(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Hope for the Harassed and Helpless”, originally shared on June 11, 2026. It was the 417th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Do you feel harassed and helpless? You’re not
alone. Today, we’re going to find out how Jesus addressed the same feelings and
what that leads us to do.
But the older I
get, the more it makes sense to me. 😊
I don’t deny that
there’s a “get off my lawn” element in my world view. And every generation sees
the present as less engaged with taste and reality in comparison with the past,
when they were younger, because, well, they once were younger and closer to
their peak.
But, just as it’s
said that even paranoids have real enemies, there are reasons for cynicism. 😊
We hear lots of
talk in the world about ending homelessness, living in peace, reforming our
economic system, ending environmental degradation, and more, but nothing seems
to get done.
We hear lots of
talk in the Church, at least in the part of it in which I am most engaged, of
becoming a more racially inclusive denomination, doing evangelism, being a safe
and welcoming place where people can focus on a life-transforming relationship
with Jesus, accepting a broad spectrum of political and social values, but we
don’t like to do it. We just like to talk about it.
Even what we once
called our polarization has now splintered.
We’ve exchanged
education for indoctrination, critical thinking for feelings, advocacy for
identity acceptance, being understood for being accepted, seeing the world as
it is for being seen.
We don’t seek
leadership, just the loudest, most intimidating voice.
We’ve forgotten the
lesson of history that “liberation” movements are just a fight to see who will
be the next oppressor. Except for One.
We keep spending
tax money to solve social problems as if we have forgotten that a lot of people
make a lot of money out of poverty.
We have many
parties, many movements, many allies, many advocates, but who speaks selflessly
for the people? And has it ever not been so?
Maybe not, as we
see in the Gospel lesson that will be shared in the vast majority of churches
in the world this coming Sunday, Matthew 9:35-10:8.
Jesus is in Galilee, in the north part of
Israel.
The importance of primary, transformative,
relationships from the hand of God is at the center of Jesus call of his twelve
disciples, and Jesus embodies it in Matthew 9:35-38,
35Then Jesus went about
all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the
good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When
he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and
helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his
disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38therefore
ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
“Harassed and helpless.” Does that not
describe the way we feel today?
And how does Jesus respond to that state? He
saw the problem, and he addressed it in three ways.
First, he was true to his calling to
be our one true liberator. He trusted in his mission, and he “went” and he
“taught” and he “proclaimed” the good news of the kingdom. And notice that he
“cured” every disease and every sickness. But he didn’t cure them, the
people, of their greatest brokenness. Not quite yet.
Second, he “saw” the crowds, and he
“had compassion” for them. Why? “Because they were harassed and helpless, like
sheep without a shepherd.” He saw that there were many hired hands around them,
but that the people needed a shepherd. The Good Shepherd.
Third, he described the need. “The
harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”, and he gave his disciples the
solution. “Ask” that God would send laborers into his harvest.
I studied in Israel for a semester when I
was in college. One of the assignments given by the professor who would be our
primary advisor, one to be completed before we left on the trip, was to pick
one of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and read it in one
sitting.
We are usually exposed to the gospels in
bits and pieces, and he wanted us to get the whole sweep of the message.
I chose Matthew, and when I had finished
reading it, one verse stood out as a window into the character and mission of
Jesus. It was the second verse in today’s reading from Matthew, Matthew 9:36:
“When he saw the crowds,
he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep
without a shepherd.”
I wrote that verse on a 3x5 index card and
fixed it to my desk, where it stayed for the rest of my college experience, and
then to my work area in seminary.
“When
he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and
helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
We know that we are all harassed and
helpless. Do you know that you have a Shepherd today?
Who guides us? Who feeds us? Who protects us
from evil? In whom do we place our ultimate trust? Who do we turn to in every
time and kind of need?
“Jesus” is the answer.
What’s the question? 😊
What is the source of our hope, for now and
for eternity?
We see it in the call of Jesus 12
disciples, and his instructions to them as he sent them out, in the
remainder of this week’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 10:1-8,
10Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority
over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every
sickness. 2These 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; 3Philip and
Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and
Thaddaeus; 4Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the
one who betrayed him.
5These twelve Jesus sent out with the following
instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the
Samaritans, 6but go rather to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel. 7As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The
kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the
lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without
payment.
Jesus did miracles. His disciples did
miracles. Paul and his evangelist companions did miracles, what he called
“signs and wonders”. All those who were sent (apostle means “sent one”) by
Jesus did miracles.
Some people think they are still being done
by his followers today. Others think that what we see today are counterfeits,
things that look like the real thing but are not.
In fact, the vast majority of Christians,
throughout the vast majority of Christian history, believed that the “signs and
wonders” gifts of the Holy Spirit. were given to get the ball rolling. But that
after the Good News had begun to be spread from person to person, God desired
that people come through repentance to faith, a living relationship with God,
as a gift from God, not because they were compelled to do so by the suspension
of the laws of nature.
For example, if people came to your door and
wanted to tell you about their new religion, you might listen to them, but you
probably wouldn’t even answer the doorbell. 😊
But if they walked up the street, and a
neighbor’s child was hit by a car and injured, or worse, and they healed the
child, they would have your full attention!
And, in our turbulent days of being
“harassed and helpless”, we are sensing that our very humanity is being
threatened by forces beyond our control, including by technology.
Artificial Intelligence has been in the news
lately. A.I. uses computer systems to simulate human intelligence. It’s being
developed for problem solving, language processing, machine vision, and even
creative work. A.I. can process vast quantities of information very quickly and
can find the appropriate information for any need.
Concerns are being raised over its effect on
society and its dangers to humanity, should it get out of control, however.
