Sermon for May 11, 2025
Easter 4 C
John 10:22-30; Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 23
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
When Beth Ann and I were first starting out as pastors, we served our first congregations in a place we had never lived before, and had visited for the first time only a few months before. About a month after we moved into the parsonage and settled in, 9/11 happened. Two days after that we had our first meeting with our some of our fellow pastors in the county.
We started learning about one another and our congregations, and of course we offered what comfort we could about 9/11, given how upset we all felt and how uncertain the future seemed. Normally these pastors meetings happened monthly, but one of the more experienced pastors suggested that we should start meeting twice a month instead. This was Pastor Wayne. He said he knew that there was lots to learn when you were a new pastor, and with everything that was going on that we should all support one another. So, I experienced that day, and over the years after that, that Pastor Wayne was a person of compassion.
Have you ever had a mentor in your life like that? A person who went out of their way to make a personal connection with you and support you through life’s challenges. If you have, then chances are, you would do anything you could to help them in return. That is the loyalty, the sense of belonging, the strength of relationship that can only be formed through the gift of compassion.
A couple of years ago, Harvard Business Review published a study that supports the value of compassion in business and leadership. [https://hbr.org/2023/02/leading-with-compassion-has-research-backed-benefits] Of course, it’s value goes much deeper than that. It’s a Christian virtue that’s a key part of living a meaningful life! The Harvard study noted that compassion requires two parts: The first part is “empathy” which is trying to feel and understand the difficulties that another person is going through. The second part is “action”, meaning that having felt empathy you now try to do something helpful for the person in response. To put it simply, “empathy plus action equals compassion”.
The study was even able to measure the value of compassion. For example, health care workers who showed more compassion to their patients felt less burned-out from the stresses of their job. In Canada, they even did a 30-year-long study, and found that children who showed the most kindness in kindergarten, ended up earning higher incomes later in life than those who were oppositional in their youngest years. You can see that teaching compassion has some far-reaching consequences! That’s a good thing to remember, especially on Mother’s Day, and to be thankful for everyone, whether that’s a mother, a grandmother, someone who is like a mother, a mother of the faith, or a father, a friend, or mentor—whoever it may be—we can be thankful for all those who show us how to live with compassion.
As Christians, our chief example of compassion is Jesus himself. We see story after story in the gospels about how Jesus responded to people with compassion, even being compassionate towards people who were judged, or shunned, by others in their society. And Jesus’ compassion didn’t stop with his earthly ministry. The risen Jesus still sends his compassionate presence to us today through the Holy Spirit. Jesus continues to have compassion for each one of us, and especially for those who suffer most, because he’s been through it himself—he has literally gone “to hell and back again”.
That’s why, in our gospel reading today from John 10 we don’t hear about another resurrection appearance (even though we’re still in the Easter season). We look back before the resurrection, before the crucifixion, to his time walking among the disciples, and we are reminded of the continuity of Jesus’ personality—that he is the same compassionate person, for all times and places and people.
That is why he says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” We—and all who seek to follow him—are his “sheep”. Like a Good Shepherd who calls to the flock to guide them, so too does Jesus want us to “hear his voice”—so that we will know the compassion he personally has for us. He makes it his business to know us better than we know ourselves; and he loves us “warts and all”.
This is why Jesus wants us to “follow him”—so whenever we begin to lose our way (and that happens to all of us at one time or another), we have a Savior and a Shepherd who will “restore our souls and guide us along right pathways for his name’s sake” as the 23rd Psalm so beautifully puts it. Jesus’ compassion for us is why he promises, in John 10:28 that “I will give them eternal life…[and] no one will snatch them out of my hand.” That’s compassion; that’s empathy plus action.
We also see in Revelation 7 another image of Christ’s compassion. This is a vision of heaven that was given by God to John of Patmos to see—and then for John to share that vision with the “seven churches that are in Asia” who were suffering greatly under Roman persecution, back in the 1st century AD. Revelation was given as a specific Word of compassion and encouragement to those early Christians and what they were going through. And Revelation continues to be a Word from God for anyone who is suffering or persecuted anywhere in the world. For all the weirdness and difficulty in understanding (and frankly, misinterpretation) of the Book of Revelation, it is at heart a witness to the compassion of Christ because in it we see a vision of God’s redemption for the whole world. Not redemption for just a small number of people who lived in an out-of-the-way place 2,000 years ago—though it did include them—but for the whole world! John of Patmos writes down the vision God gave him: “I looked and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes, and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands…”
There’s so many people that you can’t even count them—that is the reach of Christ’s compassion: at the end of all things, the compassion of Christ will be victorious over all. The Good Shepherd becomes the Lamb who was slain—crucified to forgive the sins of the world—and this slain Lamb then becomes the risen Shepherd, to “guide us to springs of the water of life, [where] God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.” Now that is a vision of salvation: life in God, and not death, will have the last word!
And the more we trust that Christ’s compassion is always there for each of us, then the more he will form us to be compassionate people in his own image. The compassion Jesus empowers us with is not just for those who are fellow members of Jesus’ “flock”. He calls us to have that empathy plus action—that compassion–for everyone. And when we offer it authentically, it’s really another form of evangelism. It’s good news, which is what evangelism means. Sharing compassion is good news. And it points the way to the never ending source of Divine Compassion, which flows down to all creation from Christ in heaven. Amen.