inaccessible capital city as if it is a piece of furniture. A little object lesson from Yahweh is enough to put the fear of God in everyone, and after a decent period of mourning and waiting David’s tactic changes. He is no longer the new potentate, waiting for the moving company to finish furnishing his royal quarters. Instead he becomes a shepherd boy again, dancing in humility around the throne of his master, carried in solemn procession by its bearers through the countryside until it can take a commanding position over all from the heights of the Judean mountains.
Of course, this disturbs some who think David’s character is maligned in the process and the dignity of his office quashed. Michal, in particular, spits on his exuberance (2 Samuel 6:20-23). She is, after all, King Saul’s daughter, and she knows how regents ought to conduct themselves in aristocratic separation from the hoi polloi. David, her husband, has displayed himself like a cheap commoner, a public entertainer.
But Michal does not understand. Her husband is not like her father. For David, at least at this stage of his life (and throughout his reign, according to his deepest desires), the ultimate goal is not to be king but rather to be first minister to emperor Yahweh. In this, David’s politics are of a completely different strain than that of his predecessor. Saul played the politics of man quite well. David plays the politics of heaven superbly. This is why an everlasting covenant (royal grant) places his family on the throne forever (2 Samuel 7). Throughout the Old Testament this covenant is a source of hope for Israel (and later Judah), particularly during times of foreign oppression and alien occupation of the land. With the dawning of the New Testament era, the promised Davidic kingship feeds apocalyptic fervor and shapes messianic prophecy. When Yahweh fulfills the promises made to Israel, according to all religious and national expectations, it will take place through a descendant of this royal family.
Ephesians 2:11-22
The Bible never suggests that our individual lives and personalities and desires and actions are of no value. Nor is a complete commitment to communal living the biblical norm. Significantly to the contrary, the scriptures raise high the importance of the individual and the responsibility of the person. In fact, much of economic capitalism, psychological personhood, and political democracy are rooted in and supported by serious reflections on theologies and philosophies drawing on orthodox Christian perspectives.
Yet our strong obsession with personal rights and self-absorbed experientialism turns our attention too much toward myopic self-interest and away from group dynamics or social interdependence. After years of reflection on the human condition in books like The People of the Lie (1983), The Different Drum (1987), and The Road Less Traveled (1978), M. Scott Peck came to believe that one of the primary maladies of our age is our resistance against community. In his book A World Waiting to Be Born (1993), he claimed that religious submission was the only cure for the incivility of our age. When we stop being submissive to some form of higher power, he said, we invariably become gods to ourselves and degenerate into a mad world of petty powerbrokers who are limited only by the striking range of their swinging fists and demanding fingers.
In the church, at least, we must become more aware of what body life means. How is it that Jesus has a stake in multiple lives, and what does this mean for our connection to the head of the body? What is the implication of the church’s role in multiethnic relations for international politics? How do we allow the leadership of the church, empowered by the Spirit and ordained by the community, to speak into the tensions of our lives that disrupt and fracture the fellowship of faith?
There are no easy answers, of course. But Paul’s teaching here demands that we wrestle with the issues. We cannot claim fidelity with God and at the same time play cavalierly in our daily relations with those around us. Each person and each congregation will have to be part of the process of determining how the community and its leadership will invest in reconciliation and restoration.
Thomas Merton, when writing about the religious community with which he spent many years, noted that every prospective participant was initially brought in and made to stand in the center of a circle formed by current members. There he was asked by the abbot, “What do you come seeking?”
The answers varied, of course, in line with the individual’s recent experiences. Some said, “I come seeking a deeper relationship with God.” Others were more pragmatic: “I desire to become more disciplined in my practices of life.” And there were always a few who were simply running away: “I hope to find solace from the world and refuge from the problems that have plagued me.”
But Merton said that there was really only one answer which all needed to voice before they could take up residence. “I need mercy!” was the true cry of the heart. “I need mercy!”
Merton said that any other answer betrayed our prideful assertion of self-determination. We wanted, we planned, we were running away from, we desired... But the person who knew his need of mercy had stepped out of the myopic circle of self-interest long enough to begin to see the fragile interdependence of all who were taken into the larger fellowship of faith. We cannot create community, for it does not revolve around us. We can only enter community or receive it as a gift. Hence, we need mercy in order to walk through its door.
