The Compassion of Jesus

Matthew 9: 36-10:8

At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few so, ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”

Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.

Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

Discussion Questions: 

1. What stirs compassion in you today, the way the crowds stirred compassion in Jesus? How are you responding?
2. When have you looked at a difficult person and seen only a problem, rather than “a sheep without a shepherd”?
3. Where do you sense God inviting you to be a shepherd, healer, or laborer?
4. How might the reality that you cannot solve or permanently change the problem of suffering, block you from tending it with your presence?
5.  How would you summarize what Jesus is sending us out to do in our lifetime?

Biblical Context

Matthew 9: 36-10:8
Margaret Nutting Ralph PHD

Today’s Gospel begins, “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned. Like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew has just told us that Jesus raised the daughter of an official whom everyone believed to be dead (Matt 19:18-26), and healed a woman suffering from hemorrhages (Matt 9:20-22), two blind men (Matt 9:27-31), a mute demoniac (Matt 9:32-34), as well as many others in various towns and villages. There is no end to the people who need Jesus’ good news and healing touch.

On seeing the crowds Jesus tells his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” The power to bring others to God is a God-given gift. That is why the disciples are told to pray for laborers for the harvest. However, the harvest does not belong to the laborers, but to the master of the harvest, to God. It is “his harvest.”

Jesus then summons “his twelve disciples” and gives them authority to do the very things that he himself is doing. They will have “authority over unclean spirits… and to cure every disease and every illness” (remember Matthew’s constant interest in authority). When we are told the names of the twelve Matthew calls them apostles: “The names of the twelve apostles are these…” This is the only place in Matthew’s Gospel where the twelve are called apostles. In the New Testament “the twelve” and “the apostles” are not synonymous terms. Notice that Peter is named as “first,” and we are told that he is “Simon called Peter.” Matthew is emphasizing Peter’s unique role, a role upon which he will greatly elaborate in chapter 16 (Matt 16:13-20).

When Jesus instructs the disciples he tells them, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” On the feast of the Ascension, when we read Matthew’s great commissioning, we noted that Jesus instructs the eleven disciples to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 2.8:19). That instruction reflects the experience of’ the early church after the resurrection, when the Spirit led the church to understand that covenant love was now open to everyone, even Gentiles (see Acts 10). In todays scene Jesus is giving his disciples their immediate marching orders. They are to serve the lost sheep of Israel.

Jesus instructs the disciples to proclaim just what he himself is proclaiming: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” As part of this announcement of the imminent in-breaking of the kingdom the disciples are to ‘‘Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons,” just as Jesus himself is doing. These mighty acts will give authority to the truth of their words about the kingdom.

Though the disciples have authority? they are not to use their authority for personal gain. What they have they have received as a gift and so they must freely give. Authority is never to be used in any way but to give service.

Beloved and Sent

Reflection
Jessica Coblentz

In a poem titled “Go to the Limits of Your Longing,” Rainer Maria Rilke imagines a God who forms us and walks alongside us as we move toward the land called “life.” With gentle words, God instructs each person in how to live: “Embody me.” And after disclosing both the wonder and horror that awaits us, God offers words of caution and encouragement: “Don’t let yourself lose me.”

So many of us—all of us?—do lose God, however. Our feeble minds forget the tenderness of the Creator who formed us freely, out of pure love and delight. And some of us remember but resist it, frightened and unconvinced of our own beloved-ness. To be seen and accepted is too embarrassing, too shameful to bear. And so, due to finitude or fear, we lose the One who sends us forth with such hope in our capacity to create something beautiful and good—the One who urges, “embody me.” You, beloved, can do this with me.

What if we remembered this, and what if we lived from this memory?

Today’s readings offer this invitation. It echoes in God’s words to the Israelites: “I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself” to be God’s “special possession, dearer to me than all other people.” And again, in the psalmist’s hymn: “We are his people: the sheep of his flock.” St. Paul reminds us, too: Still helpless and ungodly enemies, God nevertheless reconciled us through Jesus Christ. We—all of us, feeble and broken—are the beloved of an unshakable God.

Like the God of Rilke’s imagination, Christ sends us forth from this truth to proclaim it to others. And so we must remember and live from it. How else will we embody God’s unconditional, transformational love for all if we do not first embrace it as the originating truth of our own lives?

Selections from Breaking Open the Lectionary: Lectionary Readings in Their Biblical Context for RCIA, Faith Sharing Groups, and Lectors—Cycle A, by Margaret Nutting Ralph, Copyright © 2007 by Margaret Nutting Ralph. Paulist Press, Inc., New York/Mahwah, NJ. Reprinted by permission of Paulist Press, Inc. www.paulistpress.com.

Reflection from Give Us This Day: Jessica Coblentz is a theologian on the faculty at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, and the author of Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression.