January 13, Hinting Around?

Matt. 9:35-38  Wherever (Jesus) went, he healed people of every sort of disease and illness.  He felt great pity (compassion) for the crowds that came because their problems were so great, and they didn't know where to go for help.  They were like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his  disciples, "The harvest is do great, but the workers are so few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send out more workers for his fields."

I remember the first time I really noticed this passage. I was sitting on a mud brick pew in Chad reading the passage in French.  Maybe it was the French words that got me - the word compassion in French for pity. Somehow that word had so much more meaning for me.

Anyway, we often read this passage and reference it to encourage people to pray for more people to go to the "foriegn fields." But when you step back and read this passage as a whole, I wonder if more is going on. We see Jesus traveling about, engaging with real people, terminal people and sick people, and I would guess plain old hurting and maybe depressed people. Think through that description of those people as like sheep without a shepherd.

Now He is Jesus, sent here to redeem the lost....to save them...and we don't necessarily think of Him as personally engaging with social services kinds of activities. But He certainly did. And in front of His followers, not in secret or when He was alone.

We often hold Him up as a model, a life we are to emulate, except when it comes to people to people helping, in ways we might see as without eternal significance.  But He thought it was important to help relieve temporal and physical suffering.  Preaching alone did not seem to be His mission.  He lived compassion, and so validated His message.

So back to how we use the passage - to tell people they ought to pray. I wonder if Jesus was also showing us how to live, and in His kindness, He modeled it. He didn't preach it.  He showed us how. He did not give us a list of behaviors. He wants us to live lives of compassion, and when we see people who are sick and hurting, to reach out to them. If we cannot help them, He calls us to help them get help.
Just a thought.