The phone rings just as you've sat down for Sunday lunch...
Your child calls out from her room just as you've sat down with a coffee...
Your elderly father calls for the third time in one evening...
When people make demands on us when it doesn't suit us, we can be quick to moan. Sometimes we might even ignore their requests (and caller display makes this so much easier!).
John the Baptist is callously killed by a weak and stupid king. And Jesus takes off for some space. Space from the crowds and the constant questions of the diciples. Space to think and pray.Herod sent and had John beheaded in the prison, and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother. and his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus.Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.Matthew 14:10-14
We don't know if Jesus was particularly close to John the Baptist - they don't seem to have spent much time together. So Jesus may have been reflecting as much on humanity's sick, evil hearts and his mission to rescue us as much as the particular loss of John. Perhaps his thoughts turned to his own death and his Father's request that he should carry the depravity of the world on his shoulders as well as the just wrath of the Father.
We don't know exactly why Jesus went off for some time alone. What we do know is how he responds when that time is interrupted by crowds of people: he has compassion on them. He is moved to action.
Now we could read this and think, 'I should follow his example.' Of course I should! But I don't and I know I won't. And if I read it this way, I just get burdened with guilt.
But the great news is that Jesus did continue to have compassion when it was inconvenient, when he was tired, when it meant suffering and even death. What a relief that is. Because Jesus does what I can't do - because he dies for my failure to do what I should - I am free from guilt.
Free from guilt, free to be filled with the Spirit, free to be a child of my heavenly Father. With that security, and having received that love and forgiveness, I'm now much more likely to go and show the compassion that I myself have received (cf 2 Corinthians 1:3-7).
So we really must stop looking to Jesus as primarily a moral example. That will lead us to guilt and failure and despair. As we read about Jesus, we must not ask, 'What should I do?', but 'Who is he and what did he do?' Then we can ask, 'Who, by faith in Christ, am I?'
