When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. The Greek word for compassion here—splagchnizomai—refers to being moved in the bowels, visceral gut-level emotion. This isn't sentimental pity. This is the kind of compassion that makes you physically move.
I've been thinking lately about what it means that the crowds were both harassed and helpless. Not just one or the other. The religious leaders were actively wearing them down with impossible demands, while simultaneously offering no way up or out. Double bind. Jesus looks at that situation and feels it in his guts. He doesn't intellectualize their dysfunction or blame them for not pulling themselves up. He just grieves that they have no shepherd—no one who is actually putting their wellbeing first. That word 'harassed' keeps coming back to me. How much of my spiritual weariness comes from being under the weight of systems that aren't actually meant to nurture me? And what would it feel like to know Jesus grieves that configuration and is moving to change it?
No comments yet. Be the first.