Psalm 103:8-13 The Gifts of Christmas: Compassion
Misha’s Story
The following story is one of those stories that floats around the internet. No one seems to know exactly where it originated, and it’s probably best thought of as a parable, rather than an account of actual events. Still, I believe it is a nice story:
In 1994 two Americans were invited to go to Russia to teach morals and ethics (based on Biblical principles) in various public places.They were invited to teach at prisons, businesses, fire and police departments, and a large orphanage.
It was nearing the holiday season and they were at the orphanage with the opportunity to tell these children, some for the first time, the traditional Christmas story. They told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem and finding no room in the inn, the couple going to a stable, and little baby Jesus being born and placed in a manger.
Throughout the story, the children sat in amazement as they listened. Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word.
As a follow-up activity to the story, each child was given three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manger. Each child was also given a small paper square, cut from yellow napkins, which they tore into strips and carefully laid in the manger for straw. Small squares of flannel from a thrown away nightgown were used for the baby’s blanket and pieces of tan felt were used to make a doll-like baby.
As they made their way around the room to observe the children one of the Americans noted, “All went well until I got to one table where little Misha sat. He looked to be about 6 years old and had finished his project. As I looked at the little boy’s manger, I was startled to see not one but two babies in the manger. Quickly, I called for the translator to ask the lad why there were two babies in the manger.”
Misha very accurately recalled the story that had been told until he came to the part where Mary put Jesus in the manger. Then Misha started to ad-lib. He made up his own ending to the story as he said, “And when Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no momma and I have no papa, so I don’t have any place to stay.
“Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn’t because I didn’t have a gift to give him like everybody else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift. So I asked Jesus, ‘If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?’ And Jesus told me, ‘If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me.’ So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him – for always.”
As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks. Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed. The little orphan had found someone who would never abandon or abuse him, someone who would stay with him – FOR ALWAYS!
The Christmas Gifts
This year in the run-up to Christmas we are doing a series called “The Gifts of Christmas.” I’m asking the question: “What does the reality of God coming to earth create in us?” I’m not just talking about “holiday spirit” or superficial behavior change for the month of December because you don’t want to end up on Santa’s naughty list; rather, I’m talking about the kind of deep and lasting changes that are possible because of Jesus’ birth.
Last week we talked about how we can be hopeful people because “for to us a child is born, to us a son is given.” Even though we live in a dark world, hope is possible because of the birth of Jesus. This week we’re going to talk about being compassionate. We can be compassionate people because God has come to be one of us.
I’m going to share quite a few different scriptures with you today, but our starting point will be Psalm 103:8-14. So let’s turn there. Psalm 103:8-14:
8The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. 9He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; 10he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. 11For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; 12as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. 13As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; 14for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
So the message today is that we can be compassionate people because God has come to be with us. I’m going to ask and answer three questions. 1) What is compassion? 2) How does Christmas reveal God’s compassion? And 3) How can we show compassion?
As a Father Has Compassion
So, first question: What is compassion? And the answer is: compassion is an important expression of God’s character. This is why I’m starting with Psalm 103, it gives us such a good picture of God’s compassion. Verse 8 again:
8The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
The Lord is compassionate. If you were asked to describe God, compassion would be a good place to start. In fact, when God describes Himself in the Bible, He often emphasizes His compassion.
In Exodus 33 and 34 Moses begs God for the opportunity to see His glory. This is not something God can allow to happen because—as He says—“no one may see me and live.” (Ex. 33:20) So instead, God stands Moses in the cleft of a rock and then covers him with His hand. Then God passes by, removes His hand, and allows Moses a quick glimpse of His back. And as He passes by, this is what He says, words echoed by Psalm 103: “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” (Exodus 34:6)
Or, again, from earlier in Exodus, chapter 22, verse 27. God is giving instructions to moneylenders to make sure they don’t take advantage of the needy. He says that you should never take your neighbor’s cloak as a down payment. Because then, when the sun goes down, he’s going to get cold. And he’s going to cry out to God. And God says: “I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
God self-identifies as compassionate. The New Testament says that God is love. One way that God expresses His love is by showing compassion.
Dictionary.com defines compassion like this: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. The last half of that definition is the key. Compassion doesn’t just feel bad about someone else’s pain—that’s pity—compassion moves toward the pain and seeks to do something about it.
