Sermon on Matthew 9:35-10:8

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Jesus went to all the cities and villages to proclaim the Good News and cured every disease and every sickness.

And when he looked at the crowds, he saw how harassed and helpless they were and felt compassion.

His mission of love and mercy was important and needed, but it sounds like he was getting a bit overwhelmed.

But instead of getting burned out and deciding to throw in the towel, he looked at those he was serving and his heart was moved. He couldn’t just give up.

But even after going to all the cities and all the villages and curingevery disease and every sickness, the need was still great.

What was he supposed to do?

Compassion fatigue is real. It’s hard to continue to dedicate oneself to helping people when the problems of the world are so many and so enormous.

It feels good to help one person, but when you spend day after day, year after year, decade after decade trying to make a difference, it can feel like trying to stop a wildfire with a glass of water.

You come to church and hear about loving your neighbor, sharing God’s love and compassion with the world, and it can feel like you have nothing left to give.

And maybe you volunteer with Caring Hands and that’s so important and wonderful. But then you notice the same person in line who you saw last year or five years ago or maybe even ten years ago, and you know that person works hard and loves their family, and you just don’t understand why they still don’t make enough money to buy what they need.

And then you start thinking about the factors that might keep them impoverished:maybe growing up in a neighborhood with underserved schools, racism, sexism, or homophobia that kept them from certain job opportunities, medical debt, or needing to care for a family member without the resources to get outside help, or a multitude of other possibilities.

While we can help with food, which is so important, it can feel impossible for one person to make a difference when it comes to the factors that contribute to someone needing a food pantry.

And then, sometimes there are senseless acts of violence and hatred that can make us feel so powerless.

This Wednesday, we commemorate the Emanuel Nine: the nine Black people who in 2015 went to their Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, when a young white man,who had grown up in an ELCA congregation, shot and killed them, hoping to start a race war.

The ELCA commemorates this day to honor those who were martyred and as a call to dismantle the white supremacy that spurred that young man.

It can feel futile to speak of God’s love and inclusion in the face of violence like that, which unfortunately is hardly the most recent act of violence motivated by hatred.

So, what did Jesus do when he felt overwhelmed?

He invited his closest friends to pray. It’s easy for us to want to jump right to doing something, forgetting that prayer is doing something.

Prayer grounds us in God’s love for us and our calling to do, as is attributed to Mother Teresa, “small things with great love.” And praying with others reminds us that we as individuals are just small parts of the whole Body of Christ. We’re part of something much bigger than ourselves.

Then, Jesus empowered his friends and followers to do what he was doing. Instead of just trying to work harder and faster, Jesus invited other people in.

“Many hands make light work,” as the old saying goes. And while God’s work of justice, mercy, inclusion, and love may not be light, it does require many, many hands, and it’s easier to keep going when we can encourage each other instead of trying to maintain our motivation by ourselves.

One thing to note is that it might sound jarring that Jesus told his disciples not to go to Gentile territories or to the Samaritans. But remember that by the end of this Gospel, Jesus told his disciples to “make disciples of all nations.” We read that just a few weeks ago. Jesus started his mission by sending his Jewish disciples to his own Jewish people, and his mission would eventually extend to the whole world. For now, he and his disciples stayed local and focused.

It’s a good reminder that even Jesus started small. He saved the world, but he started in his own community. Not many of us will have a national or global platform to effect change. Often, we can make the biggest difference on a local level.

And we can make a bigger difference locally if we work together. One person handing out groceries is good. Many people joining together to form Caring Hands makes a much bigger difference.

One person making a public comment at city hall is good. Many people making public comment about something they collectively care about will hopefully get attention and bring about change.

There were people before Rosa Parks who refused to give up their seats on the bus to white people, but it took a lot of people boycotting the buses for over a year and setting up rides for each other and walking together to work and helping each other out before the Montgomery bus system was integrated. And of course, the Civil Rights movement did far more than that.

But it took groups of people working together, sacrificing together, believing together in the possibility of a better world to make change. And it was on a local as well as a national scale.

Even Rosa Parks and Dr. King couldn’t make a difference on their own. They’re two of the leaders we remember most vividly, but there were so many others who contributed. It was a community effort—a Beloved Community effort.

I often use Beloved Community interchangeably with the Kingdom of God, and the term was popularized by Dr. King.

According to The King Center, “The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

“Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”

While I don’t believe we’ll fully realize this before Jesus comes again, I do believe it’s our mission to cocreate with God toward this powerful and costly form of peace and justice.

It’s a mission that can seem overwhelming in the face of violence, hatred, scarcity, and fear. But, like Jesus, we can start by praying with each other and then acting with compassion, mercy, and justice in our local community.

With God’s help, we can be the hands and feet of Jesus, sharing God’s love with the world and building Beloved Community right where we are.