Eyes of Compassion

Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut.

The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

The gospel lesson for today is from Mark chapter 10, verses 17 to 30.

Mark 10:17–30

You'll find that on page 1006 of your Pew Bible.

The gaze of Jesus reveals both the inner and outer truth of who we are and is accompanied by his great love and desire to redeem our sin and failure.

Here then is a reading from Mark chapter 10, beginning with the 17th verse.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him.

And asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone.

You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and your mother.

And he said to him, Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, You lack one thing.

Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

And come, follow me.

Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How difficult difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

And the disciples were amazed by his words, but Jesus said to them again, Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, Then who can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, With man it is impossible, but not with God.

For all things are possible with God.

Peter began to say to him, See, we have left everything and followed you.

Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers, or sisters or mothers, or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time.

Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life.

But many who are first will be last, and the last first.

Here ends the reading of his holy word.

May God add his blessing to it.

I love a good road trip.

In the 15 years that Naija and I have been married, we've been blessed to visit 23 states.

Of the 23 states, we've driven to at least half of them.

But road trips today are very different than when I was a kid.

Today we have technology, we got streaming services, and we actually have space in the car.

When I was a child, there was one feature of the road trip that I personally looked forward to.

The one stop on the road trip that I thought was the whole point of the trip.

Can you guys guess what it was?

Well, it's the all-you can eat buffet.

Yes, yes, yes, the all-you-can-eat buffet.

And for some reason, as a as a kid, I translated all you can eat to eat everything you see.

Unfortunately for my mother, I was a growing athlete, and my mom used to say in a super Jamaican way, Una eyes too big for your belly.

In other words, your eyes are too big for your stomach.

And I'm like, actually, no, it's not.

But there was one thing that could stop my covetous food rampage.

It was a look from my mother.

Every mother seems to be equipped with this look.

Joanne Hendricks, my mother, wasn't a big talker.

She was very introverted, but her eyes said everything she ever wanted to say.

She gave me one kind of look, and I knew that I should probably stop get up and get getting food.

She gave me another look and I would know to keep my voice down.

When we arrived at her house every Thanksgiving, she would stop at the threshold of the door and she would give me a look and I knew I was welcomed home.

Interestingly, my mother changed when she got saved, and also when she became a grandmother.

Instead, I inherited that look somehow.

The eyes that once could pierce my heart became the eyes that would look at my children with compassion if I was ever over-disciplining them.

Jesus' eyes do the same thing.

And it is with utter honesty and careful precision that he looks upon us.

When Jesus looks at us, we tend to do one of two things.

We give him more, or we give him less.

It's because not that he's just looking at us, it's almost like he's looking through us.

He looks at us with compassion.

He looks at us and he sees us completely.

Because when we behold the compassion in the eyes of Jesus, they immediately call us into relationship with God.

When we behold the compassion in the eyes of Jesus, they immediately call us deeper into relationship with God.

And that's what this scene about the rich young man is about.

It's about belonging and belongings.

A little background on the rich young man.

Jesus and his disciples see the young man approach him.

They're in probably what seems to be some kind of a public square.

He is appearing to be genuine, a bit humble in his approach.

Scripture calls him the rich young man.

We're going to call him R Y M.

Now, R Y M was likely around the same age as the disciples.

R Y M is well known in the community because everybody seems to know his business that he was rich.

RYM is also someone who's considered to be a good Jew who keeps Torah.

This young man, or young ruler, as other gospels call it, had to have some measure of character in order to be able to balance being young, being wealthy, and following the law.

So with humility, he presents himself before Jesus in front of the disciples and in front of a larger crowd.

The rich young ruler actually represents the kind of person that the disciples would have never rebuked if they had tried to approach Jesus.

I would even say that the social, the disciples actually looked up to this young man socially and spiritually.

The disciples saw a dignitary, but Jesus sees the eyes of invitation.

And in seeing RIM completely, Jesus can detect that this young man has an inner dilemma.

He has a problem.

And that's the problem of goodness.

The disciples, the crowd, the young man, they're not on the same page about goodness.

The implications of the title good are so significant to Jesus that he seems to skip over this whole inheriting eternal life thing in order to clarify what the nature of good really is.

Here's what Mark 10, 17, and 18 says.

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God.

His eyes are God's eyes.

Well, first, why in the world would he ask him, Why do you call me good?

The Muslim might argue, see, even Jesus doesn't want to be called good.

So how can he actually be God?

But in modern language, what I believe Jesus is actually saying is, Do you realize what you're really calling me?

Notice that Jesus does not say, I am not good.

Nor does he say, Do not call me good.

He simply asks him, Why do you call me good?

One Christian apologist says Jesus simply wants a young man to know the implications of labeling him as good.

For the young man, the phrase good teacher is some kind of a compliment.

But for Jesus, the phrase good has become a cultural platitude, a word that almost means nothing in that day.

But goodness in Jesus' eyes can only be attributed to one person, God alone.

The young man is talking to God in the flesh, and he does not perceive it.

The eyes of Jesus are the eyes of God.

And so the conversation continues.

And Jesus addresses the question of eternal security.

Herein lies the second problem.

