Ambulance, Firefighter Or Fence?

"Ambulance, Firefighter, Or Fence?"
Matthew 9:35-38

The story of the missionary, Irene Webster Smith, is told in her biography titled, Sensei, by Russell Hitt.  She was a Quaker missionary to Japan for 50 years.  She first went to Japan in 1915 from her native Ireland with an organization called the "Japan Evangelistic Band."  Her first assignment was to serve in the Tokyo Rescue Home.  The Home sought to save prostitutes from their entrapment in the government-licensed brothels.

In this early experience, Sensei (as Irene came to be known to the Japanese) learned how these young girls, unwanted by their parents (mainly because of the male child-oriented culture) were sold into a life of perversion and trained from their earliest years to know no other experience.

Those days in the Tokyo Rescue Home were discouraging to Sensei.  The girls, no matter how they seemed to repent of their past, would so often revert to the sex trade life on the streets as soon as they regained their health.  In the midst of that frustrating work, a thought came to Sensei.  Her thought, written in her journal, was this:  "It would be better to put a fence at the top of the precipice than have an ambulance at the bottom."

With that thought, a vision was born—a vision of a home for the unwanted girls when they were still at a young age.  It would be a home where little girls, once destined for brothels and disease could be brought up in happiness, and experience joyful, Christian living.  For many years, Sensei turned to the work of keeping young girls from falling over this particular cliff in life.

When we ponder our own acts of Christian compassion, we must ask ourselves what God would have us do.  Pick up the pieces in people's lives after calamity has struck?  Run a spiritual ambulance service?  Or should we be like spiritual firefighters, holding on to a life net and calling people to jump from the "burning buildings" their lives have become?  Or, like Sensei, should we be fence builders on the jagged cliffs of life, keeping people from falling in the first place?  In other words, provide a practice of preventative spiritual medicine?  All three are valid and all three are needed when people are hurting.


As Jesus went from village to village, teaching and proclaiming the Good News, healing people of every imaginable disease and illness, witnessing their distressed and downcast lives, his compassion was inflamed by a frustration that the fence building ministry was not being provided by anyone of his day.

The reason he saw so much hurt and misery was because nothing was being provided up front to keep the people from falling into such a state of hopelessness.  Jesus saw himself providing a spiritual ambulance service for the walking wounded—indeed, the nearly perishing—and wondered out loud where the people were who were supposed to be watching over the flock.  It was so frustrating for Jesus to see that the people's wounds, and their lostness and their disease wouldn't have progressed to such an alarming state.

"Alarming state" doesn't even begin to describe what Jesus witnessed in the people.  As he looked upon them, Jesus described the people as "distressed" and "downcast."

Let's get the full impact of what Jesus was saying here.  Elsewhere in the Bible, the word "distressed" is used to describe people in three different states.  First, the word is used to describe a person who had been literally flayed and mangled to death in some tragic way.  (pic). Jesus looked around him and saw spiritually tragic and emotionally damaged people.  Walking corpses.  Life had dealt them a blow, seemingly beyond recovery.

Or, maybe it was a slower process, as John Killinger wrote about in one of his books, titled, Christ In The Seasons Of Ministry."  (pic). In that book Killinger described being distressed as, "life in the piranha bowl."  It's where people, or situations, or life in general, always seems to be taking little pieces of you.  A little bite here and a little bite there.  Pretty soon we feel like nothing is left except a red stain in the water.

A second way this word, "distressed," is used in the Bible is when it describes someone who is plundered by predatorily evil people.  (pic). It describes the state of the man who was jumped and robbed and beaten in Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan.  Jesus looked around at those to whom he preached and ministered and saw a people who had been attacked by the worst the world has to offer.  That they had been robbed of something precious in their lives—maybe even of life itself.

A third way this word is used is to describe someone who is wearied by a journey which seems to know no end.  In a previous church, I was counseling a young couple.  Life had been hard on this couple, not long married.  The wife mentioned she had seen a copy of the book, Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do."  It had been almost a year since she finished reading that book, and she was still waiting for the "tough times" to end.

Jesus, looking at and listening to people, describes them as those who have been wearied by their circumstances in life.  Jesus is sensitively and intuitively hearing their wondering if it's ever going to end.

All of these three uses of the term "distressed" help us get a clearer picture of Jesus' description of what he saw etched on the faces and lives of people.

