Matthew 9: Seeing the Crowds Through the Eyes of Jesus

Introduction

"Can we live in a society so polarized that its members keep their capacity for compassion toward concrete individuals, yet gradually lose the capacity for compassion toward whole groups?" With this question, Pedro Zamora, introduced as "our brother" by the pastor of the Primera Iglesia Evangélica Bautista de Madrid (PIEB Lacy), opens his message titled "The Gaze of Jesus."

Before the sermon, the congregation listened to a song by Santiago Benavides with the same title: "What is the gaze of Jesus like?" The song answers that he looks with a father's love for his child, seeing the story hidden behind every person.

The text is Matthew 9:35-38. Jesus fixes his gaze on the crowds, is moved with compassion, and sees sheep without a shepherd, but also an abundant harvest. Pedro Zamora draws from it a simple and unsettling question: how do you look at people?

Outline of the message

1. When groups replace faces

We know the polarized context we live in, and Christians do not escape it. The question applies to us too: can we lose the capacity for compassion toward whole groups?
The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, in Men Against the Humanly, explains that our categories for analyzing society are useful, but they can end up replacing people. We no longer see individuals with a life story, convictions, and sufferings, only representatives of a group, according to the label stuck on it.
The Jewish thinker Martin Buber, in I and Thou, distinguishes the "I-Thou" relationship, from person to person, where the presence of the other addresses you, and the "I-It" relationship, where the other becomes an object to be classified, handled, and controlled.
"Do not be afraid, I am not going to wander off into philosophy," says the preacher. It is with this starting question that he invites us to meditate on the gaze of Jesus.

2. A gaze that extends God's own

Exodus 3 is a foundational text for Israel, and therefore for the Church: God sees the suffering of his people, hears their cry, and comes down to deliver them. It is a gaze that puts things into motion.
Jesus stands within that gaze in Matthew 9:35-38. He goes through the towns and villages, teaches, proclaims the good news of the kingdom, heals, and then, fixing his gaze on the crowds, he is moved with compassion because they are weary and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd.
Jesus sees sheep and a harvest, the barley harvest that makes bread. It is the gaze of someone who grew up in Galilee, in a family economy where farming, herding, and craftsmanship go hand in hand, and who knows how hard it is to keep such farms alive.
For these shepherds and farmers, the flock and the harvest were more than an economic asset, they gave meaning to their lives. Jesus does not look at the crowds as a means of getting something: he sees someone to take care of.
Pope Francis said that Jesus "smelled like the sheep." Since Matthew 4, Jesus has not stayed at a distance from the crowds, he has been in the midst of them. He suffered with those who suffer, his heart is stirred, and he shares the condition of his sheep.

3. Seeing or looking: how do you look at people?

Some versions translate "when he saw the crowds," as if Jesus were just passing by. Pedro Zamora translates "fixing his gaze": it is a thoughtful, intentional look.
Seeing is natural and can be circumstantial. Looking is intentional: you begin to pick out profiles. "How do I see people? Better not say. But how do I look at them? That I can control, I can discipline it a little more."
He gives the example of his commuter train: at Cantoblanco, a mass of students boards "like pirates storming a ship." His first thought: "Those people, how disrespectful!" A student from the church later told him: "I'm one of them."
Loving your neighbor is something we understand: the good Samaritan had compassion on the wounded man, and compassion is love in action. We also think of the lost sheep, for which the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine. But is it possible to love the crowd? The preacher admits that the text pricked his conscience, because his own gaze is rather distant.
Today our sense of privacy is very sharp, social mobility makes relationships difficult, and the crowd has no face. Statistical and sociological studies bombard us with numbers. It becomes easy to forget that "I too am part of the mass" and that people are more than a statistic.
Matthew connects the compassion of Jesus with crowds in three accounts, and with specific individuals in two. As if the crowd were "an enlarged neighbor."

4. A clear-sighted gaze: sheep without a shepherd

How can Jesus say there were no shepherds? There were teachers, rabbis, priests, preachers, healers, and religious parties.
Pedro Zamora quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Where was the shepherd this people needed? What good was it to them that there were scribes who harshly forced them to attend the schools, that the zealots of the law fiercely condemned sinners without helping them, that there were preachers and interpreters of the word of God, if they were not filled with mercy and compassion for this mistreated and downcast people?"
Bonhoeffer is not speaking strictly about the Church of his day, but about the society of his day, a society where Church and State were intertwined, full of specialists, yet lacking this pastoral gaze of Jesus.
Despite psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, there remain "many questions but no answers, distress but no help, anguish of conscience but no deliverance, tears but no consolation, sins but no forgiveness."
For the preacher, this is the most important phrase. In the time of Jesus, the awareness of sin was so acute that it left little room for forgiveness. Today we have banished the notion of sin from society, and with it the experience of forgiveness, personal and social.
"So much bitterness, so many battles!" Political debates are the easiest example, but you see it at every level. We need to experience forgiveness.

