The People Jesus Saw
Genesis 18:1-15 / Psalm 116 / Romans 5:1-8 / Matthew 9:35–10:8
Today’s Gospel tells the story of Jesus sending out his disciples. But this passage is not simply a command to go and evangelize. In Matthew’s Gospel, this is the moment when Jesus’ own ministry passes into the disciples’ mission. That mission did not begin with a plan. It began with what Jesus saw when he looked at the crowd. The Scripture says: “Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.” His ministry held two things together: proclamation and healing. The announcement that the kingdom of heaven had drawn near was not an abstraction. In his ministry, the sick were restored, the oppressed were set free, and the abandoned were brought back to life.
And then Jesus saw the crowd. “They were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Here we come to the heart of today’s Gospel. People tend to look at crowds in terms of numbers or problems. Too many, too few. Helpful or burdensome. Too demanding, or not faithful enough. But Jesus looked at that same crowd and saw lives that had gone uncared for. Sheep without a shepherd means more than being lost. It means unprotected, unattended, left to suffer without anyone to tend the wound. The people Jesus saw were not lazy. He did not write them off as lacking faith. They were worn down, pressed under forces larger than themselves, long neglected. That is how Jesus saw them. Our mission begins here as well: not by counting people or treating them as problems, but by first asking how they came to be where they are, rather than judging them for it. Jesus saw them, and he was moved with compassion. This was not pity observed from a safe distance. It was a love that could not look away. He said to his disciples: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” It means that there are many people who need care right now, lives that cannot wait much longer.
So Jesus called his disciples to him. They did not step forward on their own. He called them, and he gave them authority. The mission comes not from the disciples’ zeal but from the Lord’s summons. And Matthew does not simply say “the Twelve.” He records their names, one by one. The mission of Jesus was not entrusted to nameless figures. It was given to disciples with names, each with a past, a temperament, and a set of weaknesses. The Scripture does not idealize them. It sets their names down as they are. Among those names is Peter, who will deny him. Thomas, who will doubt. Matthew, who was a tax collector. And Judas, who will hand him over. The ones Jesus sent out were not finished people. They were still fragile. Some were afraid. Some would fail. And yet Jesus called them and sent them. That is grace. But the list of the Twelve is also a warning. Even the called community is not free from weakness and failure. So we must remain humble. The authority given to us is not our own. The mission must never become a badge we wear for ourselves.
Jesus says to them: “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.'” And immediately: “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” He sends them to the very people who need it most. The Gospel begins with words, but it does not end there. The kingdom becomes visible when the sick rise again, when those pushed to the margins find their way back into community, and when the crushed begin to live as themselves again. The kingdom of heaven is people living as human beings once more. And at the end of it all, Jesus says: “You received without payment; give without payment.” What the disciples received was never theirs to begin with. The calling, the authority, the Gospel — all of it is gift. And so the manner of giving must reflect grace. We know this danger from within the Church: what was received as grace can be turned into power. In the name of service, even in the name of healing, people can be placed beneath us. So Jesus says it plainly: what you have was given to you freely. Give it the same way.
Sarah in today’s reading from Genesis belongs to this same word. Sarah laughed to herself inside the tent. She heard God’s promise and laughed. But it was not a light laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had waited a very long time. Someone who had been disappointed so many times that she had stopped letting herself hope. We should not be quick to call it faithlessness. Just as Jesus did not lead with judgment when he looked at the crowd, we ought to see what lies behind Sarah’s laugh: a long waiting, and the years that had passed without answer. God heard that laugh. And God asked: “Why did Sarah laugh?” The question is not simply a rebuke. It brings what is hidden in Sarah out into the open: her resignation. Resignation does not speak. But it grows quietly. A person can go through the motions of faith while having already reached a conclusion inside: It’s too late now. This is beyond hope. That person will never change. This congregation has gone as far as it will go.
That resignation must also be brought before God. Only then can we hear his word again. And God says: “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” God is not asking Sarah to ignore reality. Sarah’s age was real. The long wait was real. But reality must be seen again in the light of God’s promise. Sarah looked at her own body. She looked at the years behind her. But God was looking at what he had promised. Faith is not a refusal to see reality. Faith is learning to see reality before God. Paul, in the letter to the Romans, speaks of that same grace: “While we still were sinners Christ died for us.” The word that matters here is still. Not yet ready, not yet righteous, not yet worthy to stand before God, and Christ died for us. While we were still exactly that. We are people who have already received. We were not loved because we became acceptable. We were loved while we were still weak, still in the middle of our sin, still laughing quietly to ourselves like Sarah in the tent. God loved us first.
What the Church has to offer the world, then, is not a sense of its own superiority. It is the grace it has received. We do not help others from above. We stand with them as people who have received mercy, who have been forgiven, and who are still on the way. That is why those who have received freely must give freely. The psalmist asks: “How shall I repay the Lord for all the good things he has done for me?” This is not a plan to settle a debt. It is a question about direction, asked in the presence of what has been received. Given a grace this great, how will I now look at other people? Since God did not give up on me, whom am I giving up on too quickly?
We hear that question today in this Mass. We receive the Word, we share in the Eucharist, and then we are sent back into the world. The Mass comforts us. But it does not stop there. Here we are schooled again in the way Jesus sees: to look at those who are harassed and helpless, worn down like sheep without a shepherd, and to see them as he did. And we are sent out, so that the grace we have received does not stay within us but goes with us into the world.
Sarah’s story begins with a laugh and ends with one. The first laugh was the laugh of resignation. But in the end, Sarah says: “God has brought laughter for me.” God did not take the laugh away from Sarah. He changed it. He drew out the hidden laugh of resignation and turned it into a laugh of joy. We are called to become that kind of place. A place that holds people’s resignation without rushing to condemn it. A place where what has been hidden can be brought before God. A place where, through the Word and the Eucharist, lives are slowly renewed. May we build that kind of community together. Amen.