We’ve all seen large groups of people. The stadium packed with fans. The main square/street in town completely filled with partiers or protestors. The line-up of cars stretched out to the horizon in a traffic jam. The great mob of people rushing to and fro in a mall in December. We’ve all looked out over a city from a high place, and wondered at the great numbers of people who call that place home.
What do you think of when you see the crowds? Do you think of the great quantity of food that is needed to sustain them? Do you think of the ill intent of some among them? Do you think of the mindlessness of the mob and wonder if common sense has a home there? What emotions fill your heart when you see them? Wonderment? Frustration? Fear? Anger? Matthew recorded for us what Jesus saw when He looked at the crowds, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
God looks out at the crowds, and He knows the needs and hurts and disappointments of each one. He knows how sin has twisted and distorted life for every individual that the Spirit formed from conception. He looks and sees a vast graveyard of the walking dead of humanity. For they are all dead in their trespasses and sins. Completely helpless to do anything at all to rescue themselves. Worse, they are harassed. The enemy of their souls is not content to sit idly by and watch them stumble into eternal destruction. He and his minions do all they can all the time to further entangle them in sin and foolishness. He constantly lies to them, telling them they are not worthwhile, not loved, not noticed or cared for. Worse still, he constantly incites those he has oppressed and possessed toward ever more destructive behavior, furthering both their own misery and the misery of all around.
Jesus looks out to the crowds and sees how the enemy is harassing them. He sees how unable they are to help themselves. He notes that they are but sheep being led to the slaughter, and those He Himself had appointed to shepherd them to safety are absent. Unaccounted for. The shepherds have chased after sin too. They have fed their pride, and in their arrogance they distain the crowd and care nothing for them. The crowd is shepherdless.
Jesus sees these things, knows these facts, and is filled with compassion.
After you strip away the obvious, and after you look beyond the petty motivations, and after you look past the all too human faults, you see the true condition of people.
That is a spiritual exercise. An exercise which does not yield a conclusion so much as it yields a feeling. A deep, entirely spiritual emotion, whelming up from the soul. It is not an emotion you can walk away from or shake off, because it is God’s heart for people. It is compassion, and as John Nolland said, “Compassion involves so identifying with the situation of others that one is prepared to act for their benefit.”
Those who lead and those who govern must have this same compassion for the crowd they look upon. Without God’s heart for those we lead – without compassion – one’s behaviour becomes entirely motivated by one’s own condition.
And that – well, that never works out for the best.
We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
APPLICATION: Intentionality
What do you see when you look upon those you lead? Does God’s heart for them well up within you? Ask God for more of His heart for those you influence, that you might lead well.
