“Living in the Lord’s Harvest”

June 18, 2023 — Ordinary Time

Matthew 9:35—10:8

John Gribas

Good morning. I am so glad to be here with all of you this morning, on this day. This Father’s Day.

For me, Father’s Day is a reminder of blessing. I was blessed in so many ways by my own father. The opportunity to be a father for my two sons, Adam and Levi, has been an even more powerful blessing—a blessing beyond anything I could have imagined back in my pre-parent days.

So happy Father’s Day to all who have been blessed to be fathers, and to all who have been blessed by their father or by someone who has been for them a good father-figure.

And I hope we all can appreciate this day in light of the endless blessings coming to us from our heavenly father. But not only father. I’ve been reminded over the last number of weeks through what Mike and others have shared here that “father” is but one manifestation of the divine. God is also “mother.” In Jesus, God is “with us” as “companion” and “friend.” Then there is God as Holy Spirit—“spirit” meaning “breath.”

Scripture is full of ways to talk and think about God: Fountain of life. The potter who forms us as clay. Shepherd. Light of the world. Our rock and fortress. What an abundant and rich variety of metaphors offered to us as ways to grasp the divine!

Speaking of abundance, variety, and metaphors, let’s turn our attention to the piece of scripture from Matthew I just read. Here we see yet another manifestation of God. That is…the Lord of the harvest.

When you hear “harvest,” what comes to mind?

Standing here and looking out to all of you, one thing that comes to mind for me is…us. This place. In my relatively brief time as part of this community of faith, I have witnessed what might be called a substantial harvest.

For some time, COVID obviously played a big part in keeping down the number of people willing and able to safely show up on a Sunday. But it seems clear that more has happened here recently than the waning of the pandemic. There are new faces. We have seen multiple baptisms and church membership commitments. Consider the various individuals who are now actively involved in greeting, serving as ushers, singing in the choir, participating in studies, facilitating worship, preaching.

And I see beautiful variety in this increasing abundance. The recent overwhelming approval of this community’s commitment as a reconciling church reflects that variety—and, keeping with the harvest metaphor, it likely tills the soil for even greater and richer variety over time.

Look around. Would you say that “the Lord of the harvest” has been generous here?

If you would say, “Yes,” I would not disagree. The expansion and diversification of this or any other faith family is a blessing. At the same time, and in light of these verses from Matthew, I would also say…let’s be careful.

Jesus’ reference to the “harvest” is a metaphor. And metaphors are tricky things. Beautiful and wonderful things, for sure. Necessary things for finite creatures like us—bound in our world of language—who are trying to grasp God who is infinite, unlimited, and eternal.

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest, internationally recognized teacher, author, Christian mystic, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. In his book, The Divine Dance, Rohr reflects on the limits of language and the role of metaphors for those seeking God.

His point seems to be that there is something about the divine that defies being captured by words, and that things like silence and humility are needed to help us avoid the pitfalls inherent in our tools of language. He also argues that all words are essentially metaphors.

As a university professor whose teaching and scholarship has focused on the nature and power of metaphor, I agree. I have spent a lot of time over the last 30+ years thinking about metaphor, and I’ll say it again: metaphors are tricky things.

Here’s why.

Most people understand metaphor as the use of language whereby we bring understanding to one thing by referring to something else—usually something quite different. If we say that someone is a “diamond in the rough,” we are likely drawing attention to that person’s hidden and valuable potential, despite appearances that may suggest otherwise.

But, in actuality, when we apply metaphor, we are not simply using one thing to bring understanding to another thing. Instead, it would be better to suggest that we are using one conceptual world to bring understanding to another conceptual world. You can probably imagine that bringing two conceptual worlds together is rather tricky business.

Consider how common it is in modern organizations to refer to work groups as “teams.” When we do, we are metaphorically drawing on certain aspects of our understanding of the world of competitive athletic teams to emphasize corresponding things in non-athletic organizational settings—things like working together for a clear goal. Or like recognizing that everyone has a unique and important role to play. Or like giving it your all and setting aside personal interests for the good of the whole team.

But you can’t easily limit the “connections” to just these things. There are many, many other aspects of competitive athletic teams that can be metaphorically connected to the work group, and at least some of those potential connections could be really problematic.

For example, some team “leaders” embrace the idea of being the “coach.” And if one is drawing on a football coach as the conceptual model, that can justify extremely top-down, fully autocratic leadership since football coaches typically call every play and expect absolute obedience and compliance, and they are in their right to pull players who aren’t performing as expected and to substitute those players with backups who will. It certainly isn’t inevitable, but the team metaphor can justify pretty high levels of leader abuse. Speaking of leader abuse, here is an extension of a leader metaphor I have heard…from a pastor. Actually, I’ve heard slightly different versions of this from two separate pastors—serving in completely different churches and denominations. Just for clarification—not in this church, and not by Mike.

