It is my joy to be with you and to celebrate the ministry of women in the church on this special Sunday. I want to express my appreciation to your senior pastor, Jack Harnish, with whom I had a delightful visit at lunch about a year and a half ago. Back then he offered me an invitation to come out to his church and to preach. Now many persons do that when they meet me as the professor of Homiletics, and then I never hear from them again. But, here I am; so thank you, Pastor Harnish, for allowing me into your pulpit.

Special thanks also to Pastor Rod Quainton who initiated the contact and kept up with all the arrangements, for his attention to detail and his hospitality. And I want to thank Pastor Lynn who kindly received my calls when I was trying to book my flights. And thank you, church, for welcoming me and for your continued support of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Please know that we are all grateful for your hospitality to students and faculty and for your financial support. I bring you greetings from Dr. Jake Martinson, our interim President, Dr. Phil Amerson, our President-elect, and all the faculty, staff and students. Without the support of persons like you, we would not be as able to do the work to which God has called us. I look forward to greeting some of you on the seminary campus this summer.

In the meantime, it has been my pleasure to share your Lenten study from a distance. Pastor Quainton sent me your study text, Traveling the Prayer Paths of Jesus, and the request to follow the theme for the week in my sermon.  So I decided to use it for my own Lenten study. So let us take a moment and look at Matthew 9:35-38 to see what it means for our prayer life to pray with Jesus “By the Roadside.”

Let us pray.

When I read this text in preparation for this sermon, two images immediately came to mind. The first had to do with New York City, the place I consider home. Summertime and Times Square – the streets were packed with people – a tidal wave of people, all going somewhere important – or so I believed. I tried to maintain my relaxed Caribbean pace, but I was bumped and pushed and pretty soon I was caught up in the crowd, moving fast, lost, going I knew not where. I began to feel harassed and helpless, but also to notice that many of the people, tourists like myself, also looked harassed and helpless; that many of them seemed not to know where they were going; “like sheep without a shepherd.”

The second image came from a visit to Antigua where I noticed a herd of animals running wild. The animals weren’t sheep (I took some license with my sermon title because of the scripture passage), they were goats, but I was amazed at the way they were left to wander wherever they wished. I noticed too that when chased out of the way, they scattered trying to escape; running in every direction and some ended up in even more danger. 

What crowded streets and scattered sheep have in common is that in both cases they represent a lack of direction, and the text caused me to think that that is what Jesus saw when he looked into the faces of the crowds that followed him during his earthly ministry. And then I thought perhaps it might even be what he sees when he looks at us, as we rush about at the hectic pace that defines so many of our lives – harassed and helpless people like sheep needing a shepherd to guide them.

The passage of scripture before us begins with a summary statement of Jesus’ ministry up to this point in time. He’s been teaching in the synagogues and on the mountainside; he’s been proclaiming the good news – the Kingdom of God has come near. He’s been healing the sick – the leper, the centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law; casting out demons; restoring sight and raising a dead girl. Jesus has been busy about his Father’s business, but he has not neglected his responsibility to be in close communion with God. As we studied in the first week of our Lenten journey, Jesus took the time and retreated to places of solitude to pray. And with the strength of spirit gained in his times of prayer, he was able to walk the roads and deal with the crowds that surrounded him. 

Now of course the tiny villages and comparatively miniscule cities of Palestine cannot compare with the great metropolis that is New York City. In fact, Bible scholars tell us that apart from Jerusalem, the cities that were associated with Jesus’ ministry “were not important in the secular geography of Palestine” (Oxford Bible Atlas) and the most important towns of Galilee are never mentioned in Gospel writings. So the crowds of people who flocked to Jesus came from the small communities around Palestine. It is no wonder that they looked harassed and helpless, kind of like tourists in New York City, because they were away from their familiar places. They did not know exactly where they were going, where the roads would lead, or what they would encounter along the way. What they did know was that they wanted to be in the company of Jesus, wherever the journey led.

There is a lot to be said about Jesus’ ministry and his purpose on earth in these few verses of scripture from Matthew, but our focus is on prayer and specifically on praying with Jesus by the roadside, so let’s see what we can learn from this passage. John Indermark, the author of our study text, tells us:

Along the road we find Jesus at prayer, but not in roadside chapels… As with the journey itself, Jesus prays in those places and with those persons who might otherwise be seen as diversions and distractions from the “real” destination… By the roadside, throughout the journey, Jesus prays.

Indermark unpacks the meaning of the roadside by telling us it represents those places where we live our lives – within the family, at our places of business and our social arenas. But for most of us that definition is not the norm; it’s not the vision that we have when we hear the term roadside.

Yesterday, as I walked with Rod around this beautiful facility, I could not help but be impressed at the many evidences of the commitment to mission that is part of the ethos of this congregation.  So many projects told of your involvement with persons that we tend to think of as being by the roadside; persons who are the victims of poverty and injustice; persons that The New Interpreters’ Study Bible says “summarize the recipients of Jesus’ ministry,” namely the marginal and common folks, not the elite.