But that's not all.  Jesus used another word as he looked upon the people during his journeys.  He described them as "downcast."  (pic). Again, there is more to this word than meets the eye.  It is a word that is used to describe the person who has literally been thrown down to the ground, stepped on, and laid out flat, usually with mortal wounds.

Just last year, at least eight people were killed and 28 were injured in a stampede over food aid, held by a church group in Zambia's capital, Lusaka.  Imagine people so hungry that they caused injury and death running over each other for food.  Not even knowing—or did they—that they were trampling others bodies.

Even when taken figuratively, as Jesus intended, it is still a powerful word and image that portrays a person under the weight of an utterly destructive force, unable to even stand up or protect themselves.

By using these two words—distressed and downcast—Jesus' imagery paints the picture of a people being neglected by those who could help.  Those two words portray people as being tormented and almost totally exhausted by life—even to the point of death.  As Jesus looked out over the throngs of faces, he lifted his eyes toward heaven, praying to the Father God, "Where are the people who will give of themselves to these hurting others?  How can others not see, and let these distressed and downcast go for so long?"



In reaction to the great need, Christians and Christian organizations have reacted in one of three ways.  The first is the ambulance.  That style of ministry to the distressed and downcast has been to pick people out of the gutter when they've already been run over by life and/or their choices.

Mother Teresa, now a Saint in the Catholic Church, ran a whole ministry to the distressed not only in Calcutta, India, but around the world.  Much of her ministry—the Sisters of Charity ministry—was basically of the ambulance kind.  (pic).

In her book, No Greater Love, Mother Teresa wrote:

In twenty-five years, we have picked up more than thirty-six thousand people from the streets and more than eighteen thousand have died a most beautiful death.  When we pick them up from the street we give them a plate of rice.  In no time we revive them.  A few nights ago we picked up four people.  One was in a most terrible condition, covered with wounds, full of maggots.  I told the sisters that I would take care of her while they attended to the other three.  I really did all that my love could do for her.  I put her in bed and then she took hold of my hand.  She had such a beautiful smile on her face and she said only, "Thank you."  Then she died.  There was a greatness of love.  She was hungry for love, and she received love before she died.  She spoke only two words, but her understanding love was expressed in those two words.

That's the ambulance form of Christian compassion.  It's waiting at the bottom of the cliffs, because one way or another people will go over the edge, turning their hurt into the tragic.

(pic). The firefighter form of Christian compassion, is also a waiting at the bottom of the cliffs.  But with a safety net—something to catch those who go over the edge.  Not letting them hit the rocks below, so you can only read them their last rites.

Remember in my opening illustration, about Irene Webster Smith, how she tried the firefighter approach.  She caught so many young women who were throwing themselves out of the burning building of peddling themselves for sex.  The only problem, as she found out, was that once the girls and young women got cleaned up, and healed of any STD's, back they'd go into the burning building.  Only to repeat the cycle of having to hurl themselves out the window again, be caught again, cleaned up again, going back again.   It's frustrating for those who are called to the compassionate Christian role of firefighter.

The fence building form of Christian compassion is probably the hardest of all.  It is so because it's an ongoing commitment of preventing people from ever needing the ambulance or the firefighter.  If need be, you can take a break from being the ambulance or firefighter.  But like Irene Smith, once you start taking in baby girls, you are in it for the long haul.

All three forms of Christian compassion are vital and necessary.  They take special gifts, so you have to assess where you would fit in best.  As Jesus looked around at the crowds that day, he was asking, "Where are my ambulances?  Where are my firefighters?  Where are my fence builders?

We need to be ready with an answer as to which of those roles we can fulfill the best.

We are not going to see the kinds of distressed and downcast people like a Mother Teresa would see.  But you walk by people every day who are suffering with loneliness, depression, and grief.  You ask them how they're doing and they reply, "Fine."  You may be one of those people yourself.  Deep down, you, or they, might just be yearning that someone would notice them.

Jesus does.  Jesus notices all the hurting people.  But wouldn't it be great to be one of those who notice like Jesus does.  To be able to approach someone and say, "Jesus notices you're not doing well right now.  And I notice, too."  Then, do something.  Like Mother Teresa said, people are hungry for love.  Be ready to pick them up off the rocks below the cliffs, to catch them jumping out of the building of their burning lives, to build the protection around people that would keep them from needing an ambulance or safety net in the first place.