When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”
Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him. These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.
I knew someone whose universal metaphor was the car: we soon learned that when he said, “I got a puncture,” he didn’t mean it literally; it was just his way of saying that there was some snag and he couldn’t finish what he had started. Sometimes his metaphors went on to a kind of second register: “I don’t have the ponies for that,” meant he hadn’t enough horsepower, which meant not enough energy. But he was only an extreme example of something quite common. We all use car metaphors, like blowing a gasket, backfiring, etc…. I heard a sports commentator say that some footballer was “running on empty.” The metaphors Jesus used were not mechanical but organic: farming, viniculture, sheep-raising, fishing…. Most of the movements in nature are gradual and slow, and they happen by themselves. When we say they are ‘natural’ we know that they are not alien to us, because we too are part of nature. It is dangerous to become so fascinated by machines that we think of everything in terms of them; we will end by thinking of ourselves as machines. Do you have compassion on your car when it gives up? No, you become dissatisfied with it, and you take it somewhere to get it fixed. If you were really to think of other people as machines, your feelings about them when they were broken down in mind or body would be like your feelings about a broken-down car. Jesus had compassion on the crowds “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Or as an older translation put it, “he was moved with compassion.” The Greek word used by Matthew (splagchnizomai) expressed exceptionally deep feelings; it meant ‘gut feelings’ – the kind you could never have for an machine. It was this deep feeling that urged him to send out the Twelve. He did not say, You are to govern these people and teach them to obey you, because I am giving you power of jurisdiction over them. No, he sent them out to show in practice the same kind of compassion for people that he had. Indeed that almost unpronounceable word expresses the whole character of Jesus in reference to us. “He was moved with compassion.”
Commentary on 11th Sunday (A), 18.06.2023
Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him. These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.
I knew someone whose universal metaphor was the car: we soon learned that when he said, “I got a puncture,” he didn’t mean it literally; it was just his way of saying that there was some snag and he couldn’t finish what he had started. Sometimes his metaphors went on to a kind of second register: “I don’t have the ponies for that,” meant he hadn’t enough horsepower, which meant not enough energy. But he was only an extreme example of something quite common. We all use car metaphors, like blowing a gasket, backfiring, etc…. I heard a sports commentator say that some footballer was “running on empty.”
The metaphors Jesus used were not mechanical but organic: farming, viniculture, sheep-raising, fishing…. Most of the movements in nature are gradual and slow, and they happen by themselves. When we say they are ‘natural’ we know that they are not alien to us, because we too are part of nature. It is dangerous to become so fascinated by machines that we think of everything in terms of them; we will end by thinking of ourselves as machines.
Do you have compassion on your car when it gives up? No, you become dissatisfied with it, and you take it somewhere to get it fixed. If you were really to think of other people as machines, your feelings about them when they were broken down in mind or body would be like your feelings about a broken-down car.
Jesus had compassion on the crowds “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Or as an older translation put it, “he was moved with compassion.” The Greek word used by Matthew (splagchnizomai) expressed exceptionally deep feelings; it meant ‘gut feelings’ – the kind you could never have for an machine. It was this deep feeling that urged him to send out the Twelve. He did not say, You are to govern these people and teach them to obey you, because I am giving you power of jurisdiction over them. No, he sent them out to show in practice the same kind of compassion for people that he had.
Indeed that almost unpronounceable word expresses the whole character of Jesus in reference to us. “He was moved with compassion.”