You are lost. The trees, the houses, and the street signs are all totally unfamiliar. Worst of all, you don’t know where you took the wrong turn in the first place. Well, perhaps you do know. You were, after all, given a detailed map at the start of this journey, a map that was all-but guaranteed to bring you to your destination. But the map was sometimes difficult to understand. It required you to make sacrifices of time, money, and comfort. To follow it, you frequently risked misunderstanding and judgment from other travelers who were taking the easier way. After a while, it became easier to drift…to follow the easy road... 

The children of Israel had also been given a map. YHWH, the God of their ancestors, had rescued them from slavery and chosen them as a “special possession, dearer to me than all other people” (Ex. 19:5). As God’s chosen, they received a unique commission: to become “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation” (v.6) that would bring the knowledge of the true God into a world dominated by idols. God’s chosen people received a covenant, laws that marked them as set apart from other nations. But the laws were sometimes difficult to understand. They required sacrifices of time, money, and comfort—sacrifices that those serving idols never seemed to have to make. They exposed God’s people to ridicule and persecution from the surrounding nations. And after a while, it became easier to drift…to take the easy road… In today’s Gospel, Jesus finds God’s chosen people, his people, lost and alone, “like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). The map still exists, but these frightened sheep no longer feel they can follow it. The life-giving covenant has become a harsh burden. What, then, is the message Jesus’ apostles are to preach to these frightened ones? A message of good news: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 10:7)! The covenant, the map to God’s kingdom, is to be fulfilled, not through their good works, but through God’s own son. The lost ones may come home at last.