Sermon: “When the Crowd Has a Face”- June 14, 2026

The Third Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 9:35-10:23

The Rev'd Ezgi Saribay Perkins, The Rector 

Transcript

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In the movie Schindler’s List, there is a scene that has remained unforgettable for many people. Oskar Schindler stands at a distance and watches the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. At first, what he sees is almost too large to take in. There is shouting, smoke, violence, panic, bodies being pushed through the streets, and human beings reduced to a terrible mass of fear. Then, in the middle of all that horror, he sees one child.

A little girl in a red coat walks through the chaos. Suddenly the crowd is no longer only a crowd. The suffering is no longer an abstract idea. The catastrophe now has a face of a child. And once Schindler sees her, he cannot unsee her. That true compassion teaches us to see and breaks through our numbness. It turns “the needy” into a neighbor, “the lost” into someone beloved of God, and “the crowd” into people whose wounds Christ refuses to overlook in passage from Matthew.

Suffering and sickness, especially when they are outside the circle of our own family and friends, can become a distanced concept. We hear about pain, poverty, illness, and war, but because the need is so large, we become callous. Sometimes we look away because we feel helpless. My mother would often say, when she was overwhelmed by the suffering of others, “Well, what can I do about it?” And that is an honest question. It is the question we ask when the needs feels are too large. 

Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds, first he has compassion for them. He does not look away. He sees the lost suffering sheep. Then he names them harvest. And that is where the mission of the Church begins to take form in this Gospel after so many healing events of Jesus. 

Thesis: In this text, Jesus turns his healing ministry into the harvest mission of the Church.

First, Jesus first reveals the healing power of the kingdom in compassion and not as an earned merit, and only then sends the disciples into the harvest.

Matthew 9:35 is a hinge in this Gospel. It gathers up everything Jesus has been doing in chapters 8 and 9: teaching, proclaiming the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. The kingdom Jesus announces is not detached from bodies, wounds, demons, fevers, paralysis, isolation, and grief. It comes into the actual misery of human life.

But, we must be careful here. Matthew does not present healing as a reward for sufficient faith. Yes, there are moments when faith is named, as with the blind men who cry, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” But the wider movement of chapters 8 and 9 refuses to make the sufferer’s faith the condition of Christ’s mercy. Peter’s mother-in-law is simply lying sick with a fever. The paralytic is carried by others. The mute man is brought to Jesus and healed before he can say anything at all. Then Matthew summarizes the whole ministry by saying that Jesus healed “every disease and every sickness.” The emphasis falls not on the spiritual achievement of the sufferer, but on the authority and compassion of Jesus.

That matters pastorally because faith can be twisted into another form of works righteousness. We can make healing sound like a transaction: believe hard enough, pray correctly enough, repent thoroughly enough, and then God will act. I hear that kind of language many times in our part of the country. It sounds pious, but it can become cruel. It burdens the sick with one more sickness: the fear that their suffering continues because their faith is defective. I think it often turns the gospel into spiritual guilt-tripping.

Matthew gives us something better. Jesus sees the crowds and has compassion for them. The word for compassion that is used in Greek reaches into the inward parts, the bowels, the gut, the deepest place of embodied mercy. Jesus is not diagnosing the inadequacy of people’s faith. He is moved by their suffering. His compassion is not a sentimental feeling; it is active. It teaches, proclaims, heals, restores, and sends.

So, before the disciples are sent into the harvest, they must learn what kind of kingdom they are serving. The kingdom’s healing power is rooted in mercy, not merit. It begins not with the worthiness of the wounded, but with the compassion of Christ. The Church must never use faith to shame the suffering. We are sent to bear witness to the One whose mercy moves toward the sick before they can explain themselves, defend themselves, or prove themselves worthy.

Secondly, Jesus sees the lost and suffering crowds as lost sheep of Israel and names them as the harvest of the kingdom.

Matthew says that Jesus sees the crowds as “sheep without a shepherd.” That phrase carries the weight of Israel’s Scriptures. In Numbers 27, Moses prays that Israel will not be left as sheep without a shepherd. In 1 Kings 22, Micaiah sees Israel scattered on the mountains, “as sheep that have no shepherd.” In Ezekiel 34, the prophet condemns the shepherds of Israel because they have fed themselves and neglected the flock. They have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bound up the injured, brought back the strayed, or sought the lost. So when Matthew uses this image, he is not simply saying that the crowds are confused or suffering individuals. He is saying that Israel’s deepest wound is political, spiritual, and physical.

That matters to us because “lost sheep” can easily become a catch-all misinterpreted phrase. We may hear it and think only of private sin or personal moral failure. But the Old Testament background does not reduce it that way. The lost sheep are not merely sinners who need to try harder. They are people who have not been shepherded rightly. They are people whose bodies are sick, whose spirits are burdened, whose leaders have failed them, and whose hope has been scattered. Their lostness includes spiritual need, but it is not less than hunger, illness, oppression, exclusion, and fear.