You see it in the way the word is put together: the prefix “com” means “with” or “together” and “passion” means “to suffer.” So compassion literally means “to suffer with”. It’s a depth of feeling and warmth rising up within you that leads you to join with another in their struggle. It’s like the Baby Jesus inviting Misha into the manger so that they could share their warmth.
As we continue in Psalm 103 we see that God’s compassion is most clearly seen in His decision to withhold judgment and show mercy. Verses 9-12:
9He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; 10he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. 11For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; 12as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Instead of judgment and anger, God forgives and redeems. Instead of rejection, God gathers His people to Himself. Instead of holding us at a distance, God removes our sins to the far points of the compass and draws us close. The image the Psalmist invokes is that of a loving father. Verse 13:
13As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
I mentioned this last week when Isaiah used a father image: not everyone has great earthly fathers. For some of you, thoughts of your father might not fill you with warm fuzzies. Some dads are miserable failures, and every earthly dad is sinful.
But David wants us to think of the best of what a father can be. Like Jesus, who says that no good dad when his child asks for bread would give him a stone (Matt. 7:11), David wants us to know that God’s heart is open to us. That God has warmness towards us.
Think of it this way: when someone says to you: “Yeah, I think I might be coming down with the flu” what do you do? I don’t know about you, but I back away. I’m not terribly compassionate in that situation, maybe, but I don’t want to get too close. I’m looking around for the hand sanitizer. I mean, I feel bad for you, sure, but you just stay over there. I’ll let you suffer on your own.
But now, what if it’s your child? Mothers are so much better at this than dads, probably. But when your child has the flu isn’t the parental instinct to wade in there and provide comfort? Don’t you see moms cuddling and holding their sick child, wiping their nose, germs or no germs?
That’s compassion. That’s the instinct to move toward pain, not away from it. That’s the willingness to suffer with.
And that is how God feels about us. That’s how God identifies Himself. He is the Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. He does not leave us alone in our sin, but His heart is moved toward us.
He Remembers We Are Dust
Now, second question: How does Christmas reveal God’s compassion? How do we see compassion in the incarnation?
It should be fairly obvious: if compassion involves identification, if compassion means seeing someone else’s pain or struggle accompanied by a desire to do something about it, if compassion is moving towards another person in order to enter into their experience, their hardship, their difficulty—then there is no greater act of compassion than the God of the universe setting aside the prerogatives of His divinity in order to take on human flesh and become one of us.
Let’s go back to Psalm 103, and the last verse of our text. Verse 14:
14for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
Here’s who we are, here’s why God has compassion on us. He was there when we were formed. He knows that we’re basically animated dirt. He knows about our weaknesses.
And the amazing thing about Christmas, the heart of what we celebrate at this time of year, is that Jesus came and joined us in our “dusthood.” That’s the incarnation. That’s what that word means. Carne means flesh. If you know a little Spanish you recognize that word. So the incarnation is the “in fleshing” of Jesus. God steps out of heaven and he joins us in our weakness.
John 1:14 says that the eternal Word Who was present at the beginning “became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” In Christ God identified with us in the most powerful way imaginable. He became one of us. He’s with us. Emmanuel. With us in all of our human weaknesses. With us in our trials. With us in our frailty.
This is the compassion of God expressed in His humbling of Himself to join us in a world of suffering. Not just looking on from a distance, but entering into our world. And then reaching out to us—think about the stories of Jesus in the gospel when the leper comes—Jesus reaches out and touches. He heals. He says, I am with you.
Or, put it like this: Compassion can be explained as the ability and willingness to put yourself in the shoes of someone else. To feel with them. To leave behind your comfort and enter into their world.
It’s the opposite of saying something is “foreign”. If you say: “That’s foreign to me” what you are saying is that you cannot relate. That you cannot understand because it is outside of your experience. That you don’t have a point of reference.
But compassion fights through that foreignness to put oneself in another’s shoes and feel what they feel and work through their suffering. Instead of saying: “That’s your problem. I can’t relate. I’ve never had a hard time paying my mortgage. I’ve never had a marital problem like that”; instead, compassion says: “I’ll make your problem my problem. I’ll suffer with you when you suffer. I’ll weep with those who weep.”
And isn’t that precisely what Jesus did at Christmas? Again, that’s why I told the story of Misha. Think of baby Jesus in a cold, drafty stable and the way He became relatable to a poor little orphaned Russian boy. Jesus meets us in our dustiness. He knows that we are dust. Not just because He was there when we were created, but because He’s taken on that dust Himself. He moved toward us.