If we know this, then when we experience tension and broken bonds with someone else in the community it is not ours or theirs to resolve in isolation. The community itself has a stake in all lives and their interactions. Therefore, says Paul, it is absolutely imperative that we engage the power of the community in addressing the hurts that affect any of its members. Failing to do so does not so much destroy community as it isolates us from it. We become impoverished when we think we have all the resources to force others into obedience to our way of thinking or living.
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
L. Nelson Bell, the father-in-law of Billy Graham, was a medical missionary in China for much of his career. One of the earliest converts to Christianity under his ministry was a wizened old man who later church members simply called “Elder Cao.” When Dr. Bell asked Elder Cao to tell some visitors why he had become a Christian, the elderly gentleman put it simply.
“A man fell into a deep and slimy pit,” said Elder Cao, “and he was unable to get out. Along came the Buddha. He stopped and took pity on the man. ‘If you will come up here to me,’ said the Buddha, ‘I will teach you the way of enlightenment and you will never fall into the pit again.’ But the man could not get out of the pit, so the Buddha went on to bring enlightenment to others.
“Along came Confucius, and he too was moved with compassion by the plight of the man in the pit. ‘If you will listen to my teachings,’ said Confucius, ‘you will understand how society is formed, and what can be done to prevent anyone from falling into the pit.’ Then he too went on, for the man did not rise out of the pit.
“Finally,” said Elder Cao, “Jesus came along. As with the others, he was filled with concern for the man in the pit. So he jumped down into the pit and helped the man get out.
“This,” said Elder Cao, “is why I am a Christian.”
This is what people experienced that day when they followed Jesus around Galilee. Yes, it was his preaching that connected. Yes, the miracles were astounding. But it was Jesus’ compassion that entranced. Here was a leader who actually cared about them! Amazing!
Application
In 1966, evangelist Martin Higgenbottem was one of the main speakers at the Berlin World Congress on Evangelism. He told the gathering about how his life of devotion and service was inspired by his mother. He remembered coming home from school one afternoon to find her sitting at the kitchen table with a strange man. The fellow was obviously someone who lived on the streets. His clothes were filthy, his hair was slicked with unwashed grease, and he smelled of a mixture of unkind odors.
Martin’s mother was chatting pleasantly with him while he devoured a plate of sandwiches. She had gone shopping that morning and found him cold and hungry, so she brought him home with her.
When the man was ready to leave, he said passionately, “I wish there were more people in the world like you.”
Martin’s mother casually threw the compliment aside. “Oh,” she said, “there are. You just have to look for them.”
The man broke down. He shook his head and tears rolled across his cheeks. “But lady,” he said, “I didn’t have to look for you. You looked for me.”
Martin looked out at the crowd and reminded them that this is true evangelism, when we breathe with the compassion of Jesus.
Alternative Application
2 Samuel 7:1-14a. Jesus’ kingship and kingdom are rooted directly in the covenant Yahweh made with David in 2 Samuel 7. In that passage the themes of God’s house and David’s house came together in powerful symmetry. David wished to build a house for God, since Israel was now settled in the Promised Land. While God appreciated this appropriate desire on David’s part, God communicated through the prophet Nathan that it would be David’s son, a man of peace, who would take up that honor and responsibility. But because David’s heart and desires were in the right place, God made a return commitment to him. God would build a royal “house” out of David’s descendants, and there would always be one of his sons ruling as king over God’s people.
This promise began well, with the amazingly successful reign of Solomon. The great temple was built, the borders of the kingdom were expanded from Mesopotamia to Egypt, the economy soared, and people flooded to Jerusalem from all over the world to hear the wisdom of Solomon and experience the blessings of Yahweh. Then it all began to falter. Solomon’s massive empire was split at his death (922 BC), and the family successors who ruled the truncated kingdom from Jerusalem were a mixed lot with varying degrees of success in both politics and religion. By the end of Matthew’s second set of fourteen generations, only a remnant of the people remained to be deported in the cataclysmic Babylonian exile. Fewer still returned to Jerusalem later under Persian rule, and they were not permitted to reinstall David’s descendants to a self-governing throne. Only recently, through the Maccabean revolt, had a measure of Jewish self-determination been regained. But David’s family was not on the throne.
The gospels make it clear that this miraculously born deliverer Jesus is, indeed, the one who will fulfill, both at this time and forever, God’s commitment to David. Matthew communicated that powerfully in the opening chapters of the gospel, when he linked Jesus to David, and in chapter 2 when the magi questioned King Herod’s authority as the “King of the Jews.” But the biggest statement of Jesus’ kingly status takes place a bit later in the gospel, when Matthew narrates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (chapter 21).
