Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.1998, Page 48

Duncan B Forrester
Passion in the Practice of Jesus
From the beginning of his ministry a multitude of ordinary folk followed Jesus
around wherever he went. They gave him no tranquillity. They pursued him
when he sought to have time for rest and prayer. They were unrelenting in their
demands on him. They thronged around him. They were thrilled and astounded
at his healings of ordinary folk just like them. He was amazingly generous with
his time. He never seemed to be too busy, or too tired to have time for them. He
listened to them, and talked to them, and taught them. The way he treated them
made them feel they were worth something. Thronging around Jesus, they felt
valued. When they were hungry, he fed them. Jesus had time for the mob, the
multitude, No one else did. Harassed, helpless and leaderless, they turned to
Jesus. And we read that the sight of the crowd moved him to pity; they were
‘sheep without a shepherd.’5
The word rendered as ‘moved with compassion’ or ‘moved to pity’ (splang-
nidesthai) is an interesting term. It means literally that Jesus felt the condition of
the people who drifted around the fringes of decent society in the guts. He felt
their anger and frustration, their confusion and uncertainty, their self-contempt
and their aggression in the depths of his being.
It is significant that the Letter to the Hebrews sees the compassion, the
empathy, the ability to enter into the condition and feelings of others, and the
passion of Christ as central to its understanding of his priestly work and practice:
we may ‘boldly approach the throne of grace, in order that we may receive mercy
and find grace to give us timely help’ because we have a high priest who is able
‘ to sympathise with our weaknesses’ for he has been tempted in every way as we
are.’6 Christ our high priest shares our feelings, our sufferings, our uncertainties,
even our despair. Only so can he be our great High Priest, standing alongside us
in our distress and in our Joys. And we Christians, called to be a royal priest-
hood, need to learn to share in the pain and anger and grief and confusion, as well
as the joys of our fellows if we are to bring these things to God for healing. And
that priestly work is surely a central dimension of Christian practice.
Passion and Knowledge
There is a further way in which the Christian tradition rejects the Apollonian
emphasis without embracing the Dionysian. For the Christina tradition, know-
ledge of God and of our fellows is not a matter of detached cerebral activity. We
5 Matthew 9.36
6 Hebrews 4.14-16.
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