Matthew 9:36-38

A People without Shepherds

Matthew 9:36-38 The Harvest Is Great, the Labourers Few

(Lk 10:2-3)

³⁶ When he saw the crowd,

he was deeply moved by them –

they were pressured and oppressed,

like sheep without shepherds.

37 Then he said to his disciples,

“The harvest is great, but the workers are few.

38 Pray to the lord of the harvest

that he send out workers into his harvest.”

Matthew rarely indicated Jesus’ emotional response to need. Jesus’ reaction was a heart-felt experience. It was a practical expression of God’s mercy, which Jesus had highlighted as summing up the key characteristic of God [9:13]. His ministry was not an academic exercise of abstract teaching, but an intensely felt and strongly motivated response to deep needs.

He saw the crowds as pressured and oppressed – harassed by the exploitation and violence of both the civil Roman administration with its merciless taxation and of the religious authorities with their cold judgment and exclusion of the poor and sinners. The resultant experience of the general population was one of powerlessness and poverty of spirit. In Jesus’ mind these pressured and oppressed crowds shared the same human dignity as himself and were deeply beloved by his Father.

They were like sheep without shepherds. The image recalled a well-known prophecy of Ezekiel:

The word of the Lord came to me:

Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel:

prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds:

Thus says the Lord God:

Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!

Should not shepherds feed the sheep?

You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool,

… with force and harshness you have ruled them.. [Ezekiel 34:1-4]

Jesus had fulfilled the role of a good shepherd; but he was only one individual, and the need was immense.

Before his death, Moses had prayed that God would provide a shepherd in his place:

“Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh,

appoint someone over the congregation

… who shall lead them out and bring them in,

so that the congregation of the LORD

may not be like sheep without a shepherd." [Numbers 27:16-17]

Jesus fulfilled that role, but needed others to help him. With a deft change of metaphor, he stated the need to pray to God to send out workers into his harvest. (Jesus would return to the image of harvest later in the narrative [13:24-30].)

Why pray? Not to make God aware, but to sensitise the community of disciples to their constant need to respond to the pressured and oppressed world surrounding them.

The need was not for “chiefs” but for workers. In the modern Church, it translates as a plea for sensitive, responsive, alert, merciful and competent lay apostles, and for pastorally motivated priests and religious to serve them.

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