Upon Jesus’ arrival at the capital city of ancient Israel and modern Judea, he is welcomed as king. The crowds immediately and publicly connect Jesus to David’s royal family (21:9) and give him a royal salute. Furthermore, when Jesus enters the city he moves directly to the temple. This, of course, was “God’s House,” the dwelling of Yahweh on earth. It was the permanent replication of what the tabernacle had been throughout Israel’s wilderness wanderings. Just as when that portable structure had been dedicated by Moses, and the glory of God swooshed in as Yahweh took up residence (Exodus 40), so the same had happened while Solomon dedicated the first temple (1 Kings 8). But a vision later recorded by the prophet Ezekiel announced the awful portent that the glory of God was leaving the temple, and that God had gone back to heaven, moving out of Israel’s neighborhood (Ezekiel 9-10).
It was Yahweh leaving “God’s House” that precipitated the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and initiated the years of Jewish exile and captivity. When Cyrus of the Persians issued an edict sending the exiles back to Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple on a small scale with their modest resources. But the glory of God never returned to the rebuilt temple. During the times of the prophet Malachi, around 400 BC, the people were still pleading with God to return and take up residence with them again (Malachi 3-4).
It is this history that Matthew draws upon as he marks the steps of Jesus entering Jerusalem. Jesus goes directly to the temple, the house of God, and by implication his own house as God. He cleans the place, a task that only the owner of the house can authorize (Matthew 21:12-13). There Jesus receives his kingdom citizens who need royal favors -- the blind and the lame (Matthew 21:14). While Jesus is holding royal court, he is also presented with an impromptu concert from the most trusting stakeholders in his realm: the children (Matthew 21:15). When the “chief priests” (i.e., those who have been left in charge of God’s House) chide Jesus for inappropriately seeming to take over, Jesus quotes Psalm 8 as if it were his own to verify the correctness of these happenings (Matthew 21:16). Jesus is king. Jesus is the eternal ruler who has a right to sit on the throne of David, fulfilling the covenant Yahweh made with him. Jesus is the obvious resident of Israel’s royal palace.
But it was never enough, and what she possessed began to possess her. Finally she didn’t even know what it meant to be free.
One day she decided to go home. When she got near the cottage of her birth, she wanted to turn around. Her footsteps faltered. She began to turn her body. But then the dogs in the yard caught scent of her. They had not forgotten her, even though it had been so long.
Suddenly the light came on at the door and the porthole opened. All she could see was her father, bathed in the light. He called out her name, even though he could not see her face. He called out her name, even though he did not have a reason to expect her. He called out her name, and suddenly her feet were running toward him.
He took her into his arms. He sobbed out blessings on her head. Later, when she told her neighbor of that night, she said, “It’s a pity, Margaret, that you don’t know Gaelic. That’s the best of all languages for loving. There are fifty words for ‘darling,’ and my father called me every one of them that night I came home.”
The language of love. The dialect of compassion. The speech of reconciliation. It is all an echo of eternity. David heard it in the voice of Yahweh as they shared the throne of Israel. Paul wrote about it to the Ephesians who were trying to build a community of heaven in the nasty places of earth. Most of all, Jesus expressed it even when he didn’t use words. He still does. And so can we.
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
David was on the rise, and Saul was a lame-duck, brooding has-been. In the end, David became king not because he was so clever or capable; he was raised to leadership precisely because he knew that he was not in charge. The true king in Israel was Yahweh. This is a lesson that Saul never fully learned.
Saul was savvy enough to recognize David’s trajectory, and the fact that Yahweh was with him. So Saul competed with both, seeking to destroy David, and trying to usurp Yahweh’s place as Israel’s rightful king. He failed miserably in both attempts. When Saul brought David into the royal palace to claim David’s reputation and prowess as his own, David’s goodness stole the hearts of Saul’s son Jonathan and daughter Michal (1 Samuel 18). When Israel’s armies continued their winning streak against the Philistines, all praise shifted from Saul to David. When Saul tried to kill David, David not only escaped numerous times but actually turned the tables and refused to harm Saul twice when the opportunities presented themselves. When Saul tried to marginalize David, David built a new community of misfits and castoffs who would eventually become the leadership team in his new administration. And when Saul found himself spiritually bereft, he turned to witchcraft rather than Yahweh and found himself rejected by both.
