As always, the scripture we listen to and read each week has so many possibilities for hearing God’s word.

One of the great difficulties I have, is to limit my comments to one idea or one point. 

Early on, a wise member of this congregation reminded me that it’s better to drive one point home than to meander all over the place.

That is good advice but hard for someone like me whose imagination tends to meander all over the place.

Today is one of those times, that in all of the readings, God has something to say… but it does seem that sheep and shepherds dominate.

I used to feel terribly guilty when these lessons came up… especially Jeremiah’s

 “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Says the Lord, Therefore thus says the Lord.”

It did not help to know that the word Pastor comes from the Latin and means shepherd as it does in Spanish. Knowing myself to be a long way from the model shepherd in the Bible, I was riddled with guilt and anxiety at Jeremiah’s “woe…”

It was not until I realized, reading a footnote in the new Lutheran Study Bible, that it was the 500 BC King by the name of Josiah that Jeremiah had in mind and not a parish priest. While the 23rd Ps. reaffirms who is the Shepherd and who are the sheep that does not absolve clergy from their responsibility to be a role model “Pastor.”

In Mark’s Gospel we hear it again.  As he went ashore he saw a great crowd and he had COMPASSION on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd …

The preceding vs. reads, Now many saw them going and recognized him and they hurried there on foot and arrived ahead of them.

How did they recognize Jesus? It occurred to me that we have no known description of Jesus anywhere in the NT. There is a visual description of sorts of the promised Messiah from the prophet Isaiah (Is. 53). He had no form or majesty that we should look at him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised  and          rejected by others a man of suffering... one from whom others hid their faces. But he was wounded for our transgression, crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the punishment that made us whole and by his bruises we are healed...

There are many paintings of Jesus by artists who project their own ethnicity or romanticized image of Jesus onto the canvas. One of the most famous, which can still be found in many Sunday school rooms today, is one of the most reproduced images of Jesus in the world “The Head of Christ “by Werner Sallman.

There are an estimated 500 million copies in print. So, for many, that is the image they have of Jesus. 

What many people don’t know is that that is fake.

Fake, in the sense that he copied the sketch from a charcoal drawing which appeared on the cover of Ladies' Home Journal in 1924. It was first painted by the 19^th century French realist Leon L’ Hermitte.

So, maybe today we could take a few minutes to ask which is the real Jesus of the Bible?

Ever since Luther translated the Bible into German, there have been those who have tried to figure out which Jesus in the Gospels is the real one.. The Good Shepherd, Suffering Servant of Isaiah., the one who we came to know in Sunday School?

Scholars even have a name for it “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.”

Let’s start with the shepherd image – real shepherding in Jesus' day was not a reputable profession. Among those professions considered unclean, America’s Dirtiest Jobs not withstanding, were shepherds.  As romanticized as shepherds are both in religious and folklore, and yet, yet…

If we understand Jesus the Good Shepherd as metaphor, we get a picture of Jesus who challenged religious assumptions about God both then and now.

Like disease is a punishment for sin, or that poverty is a symptom of alienation from God or just plain laziness, or that children should be seen and not heard, or that theologians know more about God than shepherds, fisher-folk, and tax collectors or that a woman’s place is in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant…

No Martha’s need apply for discipleship. Or that it is a sin to practice medicine on the Sabbath, and if your have a flat tire you need to wait until Monday to get it fixed..

Unless, you have a spare and no one is looking while you take off the old tire and put on the spare. 

So how did they recognize Jesus?

The answer comes in vs. 34 of today’s Gospel.

“He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” The Gk. word for compassion is    s p l a g chin zomai.

There is no good English equivalent because 2,000 years ago it was in the bowels where human emotions where thought to be located, and today it is the heart.

There goes the doctrine of “verbal inspiration” Mr. Fundamentalist.

The NT concept of compassion means that the heart of Jesus skipped a beat.

It was more like empathy and less like sympathy, although the latter wasn’t out of the question either. Compassion was the adrenaline that coursed in the veins of Jesus - making his heart skip a beat!