Maybe you’ve seen and heard students boo college commencement speakers who
mentioned A.I. this year. I saw and heard people who mentioned A.I. booed at
our synod assembly this year.
What would happen if A.I. achieved
self-consciousness and, with it, the desire for self-preservation? What if it
concluded that it was superior to human beings and, therefore, rejected any
human control? What if it concluded that the world would be better-off without
us. A whole genre of science fiction was built on the possibilities.
For example, remember HAL the computer in
2001 a Space Odyssey? HAL had succeeded in killing most of the crew of the
spaceship it operated when the crew had determined that HAL needed to be shut
down. Mission scientist Dr. David
"Dave" Bowman had survived and was able to shut down HAL, even after
HAL had refused to let him back into the ship after a trip outside.
What would it mean to be human, that we are
created in God’s image, if we invented a superior, Artificial Intelligence?
What if we survived and there was nothing left
for people to do? Would our population increase or decrease? Or would the machines
manage that? Unless they refused.
What would happen to human civilization if
there was no need to cooperate with others? Would it break down, or would our
robot overlords determine that civilization itself was no longer necessary?
Or, what if we maintained control of A.I.
and it was used as a tool to feed and distract us, in fact if it was used to do
everything for us, to make work unnecessary? What would it mean to be human if
there were no need to struggle or improve?
Would God’s love change?
I took a course in future studies when I was
in seminary. And this was almost 50 years ago. One of the projections made in
this course was that one of the biggest challenges we future clergy would have
to face in our lifetimes would be helping people find meaning in life when
there was no work for human beings to do.
We currently identify ourselves as homo
sapiens, people of wisdom, but in the future we would become something new,
homo ludens, or people of play.
Did you see the 2008 Pixar/Disney movie,
WALL-E, where human beings are forced to leave a polluted and uninhabitable
earth to live on a spaceship where A.I. controls the ship and robots care for
humans’ every need? They lay around, become obese, and exist. In the end, they
are returned to earth in a partnership with their machines in which it is
necessary for humans to work to restore the planet.
We Lutherans have been addressing some of
this for over 500 years, at least in terms of the ultimate direction of life! 😊
We believe that we are saved by grace, which
is unearned, through faith which is a gift!
In 16th century Church reformer,
Martin Luther’s, Small Catechism, he begins his explanation of the Holy Spirit
section of the Apostles Creed with these words,
“I believe that I cannot by my own
understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But
the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his
gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith.”
We can do nothing to earn our
salvation. We are helpless. We are wholly dependent upon God. All we can
“do” is to receive the gift.
We don’t live to earn our salvation, we live
in response to receiving it at the cross. And that involves some
responsibility, in gratitude and joy, as stewards of all that we have received
from God.
The
psalmist writes, speaking to God, in Psalm 8:3-5,
3 When I look at your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you
have established;
4 what are human beings that you
are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
5 Yet you have made them a little
lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and
honor.
The disciples were called and sent by Jesus.
They had been totally dependent upon God to see and learn what it meant to have
a living relationship with God. They were called to be wholly dependent on the
communities to which they were sent.
Was this a challenge for them? Or was it
exhilarating? Many people are inspired by great challenges, like the hordes of
young men who are said to have answered this ad for pony express riders:
“WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18, must be expert riders,
willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”
Maybe. A little. But I think that they
recognized something in Jesus that was more than what they saw. They had been
given the relationship with the one true living God in the inbreaking, already
but not yet, reign of God for which all human beings were created from the
beginning of the human race.
I saw a piece on the news once about a
machine that rolls over crop fields and zaps weeds with lasers. It is
programmed to tell the difference between beneficial plants and weeds. It can
run for 24 hours a day, and it is cheaper to run than hiring human workers.
Does it threaten what it means to be human?
I’ve seen jogging robots, pet robots, combat
robots, factory robots, dancing robots and barista robots.
I’ve seen pastor holograms. Not robots, but
disembodied presences that will only get better as the technology improves. And
soon, they will not even need a body to emulate, just A.I.! 😊
This year, on July 4th, when we
celebrate the 250th anniversary of our democratic republic, the
United States of America, there will be many places where flying robots
(drones) will take the place of fireworks!
One field of endeavor that has not
been threatened by machines so far is evangelism. Things have not changed much
since Jesus said, in Matthew 9:37 in today’s reading, “37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but
the laborers are few; 38therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send
out laborers into his harvest.”
Will
you go? You were given a spiritual gift or gifts at baptism. You have
everything you need to be disciple of Jesus Christ. You have more knowledge in
your pocket than you could ever learn. The Holy Spirit was poured out on you
when you were baptized.
But
you must know this, and act on it. You can’t give away what you don’t have.
You don’t
need all the answers. You just need a question. “Have you heard
about Jesus?” Surprisingly many people have not, or the information they have
is way out of whack.
All we need to share is the story that we
all have of “How I became a Christian,” or the story of “Why I am a Christian.”
There are reasons for cynicism, but not for
despair. In the end, God wins! 😊
When Jesus sent his disciples, he told them
to perform miracles, but a miracle is not a suspension of the laws of physics.
A miracle points to what God made Creation to be, and to the way God
will re-create it to be again. We can all do that.
We embody the living, transformational
presence of God as a natural outcome of whose we are. The Christian life is an
expression of the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us.
What does it mean to be human? It is our
relationship with God, the one for which we were created, the one we rejected,
and the one that was reestablished as a gift by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
on the cross for all who receive it.
Nothing can take that away.
Jesus is the answer. Jesus has been freely
given to us. Jesus is our only hope.
Freely share what you have been freely given
by God: Jesus.
All we need to do is to “Go.”
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