One of the last stories in the transitional narrative of Saul’s downward spiral is that of David defeating and destroying the Amalekites (1 Samuel 30), the nasty enemies of Israel that Saul had earlier spared (1 Samuel 15). Saul failed; David succeeded. Saul’s big-bang beginning whimpers into a battlefield suicide. David’s obscure origins rise quickly into shining salvation for Israel, clearly tied to complete devotion to Yahweh, the nation’s true and only sovereign.
It is for this reason that David ties his reign to the restoration of the centrality of Yahweh and the visible indications provided by the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 5-6). David is playing the political game with rules not appreciated by everyone, even in his own society. Within remembered history the nation had emerged from its own “Dark Ages.” Grandparents (and even some parents) could remember well the times during the judges. Israel was at best a loose confederation of bickering tribes, each handicapped by inconsequential leadership. Now and again internal threats or neighboring nations would stir the political blood long enough for a savior to be identified (and sometimes martyred). These “judges” brought a bit of regional stability, but national unity and direction were more distant than the patchwork of a gaudy quilt.
As David consolidates his rule he makes a singular move on the national chessboard, which defines the character of his administration. In a stroke of genius which arose from the unswerving commitments of his heart, David brought the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem from its forgotten and tattered site at Shiloh. Prophets and press would quickly point out to the people the remarkable history of this portable throne of the Creator who had become Israel’s chief resident at Mount Sinai. David’s design was to restore national unity, but clearly mark it as solidarity under Yahweh rather than under himself.
Who could deny that Israel’s glory days were those of Moses and Joshua, when Yahweh was openly proclaimed as national king, and the Ark of the Covenant paraded through the deserts of the Sinai and the battlegrounds of Canaan as the visible symbol of the unconquerable power of the great God who had claimed Israel as a divine possession? This is the theological and historical background which David claims as he brings the ark up to Jerusalem. Rather than quibble about whether he is a suitable replacement on a weak and challenged throne, David portrays himself as the servant of the one who rules beyond question among the tribes. Even if the religion of Yahweh has fallen onto hard times, it carries the great myth by which every Israelite stands tall and proud.
The brief setback experienced in David’s plans (2 Samuel 6:1-11), when proper protocol for transporting the ark is not followed, only serves to reinforce all of these themes. At first David tries to haul the ark up the rugged paths to his new and somewhat inaccessible capital city as if it is a piece of furniture. A little object lesson from Yahweh is enough to put the fear of God in everyone, and after a decent period of mourning and waiting David’s tactic changes. He is no longer the new potentate, waiting for the moving company to finish furnishing his royal quarters. Instead he becomes a shepherd boy again, dancing in humility around the throne of his master, carried in solemn procession by its bearers through the countryside until it can take a commanding position over all from the heights of the Judean mountains.
Of course, this disturbs some who think David’s character is maligned in the process and the dignity of his office quashed. Michal, in particular, spits on his exuberance (2 Samuel 6:20-23). She is, after all, King Saul’s daughter, and she knows how regents ought to conduct themselves in aristocratic separation from the hoi polloi. David, her husband, has displayed himself like a cheap commoner, a public entertainer.
But Michal does not understand. Her husband is not like her father. For David, at least at this stage of his life (and throughout his reign, according to his deepest desires), the ultimate goal is not to be king but rather to be first minister to emperor Yahweh. In this, David’s politics are of a completely different strain than that of his predecessor. Saul played the politics of man quite well. David plays the politics of heaven superbly. This is why an everlasting covenant (royal grant) places his family on the throne forever (2 Samuel 7). Throughout the Old Testament this covenant is a source of hope for Israel (and later Judah), particularly during times of foreign oppression and alien occupation of the land. With the dawning of the New Testament era, the promised Davidic kingship feeds apocalyptic fervor and shapes messianic prophecy. When Yahweh fulfills the promises made to Israel, according to all religious and national expectations, it will take place through a descendant of this royal family.
Ephesians 2:11-22
The Bible never suggests that our individual lives and personalities and desires and actions are of no value. Nor is a complete commitment to communal living the biblical norm. Significantly to the contrary, the scriptures raise high the importance of the individual and the responsibility of the person. In fact, much of economic capitalism, psychological personhood, and political democracy are rooted in and supported by serious reflections on theologies and philosophies drawing on orthodox Christian perspectives.
