Jesus Shows Compassion to Outsiders

Good day to everyone out there in cyber world. I hope you are having a good day. I have been really looking forward to today's post as much of what I say hear on out hinges on today's topic. Yesterday we learned who the outsider's were (I did not go into as much detail as I could have because of the nature of the blogosphere. I will let everyone know when my book comes out. In it I explore in much more detail who the outsiders were and why that is important for us today). Now that we know to look for Jewish, Gentile, and Samaritan outsiders in Scripture, let us see how Jesus actually responds to the outsiders in Scripture.

Let's look first at Matthew 8:5-13, the story of the Centurion who had great faith (Yesterday I said we would look at Luke's version in chapter 7, but I decided this version would be more fun). I will not write out the whole story hear, but in it Jesus is walking with his disciples in Capernaum when a Centurion comes up to Jesus and request that Jesus heal his servant who is extremely sick and dying. Jesus, without hesitation, offers to come to the man's home and heal the servant. The Centurion, however, feels shamed and tells Jesus that he is not worthy to have the Lord come under his roof. So Jesus, again without hesitation, heals the servant then and there. What is remarkable about this story is that Jesus does not question the Centurion one bit about the sins in his life or his background or religion. Jesus does not say "do you believe in me" or "have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior." Jesus, without the slightest questioning or concern for how this man lead his life, responds to the request and heals his servant. (I am reminded of a book a read by two Christian psychologists who explained that when a patient comes in and is experiencing a great deal of distress, the first question they ask is "are you a Christian?" That is not the most compassionate or caring way to work with someone having emotional issues). It is important to understand that the Centurion was likely a Zoroastrian which many of the Roman soldiers were (if not a stoic) who believed in dualism (two gods of equal power, one good and one evil) and was not even close to being Jewish. Jesus had no concern for that; the fulfillment of the request came immediately after the request, no questions asked. It was this non-Jew, this man who was apparently such a sinner that he was ashamed to have Jesus under his roof, that we are told has greater faith than anyone Jesus has seen in Israel. Imagine Jesus today saying about a non-Christian, "I have not seen greater faith than this man's in all of America."

The Next story takes place in Luke 7:11-17 and is the story of the widow of Nain's son raised from the dead. As the story goes, Jesus and his disciples were journeying toward the city of Nain where a funeral procession was coming from, having a dead boy/man (the story does not indicate the age) with a grieving mother at his side. We are told in v 13 that as soon as he saw her he had compassion on her. Immediately he healed the son. Again we have a situation where Jesus saw a person in great need, in great distress, and had no concern for her background, nor did he question her at all. He simply, having compassion on her, healed the son. He did not question what religion she was or what sins she has committed. Jesus did not ask her to confess her sins first. He simply saw a need and immediately met it.

The first story was of a Gentile outsider (we know this because he was a Centurion), the second was a Jew (we know this because the funeral rituals resembled that of a Jewish funeral), so let us now look at a Samaritan outsider in Luke 17:11-19. In this story Jesus is approached by 10 men who have leprosy and when they see Jesus approach, they shout out to him, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Immediately Jesus shouted to them to "Go and show yourselves to the priests." Immediately these men were healed. What is striking about this story is that only one came back to thank Jesus, and this we are told was a Samaritan (v 16). What is even more striking is that the other nine were Jews, indicated by the fact that Jesus singled this man out as a "foreigner" against all the rest (v 18). The Jews did not return to glorify Jesus, but the Samaritan did. Again we have a story where Jesus did not question the background or the religion, or the sinfulness of the lepers, but was made aware of a need, and immediately met the need.

This just goes to show the compassion with which Jesus treated people. When there was a person hurting and someone in need, Jesus did not hesitate to help that person out, to meet the need where the person was at. He did not ask anything of them. He did not give them any requirement they had to follow. He did not request their conversion or devotion. He simply met the need with compassion and went his way. Sometimes the outsider followed him and became a disciples, sometimes he/she did not. But it did not matter to Jesus. His concern was to show them love and compassion regardless of what they had done in their life or what they believed or what their nationality was; and we see this time and again in Scripture without exception. Is this the example we have been following? Is this the example the church has been following? In my next blog I will look at who today's outsiders are.
God bless.
-Brandon

Unbelievers in the Bible

I am back today and would like to discuss outsiders. Now, before I get any backlash about that term, it is not meant as derogatory whatsoever. It is simply a term denoting the position of a group or groups of people. When I talk about outsiders, I am simply talking about those people who were not followers of Jesus. Everyone of Jesus' followers was an outsider before becoming an insider (a follower of Jesus). So who were the outsiders in the bible. They fall into three separate groups.

First, there were Gentile outsiders. These were people who were not of the Jewish faith. Jesus did not encounter many Gentiles during his ministry, mainly because there were not nearly as many Gentiles in Palestine during Jesus' lifetime as there were Jews. Jesus came into contact with the Gentiles in one of two ways. They either came to him while he was in Jew territory, such as when the Centurion came to Jesus to ask him to heal his servant (Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10), or he went to a pocket of Gentile territory and encountered them there; such as when he went with some of his disciples to Gerasa/Gadara and ran into the man with a legion of demons (Matt 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-40).

Secondly, Jesus ran into Samaritan outsiders. We see this in John 4:5-38 where Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the well. What is so remarkable about Jesus' encounters with the Samaritans is that the Jews and the Samaritans were essentially at war with each other. There was no military fighting going on, but each claimed to be the right religious heirs to the kingdom of God. The Samaritans claimed to be the lost northern kingdom that had been captured by the Assyrians in the 7th century B.C. and had never been seen again. The Jews claimed that was a lie. So the two groups hated each other. Jesus only runs into this group when going through the land of Samaria which is between Jerusalem and Galilee.

The third kind of outsider would be the obvious Jewish outsider. Being in the land of the Jews, Jesus encountered many Jews who were not yet (some did not become) followers of his. If the person Jesus encounters is not specifically called a Samaritan, or somehow identified (by region or occupation) as a Gentile, then it is safe to assume that they are a Jew.

Jesus' encounters with all of these outsiders is remarkable, and as I will discuss in the next series of blogs, the traditional Christian way of communicating to and with outsiders completely counters the way Jesus communicated with them in Scripture. We will see that where Jesus welcomes and accepts, we often exclude and reject. In the next post I will be discussing Luke 7:1-10; 7:11-17; and 17:11-19 if you want to read ahead.