Now if we are honest, that presents an issue for most of us. Because even though we want to be with Jesus, even though we want Jesus to pray for us, to have compassion on us, most of us don’t want to be identified as marginal or common folks. Society and our culture tell us that we should be striving to be the elite. So in the midst of our middle class and upper middle class lives, how do we take our place in the crowds by the roadside with Jesus? Well, that part’s easy. All we have to do is to understand our need for Christ and to be at prayer with Jesus. 

That’s what our Lenten journey, Traveling the Prayer Paths of Jesus, is all about. It calls us to open, honest acknowledgement that no matter how secure we are financially, no matter how well we are doing in our social lives, unless we are walking with Jesus in all the places of our lives, unless we are praying as Jesus prayed, then we are the harassed and helpless in the crowds; we are the sheep that are running fast but going nowhere because there is no shepherd guiding us. We are the ones needing Jesus to pray with us by the roadsides of our lives.

Jesus sees the crowds and has compassion on them because they are harassed and helpless. The word translated from the original as “compassion” is a particularly strong word that is meant to convey a feeling of care and concern that comes from the depths of one’s soul; in other words, heartfelt compassion. Now if you look closely at the words of our scripture text, you will notice that it does not say in this passage that Jesus prayed for the people. He did. But this passage does not give us that information. It says he had compassion on them. If you journey with Jesus as he travels the roads of life, you find Jesus at prayer with people where they are. In the roadside places of everyday life, Jesus prays for them. Jesus does not take them aside, away from everyone; he doesn’t look for some private place; he doesn’t take them with him to the places of his own solitude. Wherever he sees a need, Jesus prays. 

Jesus knows that, unlike the times of solitude that are necessary for spiritual health and wholeness, by the roadside it’s not about him. Those prayers are for the ones in need who come in their desperation to him, to receive their health and wholeness. Indermark reminds us that “our prayer life relies on the ‘interior’ life, on moments of solitude away and apart.” And that our prayer life experienced by the roadside as Jesus did requires “a sensitivity and compassion for those persons and needs encountered on the way.” That is what Jesus calls us to do; we are called to pray for those in need; to bring them to Christ in our prayers. By the roadside, our prayers are not for ourselves; our prayers are for others.   

In verse 38, Jesus says:

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

I like the King James Version that says “pray the Lord of the Harvest.” In other words, pray to God for those who do not yet know God. Pray to God for those who are lost; who are sick in spirit because Christ is not the center of their lives. Pray whenever and wherever you encounter people in need; pray no matter what the circumstance or how much it inconveniences you. Don’t wait for a special time or a special place. Just pray. Pray, because trying to live a life without Christ is not just being harassed and helpless, it is living without a sense of the direction in which your life ought to go; like sheep without a shepherd. Just as Christ has compassion and prays for us, so we too are called to have compassion on others and pray for them.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement, considered prayer essential to Christian living. For Wesley, prayer was the first means of grace. Charles Yrigoyen, most recently the General Secretary of Archives and History of our United Methodist Church, says that Wesley discovered early that praying with others, wherever they were – at home, in the societies, the class meetings, at roadside gatherings or wherever people were – was an important means “to offer praise, to seek God’s fortifying grace, and to ask God’s blessing on others.” Sounds like Wesley followed the prayer paths of Jesus very well, doesn’t it?

Jesus prayed for the crowds that followed him. He prayed for them and called his disciples to join him and pray to God for them. And Jesus makes that same call to us. Jesus knew the direction that his journey had to take. He knew that his journey led to the cross and that nothing could stand in its way. Yet he took time to pray for the children that were a nuisance to the disciples; for women who did not belong in the company of men; for lepers that were non-people, rejected by society; for tax collectors and sinners. Jesus allowed himself to be interrupted and inconvenienced to pray with those in need wherever they were.

And Jesus invites us to be interrupted, to be inconvenienced, to be involved through prayer in the lives of those who are truly on the spiritual margins. Jesus invites us to look upon them with compassion and to meet them at the point of their need. It’s not an easy call to answer, not if we try to do it on our own. But we don’t have to. The good news is that Jesus meets us at the roadside places of our lives and Jesus prays with us right there.  

Jesus finds us wherever we are spiritually, and with divine compassion prays for us. Jesus understands that more often than we care to admit, our lives are unfocused, unglued. We become part of the crowd striving, fighting our way, working hard to stay on course, but not always sure that in the midst of the crowd we are heading in the right direction. And seeing our need, seeing the desperation of our situation, in compassionate love Jesus meets us and prays for us, and we are strengthened. We are revived and renewed through prayer. 

And having been met and prayed for by Jesus by the roadside, we are called to meet and pray for others – for the scattered sheep, the crowds in the street. Through his compassion, by his prayers, Jesus gives us spiritual strength to be persons of prayer and compassion for others. Our times of solitude, when we experience the presence of God through prayer, enable us to go forward in the strength of the Spirit of God to be with others; to be for others conduits to Christ. That is our call this Lent. That is our call on this journey that is our Christian life. Let us go forward through the compassion of Christ to be persons of prayer; to be evidence of God’s compassion for all those we meet by the roadsides of life.