Yet our strong obsession with personal rights and self-absorbed experientialism turns our attention too much toward myopic self-interest and away from group dynamics or social interdependence. After years of reflection on the human condition in books like The People of the Lie (1983), The Different Drum (1987), and The Road Less Traveled (1978), M. Scott Peck came to believe that one of the primary maladies of our age is our resistance against community. In his book A World Waiting to Be Born (1993), he claimed that religious submission was the only cure for the incivility of our age. When we stop being submissive to some form of higher power, he said, we invariably become gods to ourselves and degenerate into a mad world of petty powerbrokers who are limited only by the striking range of their swinging fists and demanding fingers.
In the church, at least, we must become more aware of what body life means. How is it that Jesus has a stake in multiple lives, and what does this mean for our connection to the head of the body? What is the implication of the church’s role in multiethnic relations for international politics? How do we allow the leadership of the church, empowered by the Spirit and ordained by the community, to speak into the tensions of our lives that disrupt and fracture the fellowship of faith?
There are no easy answers, of course. But Paul’s teaching here demands that we wrestle with the issues. We cannot claim fidelity with God and at the same time play cavalierly in our daily relations with those around us. Each person and each congregation will have to be part of the process of determining how the community and its leadership will invest in reconciliation and restoration.
Thomas Merton, when writing about the religious community with which he spent many years, noted that every prospective participant was initially brought in and made to stand in the center of a circle formed by current members. There he was asked by the abbot, “What do you come seeking?”
The answers varied, of course, in line with the individual’s recent experiences. Some said, “I come seeking a deeper relationship with God.” Others were more pragmatic: “I desire to become more disciplined in my practices of life.” And there were always a few who were simply running away: “I hope to find solace from the world and refuge from the problems that have plagued me.”
But Merton said that there was really only one answer which all needed to voice before they could take up residence. “I need mercy!” was the true cry of the heart. “I need mercy!”
Merton said that any other answer betrayed our prideful assertion of self-determination. We wanted, we planned, we were running away from, we desired... But the person who knew his need of mercy had stepped out of the myopic circle of self-interest long enough to begin to see the fragile interdependence of all who were taken into the larger fellowship of faith. We cannot create community, for it does not revolve around us. We can only enter community or receive it as a gift. Hence, we need mercy in order to walk through its door.
If we know this, then when we experience tension and broken bonds with someone else in the community it is not ours or theirs to resolve in isolation. The community itself has a stake in all lives and their interactions. Therefore, says Paul, it is absolutely imperative that we engage the power of the community in addressing the hurts that affect any of its members. Failing to do so does not so much destroy community as it isolates us from it. We become impoverished when we think we have all the resources to force others into obedience to our way of thinking or living.
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
L. Nelson Bell, the father-in-law of Billy Graham, was a medical missionary in China for much of his career. One of the earliest converts to Christianity under his ministry was a wizened old man who later church members simply called “Elder Cao.” When Dr. Bell asked Elder Cao to tell some visitors why he had become a Christian, the elderly gentleman put it simply.
“A man fell into a deep and slimy pit,” said Elder Cao, “and he was unable to get out. Along came the Buddha. He stopped and took pity on the man. ‘If you will come up here to me,’ said the Buddha, ‘I will teach you the way of enlightenment and you will never fall into the pit again.’ But the man could not get out of the pit, so the Buddha went on to bring enlightenment to others.
“Along came Confucius, and he too was moved with compassion by the plight of the man in the pit. ‘If you will listen to my teachings,’ said Confucius, ‘you will understand how society is formed, and what can be done to prevent anyone from falling into the pit.’ Then he too went on, for the man did not rise out of the pit.
“Finally,” said Elder Cao, “Jesus came along. As with the others, he was filled with concern for the man in the pit. So he jumped down into the pit and helped the man get out.
“This,” said Elder Cao, “is why I am a Christian.”
This is what people experienced that day when they followed Jesus around Galilee. Yes, it was his preaching that connected. Yes, the miracles were astounding. But it was Jesus’ compassion that entranced. Here was a leader who actually cared about them! Amazing!
Application
In 1966, evangelist Martin Higgenbottem was one of the main speakers at the Berlin World Congress on Evangelism. He told the gathering about how his life of devotion and service was inspired by his mother. He remembered coming home from school one afternoon to find her sitting at the kitchen table with a strange man. The fellow was obviously someone who lived on the streets. His clothes were filthy, his hair was slicked with unwashed grease, and he smelled of a mixture of unkind odors.
Martin’s mother was chatting pleasantly with him while he devoured a plate of sandwiches. She had gone shopping that morning and found him cold and hungry, so she brought him home with her.
