Are We Sharing Jesus Out of Love or Fear? | Matthew 9:35-37

Luke 9:35-37

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he 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 laborers are few;

Compassion, Not Fear: Why We Reach Out with the Love of Jesus

A sermon on Matthew 9:35–37 by Pastor James Huenink, First Lutheran Church, El Cajon

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jesus Sends the Twelve to a Harassed and Helpless People

The season that comes after Pentecost is all about the work of the church in the world, and it is no surprise that last Sunday and this Sunday focused on the proclamation of the gospel to people who have not heard it. We talked a little about that last week, and this week we get to hear a little more, as Jesus sends the Twelve out to the lost sheep of Israel to tell them the kingdom of God is here.

Today I'd like to focus on the opening section of this text:

Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he 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 laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."

I see here an image of the love of Jesus. He goes out across the land, proclaiming to all the people that the kingdom of God is here, and he sees the state of the nation around him. He looks at them and sees that they are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, and he has compassion on them. He looks at the state of the nation of Israel, sees that it is all going bad, and has compassion — not fear, compassion.

I think we have a similar state when we look around at our world. We see that all the people around us are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. As we consider the way the world is, we can react to it with the desire to reach out like Christ, with compassion. We can look at it and say, "These people need a Savior, they need Jesus." Or we can look at the state of the world and do outreach out of fear, worry, and desperation.

That's what I'd like to talk about: how our motivation to share the love of Jesus changes everything — what happens in a community when that motivation is compassion, and what happens when it's fear.

When Fear of Decline Drives Outreach

You may be asking, "Wait a second, Pastor — who looks out at the world and is afraid, and then says that means we need to do outreach?" Well, many congregations do, because in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod we have lots and lots of congregations — like congregations all across the United States — where people look at our pews and say, "Wow, these pews used to be a lot fuller than they are now." They look back to the day, and they say, "Back in our heyday, we had so many kids we didn't know what to do with. Our Sunday schools were packed. We built education wings just to house them all." And now we look around and our services are getting smaller and smaller. The kids are not nearly as numerous as they used to be, and even worse, the budget keeps shrinking.

And we start to be afraid — not of the world, but of where our congregation is going. That fear of losing something can lead us to ask, "How can we preserve what we have?" This comes from a good place. It comes from love of our congregation, and I have to say — what is not to love about a beautiful congregation like this? A people filled with love for Jesus, who gather together to receive his Word and Sacraments. A people for whom Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. Many of you have so much love for this congregation. You have been here longer than I have been alive. How could you not love this place? You remember the pastors who have served you, the years of ministry, the VBS held over generations, our preschool and all its growth.

Compassion vs. Fear: The Heart of Jesus for the Lost

We love this place because so many good things have happened here, because the gospel has been proclaimed from generation to generation — since we were up in that little church on top of that hill, until we built this beautiful campus. And that love can lead to worry as we see ourselves in decline, and we can start to say, "We need to do something to save what we have." That leads us to do outreach motivated by fear rather than by compassion — and that is different from outreach motivated by the love of Jesus.

Jesus, our Savior, came to earth not because he was afraid of losing something, but because he saw people who needed his love — whether the nation of Israel, harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd in our Gospel reading, or Christ who came to die for us while we were still sinners, who came to reconcile the enemies of God to himself, so that we could rise with him on the last day. Jesus looked on us with compassion when we were his enemies, and came to give us eternal life. For many of you, that happened here, in this place, whether you were baptized here as children or first came to faith here, and have been growing in the love of Jesus ever since.

Compassion for the lost begins with the heart of Jesus — the heart of a Savior who left his heavenly throne and saw people who needed his love and salvation, even though they didn't know it yet. It's a heart for the lost that says, "They need Jesus, and I want to give him to them, because I love them." The heart of Jesus growing in me causes me to see them as people who need a Savior, instead of seeing us as an organization that needs saving.

