Sermon: Third Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 9:35 – 10:8, June18, 2023Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Third Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 9:35 – 10:8, June18, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Listen to this again: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Crowds are everywhere. Certainly, crowds gather at Diamondbacks games and other professional sports and music venues. Popular restaurants are crowded. Stores attract crowds during the Christmas shopping season.

And our freeways are crowded and clogged with vehicles, making them not very free at all. There are unseen crowds waiting along with you for more than 30 minutes when you call insurance companies, government agencies, healthcare providers wanting to actually talk to a human being. Downtown Phoenix is crowded with people without homes to live in. Our border with Mexico is crowded with people seeking asylum and a better life here in the United States.

Crowds are everywhere. Think about it: the human population on our planet has doubled in our lifetimes. Maricopa County is the fastest growing area for population increase in the nation – and where are the abundant sources of water to accommodate these crowds?

And sadly, often tragically, many of these crowds are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. The Greek word translated harassed implies that the crowds were feinting. The word in the original biblical language translated helpless suggests the crowds were tossed about and scattered.

In a world where we are ever more subjected to huge organizations and intrusive technologies and other forces over which we have little if any real control, the effect is feeling harassed and helpless, tossed about and scattered. In fact, many powers that be want it this way to make it easier to divide and conquer us, to disrupt genuine community and solidarity so that they can more readily and with impunity plunder and take for themselves what’s left of earth’s abundance.

Which is to say, amidst all of this, we’re like sheep without a shepherd. Sheep need shepherds to keep the flock all together and safe. As I’ve said in several sermons, where are the leaders – in government, in commerce, and elsewhere – who genuinely have our well-being in mind as they lead?

All of this is the bad news. And the burden at times can be too much to bear. I believe it’s true that the fact that the crowds of our world are harassed and helpless is a major source of the grievance and rage we see in politics today.

But here’s the good news. Jesus saw the harassed, helpless, shepherd-less crowds, and had compassion for them. The biblical Greek word here, too, is significant. The original language suggests that Jesus’ compassion was a gut-wrenching compassion. His heart went out to them. He felt the compassion in his belly. The English word ‘compassion’ comes from the Latin, meaning to “suffer with.” Jesus had and has genuine empathy for us in our plight – another feature of what it means to be Emmanuel, God is with us. Jesus suffers with us. What a friend we have in Jesus!

In fact, the deep and radical extent of Jesus’ compassion for harassed and helpless crowds took him to the cross, where he not only suffered with us, but for us, even dying for us. After all the root word for compassion is Passion – as in the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ which we commemorate annually during Holy Week.

Here’s what the apostle Paul says about this in today’s second reading in Romans: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [and I would add, everyone]. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person…. But it is proof of God’s own love for us in that while we still were sinners [and I would add, those harassed and made helpless by other sinners!] Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8) Thanks be to God. 

And we also know that Jesus’ death isn’t the end of the story and his death does not have the last word. Indeed, Christ was also raised to resurrected new life in victory for himself and for us. Thanks be to God once again!

And by virtue of his resurrection, Jesus has given his followers, including us in these latter days, the authority and the power to do what he did in showing compassion to the crowds by healing them and giving them new and renewed life. Again, as Matthew reports: “Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and sickness.”

Then Matthew lists the names of the 12 apostles whom he was sending out: Simon, Andrew, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew, and the rest.

So, too, God in Christ claims us and names us by our own names in baptism, which in part becomes our commissioning to go out into the world to do as Jesus did. What the Lord instructed Moses to say to the Israelites, recorded in today’s first reading from Exodus, God in Christ also says in essence to us when we’re baptized:

“…You shall be my treasured possession out of all the people…. You shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” (cf. Exodus 19:5b-6)

Thereby, we have Jesus’ authority and power in the Spirit which generates and renews our faith such that we can be sent out on the divine mission to lovingly serve today’s harassed and helpless crowds, extending Jesus’ own gut-wrenching, heart-felt compassion even now in the Twenty-first Century.

We reveal Jesus’ compassion when we visit, call, pray for those who are sick. We show forth Jesus’ compassion when our holy conversations with others frees them from their burdens. Jesus’ compassion is expressed in the 12 step recovery programs that meet in our church when people are freed from the demons of addiction. Jesus’ compassion shines forth when first responders and doctors and nurses literally bring people back to life when hearts and breathing stop.

And we share in and further Jesus’ ministry all as a way of saying thank you to God for the abundance of grace overflowing in our lives, as Jesus said, “for you received without payment; [and thus we] give without payment.”

When it’s all said and done, when we do as Jesus did in our missionary work of healing and giving renewed life, we proclaim in word and deed, as Jesus instructed, that the dominion of heaven has come near. For God’s reign is indeed near when people are healed and freed and given life, ending the dominion of being harassed, helpless, tossed about and on our own. When Jesus’ compassion is near, people are bound together in community and solidarity.

Of course, our mission in and for the sake of the world in addressing the needs of helpless and harassed crowds may well get us into trouble with the powers that be that want to keep the crowds harassed and helpless, divided and conquered, so that they can plunder us and all of creation with impunity.

Thus, our ministries may bring us affliction. But even then, when undertaken in Jesus’ name and for Christ’s sake, there’s good news according to Paul as we heard in the second reading as Paul wrote: “…We boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3b-5)

Through the Spirit, God’s love is poured into our hearts giving us the endurance, character, and hope needed to support us in our ministry, so that this same love is poured into the hearts of the harassed and helpless crowds bringing healing, wholeness, life, and community. And then we’re no longer sheep without a shepherd, for Christ working in us is our shepherd! Thanks be to God. Amen.