Moved To Greece by Compassion

David Orendorff · Acts 16:6-10 · May 20, 2007

Discipleship for us is worship, study and service.  We can show up for worship regularly with some ease and we can join a small group of some kind without much trouble (we have several groups looking for new folks).  But in what way do we know where and how God wants us to serve?  What is my call, my mission, the thing God would have me do for the kingdom healing of the world?

Paul’s experience in Asia Minor and then Macedonia is instructive but first a disclaimer.  This sermon was a bit frustrating for a linear sequential person to write because it resisted being organized.  If you get lost in the middle don't worry because I'm also probably lost.  But I keep going and so can you.  At the end it all comes to together, I hope.  We begin.

I like words, their etymology and morphology.  A good deal of this sermon will be exploring various words. A favorite word of mine is “compassion.”  One of “compassions” roots (via Old French and a Late Latin transliteration) is the compound Greek word συμπαθοσ. Συμ is with or together and παθοσ means passion. So compassion is a shared passion. 1 Theological Dictionary of the New Test. (Grand Rapids, Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), Vol. V, 935 Sympathy has the same etymology. 2 ibid., 204

But like all ideas compassion is larger than just one word.  There are two other words in the New Testament that we translate as compassion; οικτιπμοσ  and Σπλαγνιζομαι.

Οικτιπμοσ adds the meaning of being sympathetic in the sense of grief or sorrow.  Compassion is the sharing of grief.  In St. Luke's Sermon on the Plain, Jesus calls us to “Be compassionate (to share sorrows), even as our Father in heaven is compassionate (shares our sorrow).”3 Luke 6:17ff.

Σπλαγνιζομαι adds the meaning of moving the inner parts (heart, liver, lungs, etc.). 4 Ibid. Vol. VII, 548  We have a similar expression when we say, “I was moved…”  When Jesus sees a hungry crowd he is Σπλαγνιζομαι, inwardly moved and this inward movement causes him to take outward action and he miraculously feeds 4 and 5 thousand. 5 Mark 6:34, 8:2 To share suffering means to feel inside ourselves another’s suffering; to be touched at the very base of who we are.  I am inwardly moved when I watch a sad movie, when someone I love suffers, when I hear the cries of hungry and homeless children, when violence in family or nation reigns and I feel a personal need to respond. 

Giving added meaning to σπλαγνιζομαι are its Hebrew and Aramaic roots from the plural of womb.  Marcus Borg writes:

Thus "compassionate" bore the connotations of "Wombishness": nourishing, giving life, embracing; perhaps it also suggested feelings of tenderness.  God is nourishing, life-giving, "wombish." 6 Marcus Borg, Jesus: A New Vision, (San Francisco, Harper, 1987), 102.

New start: Paul and those with him have been traveling the different regions of Turkey sharing the good news of God’s forgiveness, compassion and power as known in Jesus the Christ.  They have a little success in Galatia and start a church.  But they were totally ineffective in Asia Minor (or Turkey), unable to speak a single helpful word.  When they tried to go to Bithynia, NW Turkey, the Spirit of Jesus stops them.

Suddenly Paul and company are going nowhere with their ministry.  They want to share God's gospel but they can’t.  They want to tell of the compassion of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, but they can’t.  No one will listen.  Even Jesus seems against them.  What has happened?

One night Paul has a vision and the direction of his ministry changes entirely.  Paul dreams a man of Macedonia (i.e. Northern Greece) is standing before him, beseeching him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

When we read this Macedonian besought Paul the Greek word is παρακαλεω.  It is a compound word of παρα (to, or toward) and καλεω (to summon, or call).  It means to call to, to call to aid, to send for. 7 Liddell and Scott's Greek English Lexicon, (New York: American Book Co., 1923), 522. In his vision, Paul dreams that this Macedonian man is not generically sending for just anyone but is specifically and personally sending for Paul.

And we read that the Macedonian man's call was to “help us.”  Help is also a compound word, Βοηθεω.  Βοη is a cry and Θεω is to run. 8 ibid., 132.  So the personal summons to Paul is to run to the cries of the Macedonians.  Paul and those with him immediately book a boat and go.

Whereas Paul’s ministry in Turkey was dry and fruitless, his ministry in Greece is almost immediately bountiful.  Lydia and her whole family receive the good news and come to trust God.  Paul, Silas and others are invited to stay in Lydia's home at Philippi and there a great church is begun.

The difference between the failing ministry in Turkey and the fruitful ministry of Greece is that in Turkey Paul is not hearing the cries for help, but from Greece Paul hears a personal cry for help and to this he runs. It is Paul’s hearing and responding to cries for compassion that make his Greek ministry fertile.  Ministry happens when real need is met with compassion leading to acts of loving kindness, even shared suffering in the name of the God of love.

I have come to believe that our call to service emerges from

1. our belief that God is universal in presence and servant love
2. cultivated in our worship and study
3. and directed by our hearing a personal call for help.

I have come to believe that my primary job as our pastor is to create a culture at Bear Creek which is grounded in trust of God, fed by worship and study, and directed by hearing the cries of our neighbors.  From such a culture our ministries emerge naturally and divinely.

The last part:

Some of you have told me that you don’t know what your service; your ministry ought to be.  In church language, you are uncertain as to your gifts and your call.  In our search for where God asks us to serve there are a million oughts, more oughts than we can ever do.  We wander through Turkey, trying to do as best we can what we ought to do.

If you don't know what you are called to be as you grow up in the faith, then I have a suggestion.  Over the next few weeks or months imitate Paul.  Worship and study in faith.  And instead of trying to grasp a ministry and thrust it upon the world, go to sleep, dream, and wait in the stillness of daily prayer until you hear the cry of your neighbor, an irresistible call for help distinctly directed to you. And when you hear your name called for help, run with compassion to offer the good news of bread or word, shelter or sacrament, for that is your God given service.

The call to compassion, the call to ministry is as unique as every person and it changes with time.  Now it may be to be a parent or pursue a career, to be a friend or mentor. God is very personal and time sensitive about this stuff.  For some of us the cries that move us to compassion may be no further than the other side of the room.  And others of us may need to take a car to our children’s school or to White Swan, book an airplane to Kenya or hop a boat to Haiti. (Advertisement:  The United Methodist Church is always looking for missionaries, people who would volunteer for a career or a short term of mission in the United States and around the world.   You can talk to Terri Stewart or me about this.)

It is my experience and my belief that in our lives there are clear times of knowing that we have been summoned to a particular compassionate act of service.  It is not magical.  It is the mystery of God's grace.  And there are other times in which we simply practice worship and study with patient expectation for the call to come.  As brothers and sisters of Paul we nonanxiously watch for our call.  We will know it is ours because it will come uninvited to conjure up images of life shared together, of suffering and sorrow borne together.  We will know it is our ministry because it gets in our face, moves our inmost parts and generates new life.

Shalom and Amen