The Compassion That Dares to Send
Mt 9:36–10:8
Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF
Claretian Missionaries
Look at the crowd. Matthew says Jesus saw them and felt pity—literally, a visceral compassion. Because he saw what they really were: troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.
Let us sit with the metaphor of the sheep. A sheep is not like other animals. Threaten a cat, and it will arch its back and strike. Threaten a dog, and it will growl and bite. Even a cornered rat will fight back. But a sheep? No claws, no sharp teeth, no speed, no camouflage. It cannot fight. It cannot run fast enough. Its only defence is the shepherd. Without the shepherd, a sheep is not just vulnerable—it is helpless. Predators do not have to work hard. The sheep simply stands there and is devoured.
Look at our daily news. Leaders sit in safe rooms and call for wars. They speak of strategy, of interests, of acceptable losses. And then the bombs fall. Soldiers—most of them young, most of them poor, most of them with no real hatred for the enemy on the other side—are sent to kill and be killed. Civilians, entire families, children in hospital beds, old people who cannot flee, are buried under rubble. And the rest of us? We watch. We scroll. We feel a knot in our stomachs, but we do not know what to do. We are like sheep watching other sheep being torn apart by wolves. Helpless. Troubled. Abandoned. No shepherd to stop the slaughter. No one with authority to say, “This ends now.”
Jesus still sees us. Not as a mass of sinners to condemn. Not as a political problem to manage. A flock of defenceless sheep scattered and bleeding, with no one to gather them, no one to protect them, no one to stop the predators.
Jesus sees and declares: “The harvest is abundant, but the labourers are few.” He calls them a harvest. Not a problem. Not a burden. A harvest. Something ripe, valuable, ready to be gathered into life and safety. Then he tells the disciples to pray for labourers. But immediately after, he summons his twelve disciples and gives them authority. He does not wait for volunteers. He creates them. And the labourers he sends are not generals or politicians. They are twelve nobodies. Fishermen. A tax collector. A zealot. And one who would betray him.
Jesus looks at this collection of mismatched, untrained, argumentative men—and he gives them authority over unclean spirits, to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. Authority. Real power to confront the forces that tear sheep apart. He dares to dream big with these twelve. Not because they are powerful, but because the sheep are helpless and the harvest is abundant. The need creates the sending. The compassion creates the commissioning.
Now look at the instructions. “Do not go into pagan territory… Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Start where you are. Start with your own people, your own wounded neighbours. And what are they to do? “Make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.” The proclamation comes first. Then the actions prove it. Healing, raising, cleansing, driving out—these are the signs that the shepherd has arrived. Where Jesus sends his labourers, chaos turns to order, death turns to life, bondage turns to freedom. The defenceless sheep are gathered into safety. Wars do not have the last word.
Then the final instruction: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” You received everything freely—the call, the authority, the healing, the forgiveness. You did not earn it. So give it away. Do not turn the gospel into a transaction. The only appropriate response to grace is gratuitous generosity. That includes the generosity of refusing to participate in the machinery of death. The generosity of saying, “I will not be a wolf. I will be a labourer for the shepherd.”
© Claretian Publications, Macau
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