Working the Fields
Matthew 9:35-10:7[1]
I’ve never worked in a field of corn or beans. I grew up in sorghum and cotton country. So I don’t know what it’s
like to work at de-tasseling a corn field or weeding a bean field. I have,
however, had my share of manual labor. I spent many a day with my Order of the
Arrow chapter cutting weeds at the Scout camp with a swing blade. And I had the
blisters on my hands to show for it. I worked at a variety of Summer jobs
during my education—including moving potted plants at a wholesale plant
nursery, pulling parts at an auto salvage yard, and building and installing
wooden playground equipment. I think what they all had in common with working
the fields was that it was hard, hot, dusty work.
I don’t know if Jesus’ disciples had experience with working in fields.
We know that some of them made their living by fishing with nets. They
apparently worked at night, and I would think that hauling their nets could be
back-breaking work. But I doubt that all of them had that kind of background. Nevertheless,
I’m not sure they saw following Jesus as a path that would lead them to hard
work. If they saw him as the Messiah, they may have thought that by joining
with him they would have the privilege of ruling with him when he revealed
himself. That’s a very different prospect from working the fields.
In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus clearly calls his disciples to
work that he compares to that of a harvest. If you think de-tasseling is work,
imagine what it would be like to spend the day cutting wheat and bundling it
for gathering. The kind of harvest that took place in Jesus’ day was hard, hot,
dusty work. You spent the day swinging a scythe, covered chaff from the wheat
mixed with sweat. And you would work from sunup to sundown that way. There was
nothing glamorous about that kind of work.
And yet, it’s clear that the work Jesus called his disciples to carry
out was urgent. One reason is because the “harvest” they were to work had to do
with people. And the people of Jesus’ day were, as Matthew’s gospel says, “harassed
and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). The disciples’
calling to work the fields was urgent because the people needed someone to
point the way for them. They needed someone to help them trust that God was
there for them to comfort and deliver them. They needed someone to give them
hope that they wouldn’t always be suffering under the oppression of the
powerful. And so Jesus sent his disciples to work the fields.
Another reason why it was urgent for them to work the harvest was
because no one else was doing the job. Jesus says it this way, “The harvest is
plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Matt. 9:37). That might seem perfectly
natural to our ears, but in Jesus’ day, it would have sounded strange.
Jerusalem was a hive of religious activity with the priests and Levites who
attended the worship at the temple. One estimate suggests there were as many as
18,000 priests in that day.[2] There may have been as
many as another 30,000 Levites. Then there were the scribes and the Pharisees,
who taught primarily in the synagogues scattered throughout Judea. It doesn’t
sound much like “the laborers” were “few.”
But part of what was going on here was that Jesus was criticizing the
religious professionals of his day. Remember that Matthew says that to Jesus the
people were like “sheep without a shepherd.” This was very likely a
not-so-veiled rebuke of the priests and Levites, as well as the scribes and the
Pharisees. Later in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus outlines the many ways in which the
religious leaders of his day were leading the people astray, or were simply
oppressing them. But Jesus wasn’t the first to make the observation that those
who were supposed to be caring for the needs of the Jewish people had failed to
do so. Prophets like Ezekiel had announced their failure centuries before. Despite
the fact that there were many people working in the religious centers of Jesus’
day, he could still say that “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are
few.”
The solution to this problem was to “ask the Lord of the harvest to send
out laborers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:38). While that might seem a rather
safe thing to pray, I think Jesus must have known better. It may be easy to
assume that we can pray this prayer without having it really affect us. But the
truth of the matter is that if you pray this prayer from the heart, it’s not a
“safe” prayer at all. It’s very likely that this prayer is one that will lead
you to feel compelled to say, “Send me!” That’s exactly what happened with the
disciples. In the very next verses Jesus sends them out to do the work of the
Kingdom he had been doing.
We may be tempted to think, as Jesus’ disciples may have been, that the
“harvest is small and the laborers are many.” After all, there are churches in
just about every town and scattered throughout our cities. This part of the
country seems to have more churches per capita than anywhere else. Just about
everyone you run into around here seems to already have some affiliation with a
church. And yet, just as Jesus intended for his disciples to be moved to work
the fields by praying for the Lord to send laborers to the harvest, so we too
are called to engage in the work of the Kingdom. We might wonder how we’re
supposed to do that. The answer is in the Gospels—Jesus sets the example; he
shows his own disciples how do work the field by giving them a role model to
follow. And his example still stands as the best approach to serving and
working for the Kingdom in our day. As we follow his example, we can join all
the many laborers throughout the ages who have answered Jesus’ call to work the
fields.
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