3rd Sunday after Pentecost 2026

Sermon: 3rd Sunday after Pentecost 2026

Texts: Exodus 19:2-8a; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today we heard in the Gospel: “When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” This phrase, “sheep without a shepherd” struck me. I’m imagining sheep scattered about, vulnerable to attack. Sheep are stronger when kept together, but scattered about, they can easily fall prey to predators. Sheep’s instinct are also to follow a leader. The flock is like a collective, and one dominant sheep can make the rest follow them to wherever they lead. Human beings, however we much grind against being called “followers” or “sheep”, associated so much with being weak-willed or minded, very often behave in the same way. The problem is not that we follow, or that we do not abide at the beat of our own drum. Both extremes of blind following and total individualism could be harmful. However, in such an individualistic society as ours, who we listen to and follow, who we allow to inform our actions and thoughts, are causes of our current crisis.

In today’s world, there is a crisis of spiritual leadership and witness. There is a distrust of established institutions across the board, leaving many broken relationships in its, path. The institutional church, we must confess, has also been complicit in this ambiance of suspicion, in this atmosphere of broken faith. However, the church that is the community of the gathered in Jesus’ name, are still called to the work of compassion that stems from Jesus’ own compassion over the people, because people, once more, are like sheep without a shepherd. Currently, in a world of social media “influencers”, of countless voices of people that profit from steering the thoughts of

the masses, and then a captivated audience to the many voices, we are once more in the middle of a crisis of the spirit. No longer do leaders in power or influencers represent consistent and coherent value systems, but rather we are now seeing a breakdown of values, where discernment of what is good has been muddled. True enough, we always need to discern the good in every place and time, that is our responsibility of faith, to respond to the pressures of the time with faithfulness to Christ and His Gospel. But because we are in this murky terrain, people have been left vulnerable to prey from all different sources. I must confess, I’ll be the first, where I’ve had to double check my own prejudices and the content that I consume, and pass it through the filter of the Gospel, because so much content today is geared towards riling you up. There is a time for anger, and a time for action, but our action and our dismay must always be rooted in witness to Christ.

In a sense, we sometimes cannot respond ably to these times because we have lost the plot. Even though we have a Shepherd, our Lord Jesus, we act as if we had none. Sometimes, we often make ourselves shepherd over ourselves and others, and that’s when the problems start. The American theologian Stanley Hauerwas once said: “we live at a time, you, may call it modern… when we believe we should have no story,

except the story we chose when we had no story. We live at a time when we believe

we should have no story, except the story we chose when we had no story. We call

this freedom.” Hauerwas is warning of the temptation of losing the plot of our lives, the narratives and voices that have made us coherent beings with shared goals and dreams. When we lose the plot of who it is we serve and follow, of what orients our lives, we can become like scattered sheep, ripe for the taking by others who do not

care for the sheep. When we ignore our gospel call, when we forego the story of the church, a story that we are a part of, when we, in essence, forget ourselves, then we become subject to isolation. This call of remembering who we belong to and live in witness to Him is the antidote to a life we all are tempted by today. What Hauerwas calls “to live as if we should have no story”, is this false freedom of thinking we are not subject to any, as if we are not part of a community of values and experiences, as if we are above the story that formed us and are somehow immune to being made subject, of being influenced. Today we are seeing how that lack of story, that absence of the plot that governs us, especially as a church, affects us. To be unaware of our story is to drift into meaninglessness, another form of scatteredness. It can come to pass that we even forget the meaning of our own faith. That we forget who we are for, and how we are called to live together in love. And thus, when that happens, then the wolves come to afflict the helpless, unmoored, unaccompanied sheep, those who have not found the bonds that sustain.

In a Spanish translation of this same text, instead of saying that the sheep are “helpless”, it says they are “cansados y abatidos”, tired and weary. Isn’t this the case today when we lose the plot of our communal and individual lives? To be scattered and alone, to be isolated from meaning, purpose, and community, is tiring. In this environment of so much chatter and discourse, of division and strife, don’t we feel tired and weary from the constant to and fro of our social crisis? Are we not tired of the moral confusion that has set upon the Earth, where life has been desacralized?

But the good news of the Gospel is that we have a story. We have an identity and belonging in Christ. We have a way of faithfulness we are called to walk in. It does not

mean that we as communities and individuals of faith have answers to all questions, it doesn’t mean that we do not change or discern right actions, it doesn’t mean we are perfect. It means that we have a Shepherd in Jesus Christ, and He is calling us to witness to Him, and that should be a priority in our lives in how we interpret and act responsibly in the world.

It is then clear how God speaks to the people Israel in our reading from Exodus today, that He gives His people a special calling: “you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation”. To be in covenant with God confers a special way of life, a different way of seeing the world and relating to it, not because God’s chosen are better or receive more attention from God. This text itself dispels this notion, since all belong to God. But those whom God calls to be a priestly nation, a calling of which the church is an inheritor, means to understand our life story as a people for whom God bore “on eagle’s wings and brought to Himself”. It means to understand ourselves as people liberated by God from slavery to sin and death, and therefore called to the great harvest for which God calls His laborers to the field to “proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ To cure the sick; raise the dead; and cast out demons.” In Jesus Christ, we are recipients of grace, and therefore we ourselves become givers and spreaders of this grace to others. It is our priestly and holy call, to represent God’s closeness to humanity by becoming close ourselves to the wounds of humanity. It is the great task of priests, something that we all are by our baptism, to proclaim Christ and live according to His commandments, in loving service to all.

To be a priestly people means to know God and know the story that has led us to this present moment; it means to identify ourselves with the mission of God, to proclaim

and live out our liberation and help others on the way to this same liberation. As the psalm says: “O LORD, I am your servant…You have loosed my bonds.”

It is no wonder, beloved, that so many ancestors in the faith have read these passages, and have said yes to the call of Jesus, and understand their Christian work in the world as loving and restorative service to all the world, taking up the special role God has ordained over His people. It is why, many through out Christian history, have heard the call to the harvest and understood that we are not called to imitate the world in their ways of domination and enslavement, we are called to be different. It is the reason why when injustice is done, our heart moves towards compassion, it is the reason why we move to intercede for others in prayer, it is why we proclaim the great story by which we hope and strive towards what is the ultimate good for all peoples. We are God’s priests who intercede for the world and its wounds, because we belong to a story of One who was wounded for our sake, and called us to tend to Him in the world’s wounded.

Therefore, beloved, if we keep the great story before us, if we understand the mission to which we are all called, if we keep Jesus Christ as our Shepherd, moving at the sound of His voice, then perhaps we shall not be scattered about in the moral confusion of this world, perhaps we can find our way back to the fold of compassion and love. Grace has been given to you, Beloved. Live according to the call of grace. Understand your priestly mission, to love your neighbors, and pray for them, as Christ does so with you, loving you, interceding and accompanying you in the dark valleys. Understand yourself anew, see yourself in the light of God’s story, chosen, called to the deep mission of loving the world and proclaiming to the them the good news that

there is hope in the Lord. That in Jesus Christ, there is a way that can restore us to the fellowship of peace among ourselves, and that we do not need to be at war, but rather, we can open space at the table that God has set for us to join Him as a community of people that are loved and therefore love in return. So let us pray: