Deeper shade of grey | lost themes

… compassion - the lost theme of mission?

Bosch in a chapter entitled Reflections on Biblical Models of Mission draws attention to missional motifs, attributes of God outworked in his redemptive plan that is woven throughout both Old and New Testaments. One theme being that of compassion, Bosch’s exegesis centres on Ezekiel 16:4-7: “… on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you out of compassion for you; but you were thrown out in the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born. I passed by you, and saw you flailing about in your blood. As you lay in your blood, I said to you, “Live!”

I like the Message paraphrase  “No one cared a fig for you…”

Bosch makes some observations:  “This is indeed one of the most powerful “mission statements” in, the whole Bible, since it depicts God as the One who has compassion on the lost and the marginalized… It is, however, in the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth that the missionary dimensions of God’s boundless compassion are expressed in an unequaled way.” (D. J. Bosch, Reflections on Biblical Models of Mission, in Toward the Twenty-First Century in Christian Mission. Essays in Honor of Gerald H. Anderson., ed. James M. Phillips, and Robert T. Coote)

Certainly true when you observe the target of Jesus’ compassion - the poor, the blind, the crippled, the leprous, the hungry, those who weep, the sick, the little ones, the widows, the captives, those who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and the like (cf. Nolan 1976:21).

“As God has compassion on Israel and others, and as Jesus over throws the codes of society in boundless compassion on the marginalized, so we too are called to show compassion. This is a fundamental thrust of the biblical picture of mission.” (D. J. Bosch ibid.)

I feel uncomfortable in some conversations - compassion is belittled, compassion is seen as a mis-directed waste of time, to be compassionate without an end is mere humanitarianism, it is naive, something to be left to social services, a canny way in! The co-dependence issue creeps in here and is dealt with at depth and artfully by John Walter’s article at theRubicon - Compassion or Co-Dependence? Listening to those conversations - I see people lick their lips at the prospect of an excuse to not get involved, a sage nod of the head punctuating the sentiment of ‘how compassionate is dependence?’ How about erring on the side of compassion?

However well-disguised the sentiment, the reality behind the rhetoric is that we could be guilty of “Not caring a fig …”. I feel uncomfortable because I fear that this ‘waste of time’, this ‘naivety’ represents an increasingly lost theme of mission.

Deeper shade of grey appears every Wednesday on theRubicon. Find past posts and a bio of Capt. Gordon Cotterill here.  

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