Sermon for Sunday the 14th June 2026

Matthew 9:35 – 10:8

A tourist collected a few of the signs in English that monolingual Australians travelling abroad must contend with:

A Swiss restaurant announces to its customers that “Our wines leave you with nothing to hope for.”

An Acapulco hotel posts a sign assuring its customers that “The manager has personally passed all the water served here.”

Then a sign spotted in Paris. One of the city’s finer hotels invites its visitors to “Please leave your values at the front desk”

Of course, they are talking about valuables rather than values – though it is a good play on words nonetheless. If we diminish our values, and by that I mean good life-giving values, are more valuable than we first imagine.

When we apply the core values of dignity and worth, we discover they are the true barometers of health care rather than any fancy advertisements about care.  It could be said that dignity and worth are the barometers of any good community.

BACKGROUND

Values are in the Gospel text for today. The teaching is to the followers of Jesus rather than the wider society at the time. The wider society of Jesus’ day were downtrodden under Roman rule. The Jewish religious leaders were not giving direction – thus the statement that they are like sheep without a shepherd.  Into this Jesus brings the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount about God’s Kingdom and it’s values and Jesus displays how those ways of living are applies throughout his lifetime.

We hear in Matthew 9:35-38 says: “Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people.  But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest will send out labourers into his harvest.’”

Here we find Jesus commissioning the disciple.  The problem with need, is it being greater than people needed to meet the need. We find this in any church or Christian ministry.

We find the commissioning of the disciples follows from teachings on the Sermon on the Mount.  The values of the faith community are the compass or hallmark to begin with we find one value that is highlighted by Matthew is that of compassion. We hear Jesus has compassion for the crowd. The Holy Spirit moves people to compassion.   Sometimes we think that compassion is solely about feeling sympathy and empathy. In Matthew’s understanding, compassion is acting concretely on the behalf of the afflicted.  It is like an Aid Group who are meeting people in their need and working with that.

We might be surprised, when we read in Matthew 9:35-10:8, that Jesus sets geographic boundaries when instructing his disciples to “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 10:5-6). This changes later as we find in the book of Acts as the disciples then do likewise as they go to Samaria and the Gentile world of the time. What we can take that their community have found for themselves the value of not only the teaching of Jesus.

Depending on our church traditions and the nations we reside in, gospel work that focuses solely on healing and justice can be seen as “social justice” and this can become disconnected from the proclamation of the good news if the focus is too much one way.  Similarly, some ministries focus their work entirely on the teaching and proclamation of the gospel with very little thought toward justice and healing. So, balance is needed.

Jesus shows us that the work of the compassionate shepherd is holistic and integral; the preaching of the gospel is never separated from the embodied work of the gospel to bring healing and wholeness.

Every church has a choice of whether to be inclusive or exclusive. We can become a sanctuary for saints where purity reigns, or we can be a hospital for sinners where everyone is welcome. It seems to me that the word “inclusive” is more representative of the ministry and example of Jesus than is the word “exclusive.”

 

*Optional story (depends on the length of the sermon and if time to do)

Dennis Folds tells the story of a damaged Jesus in London. The city had been devastated by the bombings during World War II. The bombs that dropped on the city struck and destroyed buildings of every kind: office buildings, factories, apartments, homes, museums, government buildings, churches.

Soon after World War II, a group of German students, through kindness and love and a deep desire to return Christian love to those who had lost so much, volunteered to go to London to help rebuild an English cathedral that had been severely damaged by German bombs.

As work progressed, they became greatly concerned about a large statue of Jesus Christ, whose arms were outstretched and beneath which was the written inscription from Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who labour and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”

The student volunteer workers had great difficulty trying to restore the hands, which had been completely destroyed. They worked and worked and tried and tried, but nothing seemed to successfully replace Jesus’ outstretched hands.

Finally, after much work and much discussion, they decided to let the hands of Jesus remain missing and they changed the written inscription to read this way: “Christ has no hands but ours.”

 

COMPASSION

It is interesting as we read on in Matthew Chapter 10 that Jesus does give teaching to the disciples about the realities of being a community where compassion is a hallmark of that community.

To be such a community needs prayer and seeking God’s will in preparing our own hearts and minds.  Compassion needs a supportive community.

While compassion is a great quality, it is a quality that draws upon the reserves in reaching out to need and find there are many more needs.

Compassion can be misused and can have a number of downsides – especially if there are too few people caring and too many needs.

While compassion is a vital strength, having too much of it without boundaries can lead to compassion fatigue and emotional burnout. Over-identifying with others’ suffering can compromise your own mental health to limit your personal effectiveness, and can even enable dependency in those you are trying to help.

This is where it is important to realize that not all need can be met and the need for a balanced and caring community that cares for the carer also.

We find, many times, that Jesus withdraws to a quiet place in prayer to be replenished.  A compassionate community is a wonderful place, though still needs boundaries to be effective.

In Matthew Chapter 10, Jesus puts some boundaries in place. We need to read a bit further into the chapter and we discover that there is a mention where people misuse or turn away compassion that it is time to move on elsewhere.  Compassion will not always be welcomed and sometimes misunderstood. There is also a mention of the disciples being wise.

This doesn’t mean we don’t exercise compassion or be a caring community. Not at all, because we live in a world that needs a whole lot more compassion and forgiveness rather than trying to even scores or outwit someone to gain an advantage.

Here we arrive back at values.

Yes, we may be small in number, though the principles and values we carry do count for something.

It is interesting that those who don’t like compassion. What is wrong about compassion and care after all?   Yet, for some, compassion and care are viewed as something to use or abuse. Jesus indicates some limits to where this happens.

Compassion and dignity go hand in hand and there are occasions where goodwill and charity are misused and this is not o.k.  In the later verses of Matthew chapter 10, the teaching of Jesus says to move on or go to another district in the neighbourhood when loving care is rejected outright

One of the hallmarks of the mission that Jesus gives the disciples’ is deeply restorative. Their commission is not just about physical healing but about restoring people to wholeness—socially, spiritually, and physically. Jesus’s commissioning of the Twelve challenges us today to see faith as active participation in God’s integral mission. The work of healing, restoration, and justice is not confined to Jesus alone; it is entrusted to his followers.

One last story.

In Hobart, there was an outreach to the needy through a meal during the day and in the evening a food. This had a limited number of volunteers. They couldn’t always meet the needs, though held true to the value of meeting what need they could while still being wise. One of the people realized that many of the people who had many needs were unrecognized. So, a bench was placed outside the place where everyone gathered and those names of those forgotten or overlooked were put in plaques on the bench. May not sound a lot, though it brought a sense of dignity and value where it wasn’t named before.

Jesus is still the only one who can call disciples and commission them into service in the gospel ministry. But every Christian is called. Each and every congregation can be part of a disciple-making church. Creating disciples happens when we are open to the power of Christ’s transforming power.

 

References

Dr. Mickey Anders sermon on being  Matthew 9:35 – 10:8  called Compassion Workers      Copyright 2005, Dr. Mickey Anders.  Used by permission.

Working Preacher.    Danny Zacharias

Got questions  – Matthew Chapter 9 verse 35 to Chapter 10 verse 8.

Sermon  – Compassion that Moves (Matthew 9:35-10:8) By Rev. Dr. Shively T. J. Smith