Moving Toward Suffering
So now, third question: How do we respond? How can we show compassion? The whole point of this series, again, is that Christmas changes us. The gift of Christmas is that we, too, can be compassionate because of Christ’s compassion to us. Because God moved toward us in our weakness, we too can move towards others. We can show compassion.
So, allow me to share some suggestions of people we should show compassion to. As God has entered into our world, to suffer with us, so we should seek to enter the world of these people.
First, we should move towards the voiceless. We should have compassion for those who are oppressed and victimized. Listen to Proverbs 31:8-9, incredibly challenging words:
8"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. 9Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."
As Christians, it is our job to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. We should be on the side of those who are overlooked and marginalized.
Thank God, Christianity has a history of being a voice for the voiceless. Think of William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect that were so influential in ending the slave trade in England. Think of Mother Theresa and the Sisters of Charity that gave a voice and dignity to the untouchables of India. Think of Christians today who are leading the fight against human trafficking and the campaign for clean water.
As Christians, we are called to move towards the poor and needy. Whether it’s the unborn, or the immigrant who’s been trapped into indentured servitude, or the special needs child who’s being bullied on the playground. It’s not enough that we hear stories about such things and feel bad that they happen. Compassion commands that we move toward the suffering. That we speak up. That we do something about it.
Or, again, we should move towards the stranger. We should have compassion for those who are foreigners in a strange land. Consider Exodus 22:21:
21"Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.
God says to the Israelites: be nice to strangers and foreigners, don’t mistreat immigrants; because, remember, you were all immigrants once yourself. And the same applies to us. Not only can the ancestry of pretty much everybody here be traced back to a foreign country, the Bible says that if you’re a Christian then you are more a citizen of heaven than you are a citizen of this earth. So I don’t care if you are 10th generation American, there’s still a sense in which you are merely a visitor here. And so, we are called to show compassion to immigrants.
Now, I know Immigration Law is a hot political topic, and I’m not interested in taking sides on how best to regulate who comes to this country or not. That’s not my point. But my point is that we do have people from other countries here, in our midst. And the question is: are we going to treat them as “foreign” and say we can’t relate, or are we going to try to step into their shoes?
A few years ago I heard a speaker talking at a International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church event. And one of the things that stood out to me was when he talked about “welcome.” He said every time he’s visited a foreign country—even so-called “closed” countries or countries we might consider to be enemies of America—nearly everybody he met welcomed him to their country. He said he couldn’t get in a cab or go to a restaurant or visit a market without somebody saying: “welcome.”
And yet, he said when he’s back in the States and he meets a foreign visitor— whether it’s a student or an immigrant worker or a tourist or whatever—he’s taken to asking whether anyone has welcomed them to our country yet, and the answer is almost always “No.”
Again, I know it’s a hot-button political topic. But it seems like we can do a better job of at least saying “hello” and “welcome” to people who find themselves foreigners in a strange land.
Or, again, we can move towards our enemies. We should have compassion for those who disagree with us.
I’m thinking here of the tendency we have as Christian to vilify everyone we disagree with. “Oh, they’re atheists or they’re secularists or they’re pro-choice” or whatever, and then we decide that they’re bad and we draw lines and decide we’ll never hear anything worthwhile from them. And, of course, it’s not just Christian versus nonChristian. It seems like our whole society gets divided along these fault lines: CNBC vs. Fox News, Black vs. White, Republican vs. Democrat. You figure out what side you are on, and then you automatically dismiss everyone from the other side of the fence.
And yet, Jesus said that we should love our enemies. Jesus is the one who, on Palm Sunday, wept over the city that was about to demand His life. Remember the verse from Jude, from just a few weeks ago?
23snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear--hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.
We can disagree with people. We can hate some of the things they stand for and some of the things they say, but we can still act with compassion toward them. We can still make the effort to stand in their shoes.
And then, finally, let’s move toward those closest to us. Let’s have compassion on those we love the most.
Sometimes it seems like the hardest place to show compassion is right in our own homes. Sometimes it seems like our hearts grow hardest towards those we have the closest relationships with. Ephesians 4:32:
32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Spouses, be compassionate toward one another. Move towards each other, not away. Make the effort to understand and relate. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Parents, move towards your children. Children, move towards your Mom and Dad.
God has compassion for us. It’s central to who He is. And His greatest act of compassion was to send Jesus to join us in our “dusthood.” So, we can be compassionate people because Jesus moved toward us. This Christmas, let’s share the gift of compassion.
