Our Good Work to Do (Matthew 9:35–10:8)

How does Jesus model a faith that integrates spiritual and physical realities? Explore this week’s Gospel reading and consider what it means for us today.

Each week, we post a passage from Sunday’s Scriptures; share links to resources that give context and inspire new ideas; and offer a few questions to get you thinking about what we’ll read together in church.

The Gospel for June 14, 2026

Matthew 9:35–10:8

Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”

Read all of Sunday’s Scriptures

Step Into the Story

3 Ways to Go Deeper

Commentary

Jesus’s example shows us that “the preaching of the gospel is never separated from the embodied work of the gospel to bring healing and wholeness [to our world],” writes New Testament scholar Danny Zacharias.

Reflection

“[T]he hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self — to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince, or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor in her memoir An Altar in the World. Religious “teachings mean little apart from the embodied practices of the community.”

Poetry

Activist Marge Piercy celebrates jumping in headfirst: “I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.”

Reflection Questions

Take a Moment to Wonder

• How does Jesus model a faith that integrates spiritual and physical realities?
• What’s the difference between loving our neighbors and trying to change or control them?
• What good work might you dive into this week?