Pentecost 3A (Matthew 9:35-10:8)

I worked on the Upper East Side for about fourteen years. Now, I’m on the Upper West Side—and it feels like a different world. Along Broadway, I find myself noticing more people in visible need.

Just this past Friday morning, I saw a woman standing near one of those LinkNYC kiosks—the on-street stations that offer free Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging, and access to city services. She was crying out, shouting through tears, “No one in this city is helping me. I need help!” I didn’t know what kind of help she needed. But her cry—that sense of helplessness—stayed with me. It lingered in my heart as I prayed with today’s gospel.

And I found myself wondering: Even if she received what she needed in that moment—money, for example—would it truly help in the long term? Or would the same helplessness return again? So the question deepened: What does she really need—not just in the moment, but at the level of her life? And more broadly, what can any of us truly offer in the face of such need?

As I held that question, I began to see the gospel differently. I could begin to imagine the depth of Jesus’ compassion. We are told that when Jesus sees the crowds, he has compassion for them, because they are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” But this does not simply mean they lack a leader.

We know that having a guide, even a wise one, is not always enough. We can be given the best counsel and still remain unchanged—if something deeper within us is not reached. So perhaps their condition is not, at its core, the absence of a shepherd.


Because the “shepherd” is not only a person to lead or guide. It can also be whatever we rely on to give us security—what we trust to hold our lives together. It can be money. It can be stability. It can be systems, structures, even our own sense of control.

We look to these things to orient us, to ground us, to tell us that we are safe. And yet, even when we have them—or receive them in a moment—they often cannot hold us for long. So perhaps their condition is not simply that they lack direction or provision.

It is something deeper still: they are lost.

They are not rooted anywhere. Nothing truly grounds them. No political authority can secure them. No system can make them whole—financially, physically, mentally, or spiritually. They are harassed by the instability of their own thoughts, their emotions, and the conditions around them. And they are helpless because they do not know where, or how, to find their way out.

Jesus sees this clearly.

And he also seems to know his own limits. He cannot reach everyone by himself. So he gathers others. He calls a community to share in his work.

He summons his disciples and gives them authority. This is not yet about institutional structure or apostolic succession, though we later name it that way in the Creed. Here, it is more immediate: he entrusts his work to ordinary people.

And who are they?

Among them is Matthew—the tax collector from the previous chapter. That label stays with him. Perhaps he would not have liked it. But it no longer defines his becoming.

And yet, how much could he have changed? His call happens in the same chapter. We cannot imagine a complete inner transformation in such a short span. He is still, in many ways, who he was. Which tells us something essential: God does not call the already-formed. God calls, and then forms.

Jesus sends them out not because they are ready, but because they are willing. They will learn in the going. They will be shaped in the work itself. They are, in a sense, building the plane while flying it. And they are sent to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

This is not a dismissal of others, but a diagnosis. The problem is not “out there.” The lost are those who assume they are found. Renewal begins within. Before turning outward, we must attend to what is disordered in us.

So there are two movements here: First, Jesus sends the unprepared into the field. Second, he directs them inward—toward their own house, their own condition.
We are not called because we are better. We are called because we are also in need of healing. And what is the purpose of this sending? 

Not conversion as recruitment. Not expansion as a strategy.

It is proclamation: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”

That is the gospel.

Not a distant heaven. Not a future promise alone. But a reality that is already here—within and among us. The kingdom of God is not elsewhere. It is a presence to be recognized, received, and cultivated.
When that presence becomes real to us, it grounds us. It becomes our refuge.

Then we are no longer harassed by what arises—from the past we regret or the future we fear.
No longer helpless, because we know where we stand.

Right here.
In the presence of God.
In the body.
In the breath.

The breath itself becomes prayer—the life of the Spirit within us. And from that center, we go out and live. Jesus later says, “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Wisdom and innocence require discernment. And discernment requires presence.

So we return again to the same place:

Right here, right now, In the presence of God.