I have been reminded by these two church leaders that, as pastors, they are “shepherds.” That sounds like a nice, biblical metaphor. But, I have been informed, ancient shepherds really weren’t the gentle and kind bucolic souls I might have imagined—guiding and protecting their fluffy flock. Nope. You know the “comforting rod and staff” from Psalm 23? Sure, they could be used for tender nudging or for fighting off predators. But, I have now been told by two church leaders, those shepherd tools often had to be used for some “tough love” on the sheep, who, don’t you know, tend to be stupid and disobedient, not knowing what is really good for them—maybe straying one time too often and, for its own protection, needing the shepherd to use the rod or staff, not to offer comfort, but to break the naughty sheep’s leg. Then the shepherd would carry that sheep over his shoulders while the leg healed, and the sheep learned an important lesson.

That famous painting of Jesus carrying a sheep on his shoulders. Yep.

At least, that is what I was told. I can’t begin to express how saddened I am that individuals who I believe to be sincere men of God somehow twisted this metaphor in such a dangerous way.

Tricky things, those metaphors.

So, what about Matthew 9 and 10, and the reference to the harvest?

I don’t know about you, but my experience with harvests is pretty much as a spectator. I grew up with an immense wheat field just on the other side of the alley behind my back yard and stretching to the western horizon. I saw plenty of harvests. Or at least I saw the results.

Mainly, I know the outcome of the harvest. The bread and fruit and vegetables that have ended up on my table. When I hear harvest, my mind tends to go to something like a painting of a cornucopia, overflowing with good things that were sown, grown, and gathered from a field, garden, or orchard.

It is pretty natural for me, when I read about the Lord’s harvest, to immediately think about the result. And perhaps it is also my history with faith traditions that identify as “evangelical” that leads me to look around at the kind of expansion and diversification I have been seeing here in this faith community and think, “Nice harvest!”

I’m sure Christ is delighted at what he sees happening here. But I don’t think Jesus’ call to “ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” is a call for me to hang out in the barn, admiring the crop. I don’t even think it is a call to go gather the crop and bring it into the barn. Those understandings are, at least in some ways, metaphorically consistent. But I don’t think they accurately reflect what Jesus seems to be doing with the metaphor.

If we look at Matthew 9 and 10, Jesus instructs his followers to ask the Lord to send “laborers into his harvest.” Into. Harvest, here, seems to be a place rather than an outcome. And Jesus’ reference to the harvest sets up his call for his followers to “go.” And they do go.

Matthew doesn’t offer anything specific about what happens when they come back. However, in Luke’s version of this story, he reports in chapter 9, verse 10 that “On 7 their return the apostles told Jesus all they had done.” It doesn’t say that they came back with the fruits of their harvest. They didn’t come back with a bunch of new disciples and followers of the way. They came back with reports indicating that, out there in that harvest, a lot was done.

There are plenty of other places in the gospels that, in fact, do draw attention to increases in the numbers of those joining the Christ-follower community. That is clearly a good thing. A blessing. But my caution here is that we not allow the blessing of a certain kind of growth to cause us to miss something in Jesus’ use of the harvest metaphor here in Matthew 9 and 10.

If Jesus’ words here are an invitation to us to join in the harvest, then the invitation is to “go.”

Go where? Wherever people are harassed and helpless. Wherever people are experiencing sickness and disease and death. Wherever people are hungry to hear the good news that heaven is near.

The thought of “going” can be a little scary, especially when we have such a nice barn with a such lovely crop to appreciate right here where we are. But, if you will allow it, let me play a little with this gospel story and metaphor, because I think there is a lot of comfort and good news here for the willing harvest worker.

First, for almost the entirety of Matthew 8 and 9, leading up to this call to go, we see example after example of Jesus engaged in harvest work. Miracle followed by miracle, healing after healing. Jesus leads the way and provides the model and example for us to follow. And, according to Matthew 10, verse 1, “Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.”

Jesus not only leads the way to the harvest and provides an example, he also provides the gifts and resources we need to do the harvest work. And did you notice that right in the middle of this scripture story, we suddenly shift to a listing of the twelve apostles’ names? In terms of narrative structure, that seems a bit odd. But what I see suggested by the gospel author here is that Jesus isn’t just making a blanket call for harvest workers. He is calling these individuals. By name. This suggests to me that the Lord of the harvest, too, knows us and calls us as unique individuals—and provides the particular gifts and resources each one of us needs.

Second, if Jesus is to be our harvest work example, then consider what motivated him. Was it a sense of duty? Responsibility? Obedience? No, it was “compassion.” Chapter 9, verse 36: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

If you wonder what harvest work you are being called to, I suggest you follow Jesus and be guided by your compassion. And I don’t think we should assume that joining the harvest necessarily means going to strange or foreign or distant places. I can’t imagine that Jesus’ instruction to go “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” reflected a prejudice or disregard for gentiles or Samaritans. Instead, here I see Jesus sending his followers into the world they know best—perhaps the place where their compassion would most naturally be prompted.

Third, and to conclude, the thought of harvest work may seem daunting. But, in truth, we are simply being asked to freely give what we have already freely been given. Chapter 10, verse 8: “You received without payment; give without payment.”

And what we have been given is the good news—the recognition that the kingdom of heaven has come near. The marvelous kingdom that Kay so aptly reflected on and illuminated for us last week. I think if you look around you right here, right now, you will see that it is most certainly true—the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Let us take this good news that we have been given, and that we experience here with each other, and bring it with us to share as we go as laborers in the Lord’s harvest.

Amen.