June 18, 2023, Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

In today’s readings we see how the Israelites digressed from being a holy nation special to God to a nation of confused irreligious practices. Then we see how Jesus brought them back to being God’s chosen nation again.

In the First Reading (Ex. 19:2-6a) the Israelites have just escaped slavery in Egypt and have arrived at Mount Sinai. Moses has gone up the mountain to speak with the Lord, which was his routine. God tells Moses to remind the people how He released them from their bonds and guided them out into the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land.

Here God makes a covenant with the Jewish people and vows to keep them as his special holy people, “a kingdom of priests,” as long as they observe the statutes of the covenant. Unfortunately, the people fail to follow the covenant time and again even though they had promised to do everything that the Lord commanded. Even in the desert they forced Aaron to build them a golden calf to worship when Moses was away for too long.

Later when they neared the edge of the Promised Land, they refused to cross into the land because they feared that they could not conquer the people there even with God’s help. For this mistrust in God, they were punished to roam the wilderness for forty years. Finally, Joshua, who replaced Moses, helped them cross into the Promised land and conquer many of the pagans living there.

At this point they lived under a series of judges for their governance, but they failed repeatedly. When the judges would pass, they would turn to idol worship. During this time, every person did what was right in his own eyes regardless of the commands of the Lord. Finally due to the unrest, the people demanded that God give them a king like other nations. In a way they were rejecting God as their king.  God gave in to their desire and selected Saul as their first king. But the kingship would be no better than the period of the judges. Instead of leading them in the way of the Lord, the kings, even the great king Solomon, led them into apostasy and betrayal of the Lord.

Finally, as their punishment they were led into captivity in Babylon. But eventually God once again released them from slavery, and they returned to Jerusalem with the promise of a Messiah to come from the line of David. Once again their leaders were weak and the Jewish people were defeated by, first the Greeks, then the Romans. This was the time that Jesus was born, during the reign of the Roman Empire.

In the Gospel (Mt. 9:36—10:8) we see how the Jews were the subjects of the Roman Empire and their governor Pontius Pilate, but their immediate leaders were the chief priests and the Pharisees. These religious leaders set a poor example for their subjects. They required that the people rigidly follow the Laws of Moses but did not do so themselves. This is why Jesus was moved to pity for the people. They were like sheep without a shepherd, with no adequate leader, and Jesus mourned for them. He told them, “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; so, ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Mt. 9:37).

Jesus then summoned twelve men to be his disciples and he gave them authority to cure illness and perform exorcisms. He instructed them to stay out of pagan territory and Samaritan towns. They were needed by their own people who were like “lost sheep” and these disciples would become their “shepherds” once Jesus ascended to the Father. He instructed them to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons” (Mt. 10:7) and to do so with no cost because they had received the favor of the Lord without cost as well. Jesus also told them “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 10:6) acknowledging that with his arrival, the Messiah in the line of David had now come to set things right for God’s chosen people.

Of course, having just finished the Easter Season, we know how the story went. Peter summarizes for us in Acts: “You who are Israelites, hear these words. Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:22-24).

Yes, death could not hold Jesus and he rose and ascended to the Father. But he left behind a group of shepherds, or leaders, the disciples who established his Church and nurtured and helped it to grow to the point where there are now millions of Christians throughout the world. We are not leaderless. We have our blessed clergy to guide us. And the crowds that belong to Christ’s church are once again holy because of the Spirit that he left behind. We have come full circle, though not without occasional trouble, we are once again God’s holy people.