What Happens When Fear Drives the Church

When fear motivates our outreach, instead of seeing people as those Jesus died for, we start to see them as tools for the preservation of "First Lutheran Church, Incorporated." We start to see them as attendance numbers, giving units — if only we can get the right number of people in here, we can finally get our budget back in order. We start to see the people out there as simply a way to preserve what we have, instead of as people God wants to love and reach, people we too should love for who they are.

That fear-based numbers mindset can lead to compromise — to doing things that aren't the most faithful, that aren't the best ideas, just to get a few more people in the door. That's not loving. It doesn't help anyone to hide our theology, or the Word of God, or cover up who we actually are just to get people in. Even if it "works," even if we manage to fill the building, what we end up doing is failing to give people the grace and love of Jesus.

The Free Gift of Christ — No Burdens, Just Grace

We Lutherans have the free gift of God with no burdens. We have a peace that almost nobody else offers. If you go to the big megachurches all around us — the ones that look so successful — what they often do is lay burden after burden on their people, telling them they have to work on their relationship with God. We have real and true peace: no works necessary, just Christ for you. Why would we want to cover that up just to get people who only want the burden? Why wouldn't we want to lift that burden from them, because they are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd?

Why wouldn't we want to reach out to people who don't know Jesus — people under even greater burdens placed on them by our society — and let them know that Jesus has done all the work, that he is the only one who gives life, that there is nothing they can add to it, and that they are simply allowed to live in that peace? What a gift we have in the peace of God.

How Compassionate Outreach Looks

That's what compassion does for outreach. When our outreach is fueled by the passion of Christ, by the love he has already given us, we look out at the world and see people who simply need Jesus — people we want to love for who they are and who God made them to be. We get to go out and see a people who are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, and give them the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, calling them into the love and peace that we have.

A History of Compassion at First Lutheran and in the LCMS

I think we can see this kind of compassionate love in our own church's history, and in the broader history of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.

We started here in El Cajon when San Diego was actually several miles away — not one giant connected city. El Cajon was a rural farming community back when First Lutheran Church was founded, very different from how we are now: orange groves and open land. Eventually we built a church up on the hill — if we have guests with us today, you can step out to our parking lot and look up; it's the white building with the cross on the hill. We have photos of the families who came to us there. When we outgrew that building, we didn't say, "We have to keep this." We said, "Let's move." We built the space we're in today. When families needed childcare and the love of Jesus, we started a preschool and built a building for it, which has been running since the 1990s. We've been sharing the love of Jesus and the grace of God in all sorts of new ways, and now our community has changed again. It's always changing. Let's have an outreach filled with the love of Christ and compassion as we look toward our own future.

The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod also has a long history of compassion-based outreach. As I've researched our synod's history, I've found that church life in the 1800s looked very different from what we imagine. Most of us base our idea of church life on the postwar era, when churches were bursting and everyone built education wings — but the 1800s were dramatically different.

I spent some time researching the frontier churches of Chicago. Amazing pastors founded large congregations in the 1840s, '50s, and '60s that grew to 1,000 or 2,000 members — with only one pastor. Maybe two, if they were really large. The historical record shows that these pastors would often leave to do mission work in Wisconsin and Iowa, traveling from Chicago by horse or wagon — a long way to travel. How long were these pastors gone doing missionary work? How long did the congregation function on its own, saying, "Pastor, go find the lost in another state"? They were willing to be without a pastor for weeks at a time to make that mission work happen.

Leaping from a Train for the Sake of the Gospel

There's another story of a mission in Indiana. The pastors would ride the train to work this mission, but there wasn't a train station near the small mission — called the Roberts mission. As they approached the spot where they needed to get off, the history says, they would ask the engineer to slow the train, commend themselves to God, and leap from the moving train — all so they could reach this small mission on a Sunday. The same history records that all the bumps and bruises were forgotten as soon as they walked among the people who were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

Closing: Compassion, Not Fear

We have this love and compassion in our history, and we have this love and compassion in our Savior. As we think about how we do outreach, as we think about how we share the love of Christ with the people around us — people who are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd — let's make sure we focus on that, and not on fear.

In Jesus' name. Amen.