When the man was ready to leave, he said passionately, “I wish there were more people in the world like you.”
Martin’s mother casually threw the compliment aside. “Oh,” she said, “there are. You just have to look for them.”
The man broke down. He shook his head and tears rolled across his cheeks. “But lady,” he said, “I didn’t have to look for you. You looked for me.”
Martin looked out at the crowd and reminded them that this is true evangelism, when we breathe with the compassion of Jesus.
Alternative Application
2 Samuel 7:1-14a. Jesus’ kingship and kingdom are rooted directly in the covenant Yahweh made with David in 2 Samuel 7. In that passage the themes of God’s house and David’s house came together in powerful symmetry. David wished to build a house for God, since Israel was now settled in the Promised Land. While God appreciated this appropriate desire on David’s part, God communicated through the prophet Nathan that it would be David’s son, a man of peace, who would take up that honor and responsibility. But because David’s heart and desires were in the right place, God made a return commitment to him. God would build a royal “house” out of David’s descendants, and there would always be one of his sons ruling as king over God’s people.
This promise began well, with the amazingly successful reign of Solomon. The great temple was built, the borders of the kingdom were expanded from Mesopotamia to Egypt, the economy soared, and people flooded to Jerusalem from all over the world to hear the wisdom of Solomon and experience the blessings of Yahweh. Then it all began to falter. Solomon’s massive empire was split at his death (922 BC), and the family successors who ruled the truncated kingdom from Jerusalem were a mixed lot with varying degrees of success in both politics and religion. By the end of Matthew’s second set of fourteen generations, only a remnant of the people remained to be deported in the cataclysmic Babylonian exile. Fewer still returned to Jerusalem later under Persian rule, and they were not permitted to reinstall David’s descendants to a self-governing throne. Only recently, through the Maccabean revolt, had a measure of Jewish self-determination been regained. But David’s family was not on the throne.
The gospels make it clear that this miraculously born deliverer Jesus is, indeed, the one who will fulfill, both at this time and forever, God’s commitment to David. Matthew communicated that powerfully in the opening chapters of the gospel, when he linked Jesus to David, and in chapter 2 when the magi questioned King Herod’s authority as the “King of the Jews.” But the biggest statement of Jesus’ kingly status takes place a bit later in the gospel, when Matthew narrates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (chapter 21).
Upon Jesus’ arrival at the capital city of ancient Israel and modern Judea, he is welcomed as king. The crowds immediately and publicly connect Jesus to David’s royal family (21:9) and give him a royal salute. Furthermore, when Jesus enters the city he moves directly to the temple. This, of course, was “God’s House,” the dwelling of Yahweh on earth. It was the permanent replication of what the tabernacle had been throughout Israel’s wilderness wanderings. Just as when that portable structure had been dedicated by Moses, and the glory of God swooshed in as Yahweh took up residence (Exodus 40), so the same had happened while Solomon dedicated the first temple (1 Kings 8). But a vision later recorded by the prophet Ezekiel announced the awful portent that the glory of God was leaving the temple, and that God had gone back to heaven, moving out of Israel’s neighborhood (Ezekiel 9-10).
It was Yahweh leaving “God’s House” that precipitated the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and initiated the years of Jewish exile and captivity. When Cyrus of the Persians issued an edict sending the exiles back to Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple on a small scale with their modest resources. But the glory of God never returned to the rebuilt temple. During the times of the prophet Malachi, around 400 BC, the people were still pleading with God to return and take up residence with them again (Malachi 3-4).
It is this history that Matthew draws upon as he marks the steps of Jesus entering Jerusalem. Jesus goes directly to the temple, the house of God, and by implication his own house as God. He cleans the place, a task that only the owner of the house can authorize (Matthew 21:12-13). There Jesus receives his kingdom citizens who need royal favors -- the blind and the lame (Matthew 21:14). While Jesus is holding royal court, he is also presented with an impromptu concert from the most trusting stakeholders in his realm: the children (Matthew 21:15). When the “chief priests” (i.e., those who have been left in charge of God’s House) chide Jesus for inappropriately seeming to take over, Jesus quotes Psalm 8 as if it were his own to verify the correctness of these happenings (Matthew 21:16). Jesus is king. Jesus is the eternal ruler who has a right to sit on the throne of David, fulfilling the covenant Yahweh made with him. Jesus is the obvious resident of Israel’s royal palace.
