Written by Dr Phil Griffin
Trigger warning – this article features themes of trauma in childbirth.
As we continue our medical focus in June, our Health Coordinator Phil reflects on the Biblical basis for health and compassion ministries.
Medical mission has a long and illustrious history, admittedly not without its controversies and problems. However, many of us will be aware of names such as Hudson Taylor, David Livingstone, and Peter Parker (not Spider Man — Dr Peter Parker was the first protestant medical missionary sent to China in 1834). And finally, Dr Tom Lambie, who became a close friend of Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie and started the ALERT hospital in Addis Ababa that still exists to this day, simply by pulling a beetle out of Haile Selassie’s cousin’s ear.
Around the world, SIM sends medical mission workers to places where Christ is least known, and where many people face serious health issues without the money or resources to receive proper treatment.
But what’s the motivation for this work? It says in Matthew 9:35-38:
‘Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”’
Matthew 9:35-38
This is the only place in the Gospel where Jesus’ emotion of compassion is linked to his call to mission.
Matthew tells us Jesus went through all the towns and villages — both proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom, and also healing every disease and sickness. He saw people who were harassed: pressed down by suffering, sin, and spiritual confusion, and helpless: unable to fix themselves.
At our church, our latest “book of the term” was “A week in the life of a Greco-Roman woman” by Holly Beers. It’s a fictional account of what it must have been like in Ephesus in the 1st century AD when Paul arrived and was teaching in the lecture hall of Tyrannus as recorded in Acts 19.
The book’s written from the perspective of Anthia, a pregnant woman who’s a wife and mother. What struck me most was how medical problems that today would be diagnosed and treated easily, were such major and fear-inducing matters. Anthia experienced reduced foetal movements and bleeding, and a friend’s child had a high fever which struck fear into the whole family.
Another friend dies in childbirth — a huge risk back then that’s fortunately now very unusual. It was quite a harrowing read. The child is miraculously healed, as is Anthia, and the book closes with her thinking seriously about the message of Jesus that she has heard through Paul. It was a graphic example of the sort of helplessness Jesus saw in Matthew 9: like sheep without a shepherd — vulnerable, directionless, unprotected.
This is what medical mission workers see every day: people in pain, people without access to care, people carrying burdens alone.
The word Matthew uses for “compassion” has the meaning of a deep, gut level feeling of mercy. It’s not pity. It’s not sentiment. It’s the heart of God stirred into action. Jesus’ compassion is not passive. It moves him toward the broken.
This is the heartbeat of medical mission: the compassion of Christ expressed through the healing of bodies but also the care of souls – note what Matthew says Jesus did first – he was preaching the good news of the kingdom and then healing. The two go hand in hand.
Compassion shouldn’t only motivate us to care for the physical needs of the sick and the helpless, but to also care for their souls by sharing the gospel of the kingdom as Jesus did.
This is perhaps the surprise in the passage. Jesus does not say: “I am full of compassion, therefore I will do more.” Look at what he says to his disciples: “The harvest is plentiful… ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers.” In other words, the compassion of Christ becomes the calling of his people.
Medical mission is one of the clearest ways the church has answered that call. From early pioneers in China and Africa to today’s clinics, hospitals, and community health workers, compassion is an important doorway through which the gospel enters.
Medical mission is not simply medicine plus evangelism. It is the compassion of Christ made visible.
When we heal, when we comfort, when we sit with the suffering, we are doing what Jesus did — seeing people as he sees them, feeling what he feels for them, and going where he sends us.
Please pray
- give thanks for those who are serving in medical and compassion ministries around the world, making a difference to people’s lives every day;
- that the compassion of Christ would continue to send new mission workers into the harvest field;
- that they would be people who heal, who love, and who point people to the true Shepherd.