This is why Matthew’s phrase “lost sheep of the house of Israel” is so important. The disciples are sent to Israel, to all Israel, and for this moment only to Israel. The restriction is not because God’s mercy is small. Matthew has already shown Gentile faith, and the risen Christ will later send the disciples to all nations. But here Jesus is fulfilling his mission as Israel’s shepherd. Matthew has already told us that the Messiah would be the ruler “who is to shepherd his people Israel” (Matthew 2:6). Jesus is the one the lost sheep have been waiting for, and now he is looking at them.

Then Jesus changes the image. He makes the lost sheep into a plentiful harvest. That is a remarkable turn. He does not look at the suffering crowds and see only failure. He does not see a lost cause. He sees people ready to be gathered into the reign of God. The harvest image carries judgment, urgency, and promise. It means that God is acting, that the time is near, and that the wounded are not beyond gathering.

So, the question presses upon the Church. When we see human need, do we see inconvenience or harvest? Do we see crowds, or do we see lost sheep whom Christ still desires to gather?

Lastly, Jesus sends the disciples as laborers to continue his healing ministry and gather in this harvest of the lost without worldly guarantees.

The first answer to the needs of the lost sheep is not action, but prayer. Jesus does not say, “The harvest is plentiful, therefore organize quickly,” or “The harvest is plentiful, therefore work harder.” He says, “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:38). That detail is poignant. The harvest and the field are not ours to build as we wish. The mission is not a religious project we invent out of our own urgency. Remember that bumper sticker: “Jesus is coming, look busy.” Or as my half Greek grandmother used to say, “People need things, don’t just stay there, just do something.” But here, Jesus begins with prayer because the mission is God’s act, even when God chooses to involve human laborers. It must be rooted in compassion and prayer.

Then, almost immediately, the disciples become the answer to the prayer they have been told to pray. Jesus tells them to ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers, and the very next verse says, “And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority” (Matthew 10:1). Jesus summons the Twelve, gives them authority, and sends them. They are not sent because they are impressive. The list itself should cure the Church of romantic ideas about ministry. There are comprised of fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot, and even Judas. Good news is that Jesus does not wait for flawless people to begin his mission. He calls ordinary, conflicted, unfinished people to continue his work.

But, he sends them without worldly guarantees. They are to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven has come near, heal the sick, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. Then Jesus says, “You received without payment; give without payment” (Matthew 10:8). So the issue is not whether ministry may be supported. The issue is whether grace becomes a commodity. The healing mercy of God is not a product, and human need is not a market.

Nor does this mission belong only to priests and ordained ministers. The Twelve have a particular role in Matthew 10, but the witness of the kingdom expands to the whole Church. Peter tells all Christians to be ready to give an account of the hope within them (1 Peter 3:15). Paul says that God has given us all the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18). In Acts, when persecution scatters the Church, ordinary believers go everywhere announcing the word (Acts 8:4). So, the gospel is entrusted to the whole body of Christ. What has been received as grace must be offered as grace.

Further, Jesus does not guarantee visible success. Some houses will receive their peace, and some will not. Some towns will listen, and some will reject them. They are not to force reception, manipulate results, or measure faithfulness by numbers. They are to offer peace, discern receptivity, and, when necessary, shake the dust from their feet and continue the mission.

Then the calling becomes even harder. “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves” (Matthew 10:16). The laborers are few because this work requires faith and discipline. The Gospel asks in us for the poverty of spirit, the freedom from the tyranny of money, courage without aggression, and patience without passivity. Jesus’ sharp command still stands: be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. One commentator warns us: without innocence, wisdom becomes manipulation. Without wisdom, innocence becomes naïveté.

So, the Church should not be surprised when ministry is difficult, underpaid, misunderstood, numerically unimpressive, or insecure. Jesus told us the truth from the beginning. Yet he still sends us. The mission depends not on our guarantees, but on his authority, his Spirit, and his compassion for the lost.

Conclusion: Perhaps we return to that little girl in the red coat. What changed Schindler was not that the suffering around him suddenly became worse. What changed was that he saw it. The crowd and the suffering became personal. 

Matthew tells us that Jesus sees the lost and suffering, and he does not look away. But Jesus does more than just noticing. He has compassion. He heals and then tells his disciples to pray. That is the order we need to remember. We are not called first to frantic activity, as though the harvest belonged to us. We are not called to measure the kingdom by money, numbers, approval, or security. We are called first to see suffering with the eyes of Christ. Then we are called to pray to the Lord of the harvest to heal the lost. 

We begin where Jesus begins: with compassion. We continue where Jesus directs us: To prayer. Then we go into the field of the lost and suffering, not in our own strength, but with the mercy we ourselves have received from Christ. Could it be that this passage calls us to see the suffering around us, and to let that suffering become personal? AMEN.