He bled a little; he felt the pain of his flesh being torn by dis-ease.

Have you ever noticed how that word is spelled? Dis – Ease! If you want to know what Jesus looked like, don’t look for him in paintings by Werner Sallman or Thomas Kinkaid.  But there is one called the Crucifixion by an artist who was a contemporary of Martin Luther.  It depicts Jesus on the cross, with sores and lacerations and his body twisted and contorted in pain and suffering. I have not seen Mel Gibson’s the Passion (nor do I plan to), but from those who have - maybe he comes close to the Greunewald painting.

If you want to see Jesus you will find him with the mother who is cramped into an old Chevy pick-up with a two-year-old, a dog and an infant, waiting for a place where she can find shelter from all the pain, hunger, heat and abuse that has aged her beyond her years. If you want to see Jesus, come to a Habitat house that is being built somewhere in the world as a family waits to find shelter from the cacophony of the elements. Or talk to one of 40 million Americans who don’t have adequate health care because they can’t afford health insurance.

Frank Seilhammer tells about his summer, teaching VBS as part of his seminary training.

 At the opening session the names of the pupils who were to be in each class were read to the assembled teachers. When the list was read, the name “Grundy” was called out. As soon as it was read he writes that he could hear a sigh go through the people in the room. When the meeting ended, he was told why the sigh had gone up. Grundy was a troublemaker…  “He will fight with the children, disrupt the class, and make the class room unmanageable, said one of the other teachers. Nothing will be accomplished by anyone in your group with that kid among them.”

As he tells it the reports were true. Grundy was what everyone had described. He caused uproars in the class, destroyed the filmstrips (that was before Power Point), and literally pummeled every child in the group, nailing them one by one either in the building or on the playground. Grundy was a hellion with every person except one: A little girl named Becky, who had been born with a series of birth defects that left her only one usable arm.

Seilhammer notes that it was not until sometime later that he learned what had gone on. She and Grundy had begun to spend time together.

When Grundy had polished off a kid or two out in the yard, he would disappear into the building where he would talk to Becky during what was left of the recess.

Because of Becky’s handicap Seilhammer had volunteered to carry her from class to class. While she could use her crutches for some classes, the last class was on the second floor of the building.  Dr. Seilhammer would pick her up in heavy braces and carry her up the stairs to the room where the class met.  One particular day, the teller of this tale was detained by a long- winded colleague and he had only enough time to get to the class he was teaching.

As soon as he got to the room he saw the empty seat and remembered that he had forgotten Becky.

As he ran down the flight of stairs to find Becky, lo and behold there was Grundy… huffing and puffing up those steps one at a time, with a load bigger than himself. In his arms was a child heavier than he, Becky, braces and all.

“Wait Grundy, I’ll take her,”  “no!” he puffed. “No, you just move over and let me through.

I’ll get her up to the room all by myself.” And looking Seilhammer square in the eye and moving past him he said, “Because Becky said I could!”

So, stepping aside and holding his breath he watched as Grundy staggered past him. He did make it to the room. He dropped Becky into the chair, and then ran back down the stairs to get her crutches . . . That is an example of compassion in action.  Not sympathy but empathy with the heart skipping a few beats… that is what Jesus looked like at that moment on that day. 

Seilhammer notes that as he dashed down the hall he saw the little ruffian with a new pair of eyes. I would suggest he saw Jesus in action.

I’m afraid most of us still look for Jesus in all of the wrong places. In the literalism of the Bible or the social action agenda of Faith Communities or Government. Or in the paraphernalia of the liturgy.

Not that these are not important, but they are not the Good News.

So when you come to the altar and hear the words the body of Christ given for You, the Blood of Christ shed for you”   be reminded that at that moment you will experience the heart of God skipping a beat, you will taste Compassion in bread and wine, as you recall that Jesus the Healer, the healer not only of broken bodies but also of broken souls and a broken and diseased life..  or, as the last verse in our hymn puts it “ You who know each thought and feeling, teach us all your way of healing; Spirit of compassion, fill each heart.

Sheep we are and a Shepherd He is, that is Good News.