Jesus sees that he and RYM and the crowd and the disciples don't actually share the same definition of what it means to be saved.

For the young religious leader, to be saved is to be publicly seen as holy through his own human effort.

In verses 19 and 20, let's read what it says.

You know the commandments.

Do not murder.

That's one.

Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal.

Do not bear false witness.

Do not defraud.

That's one single commandment.

Honor your mother and father.

And he said to him, Teacher, I've kept all of this since my youth.

Well, smashing job, young sir.

You've become a perfect Christian.

But if we look closely, we see Jesus deploying a skill here that's not only brilliant, but is full of compassion, full with patience, and full of love.

There are many, many statutes in the Jewish law.

Ten commandments that are the foundation to Judaism.

But Jesus only mentions five.

He's drawing the young man in by tactfully exposing him without embarrassing him.

That leads me to my second point.

The eyes of Jesus exposes us to make us whole.

The eyes of Jesus exposes us to make us whole.

So why did Jesus only mention five, Pastor?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

The five commandments that Jesus mentioned of the ten have to do with our heart for humanity.

The first four commandments of the ten determine whether we truly have a heart for the Lord.

And the last command that Jesus intentionally omitted is the commandment, thou shalt not covet.

Covetousness in the Bible is defined as having or showing a great desire to possess something that belongs to someone else.

When we keep, when we're covetous as people, we're keeping all of ourselves to ourselves.

And then we want more.

One scholar said something to the effect of even though the young man was genuine, something within his soul knew that following the law in the way he was following it wasn't going to get him into heaven.

There was a still magnetic whisper in his heart that drew him to the feet of Jesus to seek out an answer that his soul needed to receive.

Jesus then omits mentioning the commandment that he knew the young man was not able to keep.

That is a kindness.

That is an invitation.

If you get around a holy person enough, a person who's really following Jesus, like seeing the interns in our office and the energy and the zeal they have for God, you're gonna feel convicted no matter if they say something or not.

That's a grace.

That's not shame.

Somehow the all-knowing God is also not condemning, and he's calling us to stay.

The young man is near the kingdom of God, and Jesus wants him nearer.

Just because we know something ugly about someone or something indecent, that doesn't mean that we need to be the ones to expose them in order to help them.

The public rebuke culture of Christians online has become embarrassing.

It's become unbecoming and has gone too far.

Just because we know something ugly or indecent about someone that we even love doesn't mean we need to be the ones to expose them in order to help them.

Sometimes, sometimes, not every time, but sometimes, compassion and unhurried grace in conversation can allow the ugliness to expose itself.

The eyes of Jesus exposes us, but he does that to make us whole.

The final problem we see in this conversation is a multi-layered one.

The problem was the man's belonging were in the way of Jesus' gaze.

After RYM tells us that he's followed these five laws since he was a child, Jesus sees an open door there and he enters into it.

Verse 21 says this.

And Jesus looking at him loved him and said to him, wait.

Jesus looking at him loved him.

Jesus looking at him agape him compassionately, carefully, affectionately.

Try that next time somebody curses you out.

Before we go any further, friends, we have to see this.

The eyes of Jesus are the eyes of invitation.

Psalm 32, 8 says, I will instruct you and I will teach you in the way that you should go.

I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

Matthew 14, 14.

Last service I said, I said Matt.

I said Matt 14.

I was like, Matt.

Okay, Matt 14, 14.

We have that kind of relationship.

When Jesus went ashore in Matthew 14, 14, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them and he healed their sick.

In Matthew 9, 36, my boy Matt, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.

And I love this scripture because he says that he saw that they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

The people moved Jesus.

The young man moved Jesus to stop where he was, where he was headed, and to offer him an invitation to follow Jesus into eternal life.

Let's read a little bit more.

So after Jesus looks at him and loves him, it says, You lack one thing, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

And come follow me.

Disheartened by the saying, he walked away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

And looking at this wealthy young man, Jesus sees the core issue within the young man's soul is a lack of contentment.

RYM is a man with eyes too big for the world.

Jesus' invitation proves that Jesus' eyes are big for him.

The invitation allows the disciples to see who the young man truly is.

And the invitation allows the young man to become like a child.

Kids have no belongings, they only belong.

Interestingly, children just assume that they have access to all their parents own, so belongings aren't ever an issue.

Now, just to understand what it means to become like a child, we see a moment right before the rich man approaches, and we see this happen in verse 14.

This is right before that scene.

Verse 14 says, But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant.

What Jesus was indignant by was there was a crowd of people around them, and these people are just desperately wanting to bring their children forward to Jesus.

It says, just so he could touch them.

And the disciples see that and they become security guards and they say, No, you can't do that.

Jesus sees that and it makes him indignant.

When he saw this, he was angry at the disciples, but interestingly, the text does not show evidence of Jesus responding in anger.

He explains to them that the kingdom of God belongs to children.

And then he tells them, you actually have to be childlike to enter it.

He rewards the children, blesses them, and moves on.

He makes an end to their gatekeeping.

You know, the disciples probably saw Jesus and his presence as some exclusive group that they had squeezed their way into.

They saw the rich young ruler as the ideal disciple.

