3rd Sunday after Pentecost 2026
Matthew 9:35-10:8
The Right Rev. Brian L. Cole
Compassion.
Jesus has compassion when he sees the crowds, in cities and villages, with the hurt and need and illness each person brings with them.
We expect Jesus to be compassionate. Hearing a Gospel lesson where Jesus expresses compassion is like going to a piano concert and hearing a great piano performance. It is what you expected.
But this gospel lesson is about more than compassion. It is also about being outnumbered.
Jesus has seen the crowds. Wherever he has gone, there have been crowds. And for every person he heals of illness, three more show up with need. And they all wish to see Jesus.
So, Jesus turns to his disciples and tells them the truth about what he sees. He tells them they are outnumbered.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
In other words, there are a great deal more of them than there are of us. So, Jesus tells them to ask the Lord to send out laborers. Pray for help.
Maybe you can picture them, the twelve, the ones named in this lesson, praying for help, for more laborers to assist in the work of Jesus in the world.
Upon completing this task, the disciples immediately discover they are the help for which they have prayed.
In this lesson, we learn something about prayer. One thing we learn about prayer is what it is not. Prayer is not asking for help and then expecting the cavalry to ride in and save the day. Rather, prayer is asking for help, then considering how it is, that you, the very one praying for help, can somehow become a part of the help you prayed for.
To emphasize the point of just how few laborers there are in response to Jesus’ call for help, St. Matthew gives us the name of each worker. They are so few there is room to name them.
Before sending out the twelve, Jesus does one more thing. He gives themsomething.
The something he gives them is not tangible. It is not something you can see or hold. It is not something you carry in your hands or place in your bag.
Rather, Jesus gives the twelve authority. That sounds like an impressive thing to have.
This authority he gives them is over unclean spirits and disease and sickness. It is an authority to declare that the kingdom of heaven is drawing near. It is an authority to cure sickness and raise the dead and heal the leper.
The compassion of Jesus is not simply for the crowds in need but also for the workers being sent. When Jesus asks the disciples to pray for an increase of workers, he does so knowing the ones who pray are also the ones he will send. In compassion, Jesus suffers with those who suffer. In compassion, Jesus will pray through and equip those who pray, who seek to help those in need.
We live, as in every age, in a time when there is no limit to those who are in need, to those who suffer. Like Jesus, we could also say again that the workers for the harvest are few, when we consider how much work there is to do. We are outnumbered, like the 12.
When Jesus first instructs the disciples to pray, he gives them and us, the insight needed to understand how any of us can ever be equipped for ministry. It begins with prayer. It begins by asking for help, by asking for the grace to understand that God plans to help by using us, imperfect and outnumbered, to carry divine authority into the fields.
Dorothy Fortenberry, who is an L.A. playwright and screenwriter, in an essay on why she goes to church, wrote the following, “Church is a group of broken individuals united only by our brokenness traveling together to ask to be fixed.” Before the disciples were sent, they experienced the healing and hope of Jesus in them. After knowing that hope, they were sent to bear that hope to others.
If you and I are being equipped to carry out the ministry of Jesus in the world, it is not because we have escaped hurt. We are able to be sent because we have experienced the grace and healing of the Christ, in the healing waters of baptism, in the renewing Eucharistic meal, in the daily reminder that God’s grace is being poured into us.
When Jesus looks upon the suffering of the world, he does so not from some safe distance. Jesus looks upon the suffering of the world with the knowledge that the suffering cross is his ultimate call. From that place of deepest suffering, Jesus will heal all who suffer.
We are called to see the world through the eyes of Jesus. When we attempt to see the world as Jesus sees it, we come to learn that compassion is the only lens we have. We do not have the option, if we plan to follow Jesus, to see the other with indifference, with disdain, with disgust. When we see suffering, and compassion swells up in us, we both see through the eyes of Jesus and we see Jesus.
Our world today is connected in an instant to communities across the globe, in city and at sea, in courtroom and in city high-rise. When our world suffers, if we so choose, we can know of this suffering in an instant, even as we remain separated by continents and oceans. But even now, Jesus tells us again that the fields are ripe for harvest and the laborers are few.
So, we pray for help, for more laborers to be equipped, sent out to bind up the wounded, to sit with the suffering, to comfort the oppressed, to proclaim release to the captive.
Then, after we pray, through the grace of God, we are invited to understand that we are the help for which we have prayed. Through the power of our baptism, through the sustaining strength of bread and cup, we go, as a people given authority.
It is the authority of the compassionate Christ, who meets us in prayer and then goes with us on the road, to village and city, until all suffering ceases and the glory of God reigns forever.