Jeannette Renouf

My dear friends,

Our lesson in the Gospel of Mark today is another of many stories in Mark of Jesus being pursued by crowds of people seeking healing. He appears to experience the limits of incarnation in that he can only do so much, and he has to escape; to someone’s home, to the mountains, to a boat. We don’t think of Jesus suffering from compassion fatigue but here is another way he shares the human experience.

We too are regularly called by Christ to compassion. Compassion not only for our fellow humans in need but indeed for all of creation; for plants, animals, the water and the air. Com-passion carries its meaning: to share suffering and is a central teaching of all religious traditions. It is a call to connection from deep within our being, summoning us to healing, justice and peacemaking. The call to love, as Jesus taught, is present everywhere in our world today so full of divisiveness and hatred. The need for compassionate love is so great that it can seem overwhelming, as it did to Jesus.

There is no call to victimhood in Jesus’ compassion. The Gospel stories of Jesus’ healing are honest about the pain and brokenness he encountered. He taught his disciples how to reach out and then release not to become the pain, despair, and darkness of others while reaching out and entering into that pain. Jesus’ healing was not depleting but empowering.

Just as Jesus, in this story from Mark, realizes that he needs the help of his disciples if he is to meet the needs of so many people, so we too enter into healing, loving compassion as a community. It is being part of this community that empowers us to answer the call to healing, justice and peacemaking without depleting ourselves but empowering ourselves and others. It is the power of God’s Spirit acting through us and the community that makes it possible to enter into that pain in our vulnerable compassion.

Technology can connect us, but it cannot unite us. Love alone is capable of uniting us to fulfill God’s promise of a new world. Let us again support one another as compassionate beings in this pain filled world.

Peace, Jeanette Renouf