Dionysus on a Bike

Matthew 9:35-10:23 – 6/14/2026 – The Third Sunday after Pentecost

The people are “harassed and helpless” without anyone to lead them or guide them. The Gospel writer says that here Jesus is referring to the crowds. These are the nameless ones, the ones who are overlooked. These are the poor and working class. They are harassed, as Jesus says, and the ones doing the harassing are not the nameless masses but those in power. The crowds are helpless because they do not have the power to throw off their oppressors or find another way to live that is more hopeful and more blessed. Jesus has compassion on them and that feeling of love mixed with the weight of their misery leads Jesus to act. He sends out his disciples, empowered to help them, to do things in their lives that will make a real material difference. Jesus tells the disciples to heal body, mind, and spirit, all of which have been beaten down by the harassment they have received from those who exploit them.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” The need is great; there are so many people yearning for better lives. Jesus calls these people in need a harvest because the things that are preventing them from living blessed lives do not have to be that way. By talking about workers bringing in a harvest when referring to the people’s need, Jesus is getting at several important truths about human need and community. First, our problems come from human community; the crowds are harassed. There is someone doing the harassing. People’s lives are not in great need without reason. We live in a fallen social world where people mistreat and wound one another for selfish ends. Second, human community not only causes these wounds, human community is also the solution to these wounds. Jesus’s response to the lack of workers is to send out the disciples to the communities in need nearby.

Healing people takes work. It is not enough to care. There are practical, material considerations to take into account. Who will pay for it all? How do you respond when people in need of healing do not want your help? How are you going to provide for your own needs? The answers to these and other practical questions matter because healing and a better life for those who are suffering matter. Biblical studies, theology, preaching, discourse, these things matter, but engaging in them can obscure that helping people is work that requires a plan and skill. Jesus points out that there are not enough people to help. Human need outstrips the people who are able and willing to make a real material difference in people’s lives.

This Gospel reading where Jesus gives the disciples instructions for going out into the world to help people points to our task as disciples of Jesus. We are to add ourselves to the number of laborers working for the healing of the people who are “harassed and helpless.” The difficulty is that while Jesus’s exhortation to the disciples to bring healing and blessing to the people is relevant today, Jesus’s instructions to them about how to do it are quite particular to that time and place. Our task as those who are following Jesus and attempting to follow the commands to love is to take the grace and blessing we have received and use the abilities they have given us to bring that healing to others. The hard part is filling in the details about how that healing is to be done. We can go out in faith because we are following the example and command of Christ to where we know there is need. That need is palpable; we can feel it and see it all around us. Go out to bring healing to the helpless and the harassed. That work is yours; it is given to you by Jesus.

Note on the Lectionary: Today’s epistle reading in the lectionary contains the following: “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1-3). I chose not to write on this verse because I do not yet know what to say about “sharing the glory of God.” This way of talking about life in Christ points to the Eastern theological concept of theosis (divinization), a concept not much explored in the West, especially among Protestants. What is it to share in the glory of God? At some point I will delve into this topic, but today was not the day.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary by Justin Marquis