So after the rich young ruler walks away with his wealth still in hand, showing that he actually didn't believe Jesus was good, and that he actually didn't believe Jesus was God, the Lord turns around and brings the message home for his disciples.

And stay with me here.

We're going to read verse 23 to 30.

And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

And the disciples were amazed at this word.

That Greek word means they were terrified.

The disciples were amazed at this word.

But Jesus said to them again, Children, how difficult is it to enter the kingdom of God?

Do you see what Jesus did there?

He addresses them as children.

It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, Then who can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, With man it is impossible.

But with God, all things are possible.

Peter began to say to him, See, we've left everything to follow you.

And Jesus responds, Truly I say to you, there is no one that has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands.

With persecutions and in the age to come, eternal life.

In verse 24, Jesus turns to his beloved brothers and he addresses them as children.

He's letting them know that they now hold possession to the kingdom because they've allowed Jesus to wholeheartedly possess them.

But why the abstract and ridiculous illustration about a camel going through the eye of a needle?

Now, as a person who lives with someone who designs clothing and sews for a living, I can assure you that a big hump camel cannot fit through the eye of a sewing needle.

What Jesus is using here is rabbinical hyperbole.

And when a Jewish teacher is trying to get you to understand how serious a matter is, they often use shock value embedded within the hyperbole.

The shock that we feel when we read a scripture like this is meant to match the implications of the text if we don't get it right.

Hyperboles are not meant to be true, they're only illustrations that teach us the value of the truth being offered.

The greater the shock, the greater the value.

So when we see hyperbole in scripture, know that an important truth will follow it.

A camel through the eye of a needle.

That's literally impossible.

You know, our head elder Gad said something to me right after service, which is profound.

He said it's likely that a camel would have been the largest possession that a rich man like RYM would own.

So he uses that to bring home the illustration.

Why didn't RYM just stick around for a little bit?

Just wait so you can hear the rest of this teaching, right?

Figuratively speaking, it's only difficult.

Though, literally speaking, it's impossible.

To gain Jesus and give him all that we have so that he can redeem it is difficult.

But our Redeemer works all things together for the good of those who believe and are called according to his purpose.

He's a redeemer and he does not function outside of his own name.

As we behold Jesus in closing, that's how we learn how to belong.

It's the spiritual fountain of youth.

It's becoming a child again and again and again.

Because honestly, belongings keep us from belonging.

My mother, Joanne Eleanor Hendrix, was a tall woman with fierce eyes who went unseen for most of her life.

She went to a small community college when she migrated here in New York, earned an associates.

She then went to a CUNY school, studied economics, and well after I was born, she earned a law degree at Pace University.

A school unseen by many in the law community.

Everything my mother did, she executed with quietness and trust.

When my mother migrated from Jamaica in the 1970s, she had corporate aspirations.

As a tall woman of color with a thicker accent, she was rare in the corporate sector.

And the challenge is that the more you stick out, it's often the more you go unseen.

Eventually, my mother became a compliance analyst at New York Life, a manager at AXA Equitable.

She was a senior manager there at some point.

She then decided in the middle of having three kids to go to law school, she earned her JD by the time I graduated eighth grade.

And eventually she rose to become an assistant vice president and the head of product regulatory filing, whatever that is, at a small insurance company in Massachusetts called Mass Mutual.

I'm proud of my mother, proud of her work and her achievements.

However, in her 2020 funeral, many of her former colleagues submitted videos to pay their respects.

It was COVID, so people couldn't come.

I quickly realized that I didn't see my mother.

And I did not see her ability to see others.

As little children, when we see our parents, our eyes are often only big for what they can give to us.

That day I learned how big my mother's eyes were for others.

A year-long layoff and obscurity and joblessness was when my mother was seen by Jesus.

He captured her heart.

He saw her.

Jesus' gaze changed my mother's life dramatically and gave her a new set of eyes.

Through watching these submitted videos, several women over and over of all different colors and of all different backgrounds, men, young and old, boss after boss after boss after boss, spoke about how Joanne saw them.

She prayed with them.

She looked after them and gave them opportunities.

She even mentored kids in a big sister program that I knew nothing about.

Now, Western New England University's Law School has a scholarship in her name that's given to students who need an opportunity to be seen, just like she did.

And I want to emphasize that my siblings and I knew nothing of this ever.

She never talked about it.

Her eyes that once could pierce my heart became eyes that would look at others with compassion because of the way Jesus looked at her.

Be the touch of Jesus, be the eyes of Jesus.

You know how you can tell when somebody has gazed at Jesus' face?

It's how they look upon others without their status in mind, without their celebrity, without their poverty or their pain, and they call them nearer.

For some of us, our belongings are in the way of us belonging.

Others have a grip on their family so tight that Jesus can't even get to them.

And he's saying, It's okay.

I got him.

Maybe it's a relationship that's gripped us tighter than the Lord.

I don't know what God is calling you to surrender today, but I know he won't fail you.

His eyes are the eyes of your heavenly father.

They desire to make you whole.

They invite us to him, and his eyes tell us all the things that will block us from belonging fully to him and in his will.