Our Gospel (Matthew 9:36-10:8) passage opens with, “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them…”. Other translations use ‘compassion’ that conveys a deeper meaning in the sense that ‘compassion’ finds its roots in ‘compati’ that morphed into ‘compassio’ meaning to suffer with, sympathy with the added dimension of ‘suffering with’ the afflicted. And then we have the commonly familiar, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few…”. Why did Jesus utter this pronouncement?
Could it be that the Lord was seeking to touch the hearts of his disciples so that the wandering ministers that they had become would transform into something deeper and more connected to the faith which sustained them in those early days and nourishes us in the present? Might his direction to pray for laborers to gather the harvest be a prompt to perhaps lead them to recognize that they themselves are a portion of the answer? There’s a lesson for us in this first sentence of our passage.
I can’t help but think that when Jesus looked over the suffering crowd in need of a shepherd he saw in his mind’s eye the images of the disciples hovering over them and, because he is all knowing, visions of all the faithful from that first century morning down to you and I contemplating this Scripture fragment this week. Does that awareness startle you or fill you with a reflexive sense of “I’m just a simple person doing my best to stumble through life. I have all that I can do just to carry myself through each day. There’s nothing I can do for anyone else!” We sometimes find ourselves bleating like nervous sheep when our pastor or someone else in the church invites us to get involved. In some sense, our self-assessment is accurate. We are not shepherds, or to use the other image from our Gospel, we are not the master of the harvest. But we are sheep dogs helping the shepherd guide the flock to safety. We are laborers joining together to gather the valued crop. But what does Jesus’ commission of the disciples mean for us? We too don’t need to go far. We begin by helping to cure hearts sick with hopeless worry. Through our attentive presence, we can raise the dead who no longer have the energy or will to live. We are called to restore access to community and companionship to figurative lepers isolated by real and perceived faults and failings. We can drive out the paralyzing demons of fear experienced by so many. It’s not just the disciples who were sent. Each Sunday the Mass ends with a dismissal which is a call to action for each of us. We are prepared by faith and the Holy Spirit’s gifts, but a need for reciprocity exists. Jesus’ words insistently reverberate for us, “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” Let’s give.
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