Matthew reaches for a strong word when he says Jesus 36"had compassion" on the crowds. The Greek points to the gut, the seat of feeling turned all the way up. In Matthew this pity turns straight into action, and here the action is sending twelve men to do what Jesus has been doing.
What moved him was specific. The crowds were "harassed and helpless," and the picture of sheep without a shepherd is the one the prophets used for a nation whose leaders had let the flock scatter. Then Jesus tells his disciples, 37"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few," and tells them to 38"pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest." The next chapter turns them into the answer to their own prayer. Those who ask for laborers get sent.
He calls twelve, matching the twelve tribes on purpose, a new nucleus for God's people, and hands them 1"authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction." For now they are told to skip Gentiles and Samaritans and go to 6"the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The restriction is temporary. Matthew has already shown foreign wise men worshiping this child, and Jesus will send these same men to every nation before the Gospel ends. It is a matter of order. Israel is found first because Israel is who its own Messiah came looking for.
The instructions then get strange. No gold, no silver, no bag, no second tunic, no staff. 8"You received without paying; give without pay." It is a short mission with no time to pack, and a gift stops being a gift the moment someone tries to charge for it. The trust Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount is now put into practice on the road.
Wherever they are welcomed, they leave their peace behind. Where they are refused, they 14"shake off the dust from your feet." A town that will not hear God's own messengers will face a sharper reckoning than Sodom. 15"it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town." The stakes of the message match the size of its gift.
He ends with a pairing that has to be held together to make any sense. 16"Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." Shrewdness alone would become cunning, and innocence alone would be easy prey. The two together let a sent person read a hostile world accurately and still never turn that skill against the people they were sent to reach.
Compassion moves the gut and then moves the feet. A shepherdless crowd becomes the reason for a mission. A prayer for workers becomes an assignment. If you have been praying for laborers, listen for whether the Lord of the harvest has your name in mind.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a compassion that moves toward the need. Give us the eyes Jesus had for people who are harassed and without a shepherd, and make us willing laborers as well as people who pray from a safe distance. Teach us to carry your peace freely, as we received it, and to be shrewd in a hostile world without losing our innocence. In Jesus' name, amen.