Read through the stories in the three gospels that are on our list of readings in our Quest this week. There is a cavalcade of needs that Jesus meets in these chapters, and He shows his desire to do things in a whole new way over and over. He shows his authority over the Law by touching an untouchable leper to heal him. He shows that the love of God includes even the Romans, who are there to occupy and subdue the Jews, by healing a centurion’s servant. He heals those who are demon-possessed, shunned and feared by everyone. He demonstrates his mastery over nature by calming a storm. He heals two women when no rabbi of his time would have touched them with a ten-foot pole. He goes into Gentile areas and heals; he comes home to invite a hated tax collector to follow him and eats in the despised man’s home with his outcast and sinful friends. He decides that freeing a person of his infirmity is a good way to keep the Sabbath, instead of refusing to help to keep himself on the “right” side of the Law.
You might be surprised to hear that he is not universally loved for all of this. The Gentiles who are cleaning up dead pigs after his healing of the two demon-possessed men ask him to get out of town. And the Pharisees view all of the healing and welcoming of sinners and his so-called violation of the Sabbath and say He is a blasphemer, a suspicious character who consorts with sinners and transgresses the law. In their depraved and muddled thinking, He might even be in league with Satan. (Matthew 9:34: “But the Pharisees said, ‘It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.’”)
Jesus keeps doing what he’s doing, bringing in the Kingdom everywhere he goes. His work shows people a glimpse of what Heaven will be like, in real life. Sickness and injury are healed; outcasts join the community again; people are freed from demonic possession; the dead have new life; storms are calmed; even a Roman centurion sees and believes. In our Scripture readings above, he looks at the everyday people he’s been helping and has compassion on them. They are anxiously milling around in life like sheep with no Shepherd. He sees beyond rules and the limitations people have put on God and he loves them. These people are poor. They are sick with no doctors. They are in an occupied country and subject to violence and outrageous taxes and rapacious tax-collectors. They work hard and have no margin between themselves and financial disaster. The faith as taught to them by the Pharisees leaves them outside of God’s love and acceptance almost all the time. They are forever on the outside, looking in at the love of God they have been told they are not worthy to receive. They are in a hopeless situation.
But Jesus sees them and has compassion on them. Jesus wants to show them what the Kingdom of heaven is like. He asks for others with his compassionate views to join him in helping them to see hope, to live knowing that God loves them and sees them.
In a passage following our readings, in Matthew 10, Jesus begins to send his disciples out on practice runs to help these people with deep needs. He wants to leave behind shepherds who love the flocks, who look out for them, heal them, include them in the good life.
Jesus is still sending us out on practice runs. We are those shepherds now.