5. Forgiveness that frees and transforms

The preacher recounts a scene from a film, betting that the congregation will recognize it: Captain Rodrigo Mendoza, a former slave hunter who killed his own brother, climbs the cliffs near the Iguazú Falls dragging an enormous bundle containing his armor, his sword, and his weapons.
This bundle is the physical expression of his sins and his remorse. He refuses to let it go, despite the drop below and his exhaustion. A Jesuit wants to cut the rope, but Father Gabriel stops him: Rodrigo must carry this load to the end.
At the top, he finds himself facing the Guaranis he had persecuted and enslaved. Instead of taking revenge, a warrior approaches, looks at him with astonishment, cuts the rope, and throws the weapons into the river. Seeing himself forgiven by his former victims, Mendoza breaks down in tears, in a mix of relief, pain, and spiritual transformation.
"True forgiveness frees, it transforms." Just as God's gaze on his people opened a whole history of liberation, forgiveness frees, transforms, and restarts people's lives.
After the excesses of a guilt-inducing religiosity, we flee any notion of fault: "Nobody is guilty of anything." But guilt keeps digging a deep hole in the soul, pushed into a corner, that we do not want to hear.
A competitive society, where everyone must assert themselves as if "hell is other people" (a phrase from Sartre, used here without its original meaning), contributes to this. More deeply, the awareness of evil remains within us and reminds us of our powerlessness. Paul said it: "I don't practice what I desire to do; but what I hate, that I do."
The preacher quotes the Cant espiritual of Joan Maragall: "I am human, and human is my measure." No therapy can free us from this. It can make it bearable, but not deliver us from it.

6. A gaze full of hope: the harvest is plentiful

To bring forgiveness to society, we need both the compassionate and clear-sighted gaze of Jesus, and his gaze full of hope: knowing how to see fruit in people.
The accusing gaze of the legalists sees only barren ground in the crowd, scorched and destroyed. Jesus sees the opposite: a field ripe for the kingdom of God, a harvest ready to be brought into the barns.
It is this gaze of hope that drives him to mobilize his disciples: "Pray therefore to the Lord of the harvest, that he may send out laborers into his harvest." In chapter 10, without waiting, he sends out the Twelve on mission.
It is a pastoral mission. Carrying the message is not only being someone's spokesperson: it is taking care of others, of people.
Jesus is neither the leader of a movement nor the master of initiates into higher knowledge. "I say this because I am Mediterranean too": he is a farmer and a shepherd who wants to take care of his flock and his land. This flock and this land are called Israel, the Church, the world.

7. Called to be shepherds of people

As humans, we can absorb the atmosphere around us and look at people as an "it": a good it, a bad it, an indifferent it, but always an it that would not be worthy of our compassion or our love.
The disciples of Jesus are all called to be shepherds of people, and even "shepherds and farmers" who take care of them and know how to bring in an abundant harvest for the Lord.
"Evangelizing society, people, means looking at them as Jesus looked at them, and as he continues to look at them from his throne. His gaze has not changed."
After the message, the pastor concluded: if we could look at people the way Jesus looks at them, our world would be different, and we would live differently.

Key takeaways

In a polarized world, labels can replace faces: we risk no longer seeing persons, only groups.
Jesus fixes his gaze on the crowds. He lives among them, he "smells like the sheep," and his compassion sets him in motion, like God's gaze in Exodus 3.
Seeing is spontaneous, looking is something you can train. You can learn to look at people differently.
What our society lacks most is the experience of forgiveness. Forgiveness frees and transforms.
Where others see barren ground, Jesus sees a ripe harvest, and he sends his disciples to take care of it.

Personal application

Which group of people do you tend to look at as an "it," through a label rather than through faces?
The last time a crowd irritated you, on public transport, at work, or online, what did you see? What would Jesus have seen?
Is there guilt you are dragging along like Rodrigo Mendoza with his bundle, that you have not yet laid down before God?
Around you, where do you see barren ground where Jesus might see a harvest?
This week, how can you concretely care for a person you pass without really looking at them?

Verses cited

Frequently asked questions

What does the compassion of Jesus for the crowds mean in Matthew 9:36?

For Pedro Zamora, it is not a passing glance but a fixed, thoughtful, intentional look. Jesus has lived among the crowds since the beginning of his ministry: his heart is stirred and he shares the condition of these weary and abandoned sheep. Matthew thus shows that Jesus loves not only specific individuals, but also the crowds, as an enlarged neighbor.

Why does Jesus say the crowds were like sheep without a shepherd?

There was no shortage of teachers, priests, preachers, or religious parties. But, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted by the preacher, points out, they were not filled with mercy and compassion for this mistreated and downcast people. There were sins and no forgiveness: what was missing was the experience of forgiveness.

What is the difference between seeing and looking at people?

Seeing is natural and often circumstantial. Looking is intentional: you begin to distinguish faces and stories. Pedro Zamora admits that what he sees spontaneously is not always good, but that the way we look at people can be disciplined, following the example of the gaze of Jesus.