A demoniac who could not speak was brought to Jesus,
and when the demon was driven out the mute man spoke.
The crowds were amazed and said,
“Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.”
It was not a single miraculous event that impressed the crowds. It was rather the fact that it seemed like there was no challenge that was insurmountable to Jesus. Whatever seemingly intractable problems people brought to him were healed without so much as visible effort or exertion on his part. His power was never exhausted such that he needed to ask someone to come back on a different day. He had only to say the word and people were healed. He was fulfilling predictions of the messiah one after another, such that he told the disciples of John the Baptist, "the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them" (see Matthew 11:5). It seemed like wherever he went the ramifications of the fall and exile from the garden of paradise were being reversed. People couldn't help but exclaim, "He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak" (see Mark 7:37).
But the Pharisees said,
“He drives out demons by the prince of demons.”
In light of all Jesus was doing the criticism of the Pharisees had the savor of insincere jealousy. They saw so many things that were hard to deny were genuine positive and life affirming miracles, but complained about them because they were focusing the attention of the people on Jesus rather than on themselves. He could do what they could not and the crowds responded. They, however, were so certain of their own self-importance that they felt that anything that undermined it was evil. They were their own greatest good, so anything that did not fit in with the end of their self-aggrandizement was consequentially among the greatest of evils. This isn't all that different from the spirit of partisanship in modern politics where it is very difficult for one side to acknowledge anything good in the other, even when it is so obvious as to be almost undeniable. An individual might wish to credit someone on the opposing side for something good, but then think twice about how such a complement would be read by the media, used as a sign of their weakness, and the superiority of everything about the other side. But it was more egregious to criticize the motivation of Jesus and the power with which he worked, because he was not sometimes good and sometimes bad as politicians are wont to be, but only always good.
At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Jesus came to earth and found the leaders of his people to be more concerned with political posturing than with care for the sheep who were in their charge. It was true that the leaders did not have the power to address the needs of the people in the way that Jesus did, not the wisdom to teach they as he did. But rather than do the best with what they had they had decided to settle for what they could get for themselves. The people were meant to be able to turn to their shepherds for care and compassion, but found instead that they only mattered to them insofar as they were useful to them. We who have had the experience of caring spiritual leaders might not fully appreciate what a vacuum their absence would create. We might not appreciate the sense of having nowhere to turn, and no one who really cared about us or understood from where we were coming. But in the time of Jesus the people to whom he came understood the far too well. The majority of the Pharisees, the scribes, the scholars of the law, and the Sadducees, were not motivated by compassion for the sheep as Jesus was, although they were meant to be. There were exceptions, to be sure. But their voices tended to be drowned out by the corrupt majority.
Then he said to his disciples,
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.”
The motivation for mission was not merely to create the largest group or voting block. It wasn't the result of egotistical attempts at self-affirmation. It had nothing to do with megalomania. Rather, the mission of the disciples was an extension of the compassion Jesus felt for the crowds. He wanted his loving mercy to reach more of them than his physical presence alone could reach. And so he gave his disciples his own authority to do the same works he had done in order to extend his own outreach to the people.
It is still the case that the harvest is more abundant than the supply of laborers. There are more who could be reached with the compassion of Jesus if there were only more laborers ready and equipped to go to them. When we really come to understand and resonate with Jesus' compassion for those who are troubled and abandoned we will naturally ask for more and more laborers to be sent, and even open ourselves more to his call in our own lives. When Christians go forth with this motivation in mind miracles accompany the proclamation and the crowds take notice. Those who once wrote off Christianity as something old and irrelevant in the modern world will see Jesus at work in his disciples and exclaim, "He has done all things well!"
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