Jesus speaks metaphorically - the harvest being those ready to hear and receive the word of the kingdom's nearness. However, in our current context, praying for laborers to bring in the plentiful harvest might be taken literally. The coronavirus and subsequent travel restrictions and rate of infection among migrant workers living in close quarters has left crops rotting in fields. Farmer Jeremy White told a reporter
that 1 million dollars' worth of blueberries might rot in the Georgia field if 100 workers from Guatemala do not arrive within days. He said of those workers: "We need 'em now. Absolutely, we need 'em now. As you can see, this fruit's turning blue and it's not waiting on anybody." Georgia's commissioner of agriculture Gary Black added: "It is a reality. If there are not workers, there will be crops that will go unharvested, and that has a ripple effect throughout this economy, and it will affect the consumers of this nation."
A ripe harvest will not wait. The crop gets picked, distributed and consumed - or it dies and rots unused. A lack of workers disrupts the entire food chain causing damage to all those affiliated with it, and everyone needs to eat. Jesus knows that a world without workers to share the good news is one in peril, one filled with rot, one in which hunger runs rampant, one in which the bounty of the earth meant to nurture instead gets plowed under and wasted.
In all the turmoil and pain of these days, is there, in fact, a plentiful harvest ripe for the picking? Or has our reticence and reluctance to go to the fields and labor rendered all that good fruit useless?
The lack of agricultural workers in our time is due to the ravages of COVID-19, travel restrictions, punitive immigration policies, low pay and, in many cases, abusive working conditions. In a sense, we are not reaping because of what we have sown. Jesus sends out his followers with good news for the poor and oppressed. He sends them out to rely on the hospitality of strangers and to preach and teach and heal. Nowhere in this Jesus harvesting is there room for selfish gain or exploitive practices. The harvest of those ripe to hear Christ's message of hope and justice, ready not just to hear about the kingdom of heaven but see it come to earth, swells into the streets of cities and towns across our country. Indeed, the abundance of people yearning, yelling, demanding the ability to breathe free grows by the day. Where then are Christ's workers, those ambassadors of reconciliation, the peacemakers and justice bringers?
Langston Hughes' famous poem "
What Happens to a Dream Deferred?" comes to mind with images of festering, rot and explosion. That crop of dreams will not wait forever to be realized and harvested. If the workers don't show up to heal and cast out evil, and dreams and longings and lives get thrown away or plowed under, all that sustains us will collapse and none of us will survive, let alone thrive.
Jesus is here. The kingdom of heaven is near. We know what Jesus commands. We know what the prophets say and what God demands. The harvest is ripe; what is needed now are the laborers. Howard Thurman includes in his prayer "Our Little Lives" these two lines:
"We do not know how to do what we know to do.
We do not know how to be what we know to be."
Jesus sends us out to proclaim the good news, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons - and yet it seems we do not know how to do what we know to do or how to be what we know to be. The harvest is so ripe for the life-giving, justice-bringing, sin-freeing, evil-obliterating Word of God, but many of us Jesus workers refuse to go to the fields and fail to be what and who we know to be. And the harvest won't wait forever. It will fester. It will rot. It will explode.
As we wrestle with the state of our life together, the undeniable, centuries-long inequities, the systemic deadly racism, story after story of black and brown beloved children of God murdered by those supposedly entrusted with "keeping the peace" for every member of every community, we (particularly white Christians like me) must ask ourselves if we are willing to do the hard labor of harvesting and distributing God's abundant crop of justice and love.
The epistle reading this week brings home the reality of how hard this kingdom-harvesting work is. We cannot expect to be about casting out evil without real pushback from demonic forces. We cannot expect to help heal deep, open and life-threatening wounds without putting ourselves in harm's way and going to places where they are perpetually inflicted. We cannot expect to cleanse lepers from a safe distance. We cannot proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ from a sound-proof bunker of personal protection. We cannot raise the dead without spending time in graveyards, morgues and killing fields. We cannot do any of this without a willingness to suffer with those long oppressed.
Lord, we ask you for laborers for your abundant, life-saving harvest of justice and love, peace and reconciliation. We boldly ask to be among them. But we are going to need a lot of faith and courage, endurance and mercy. We are going to need to extend and receive radical hospitality from strangers who may well be angels. We are going to need to trust that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character calls forth no small amount of hope. We need all of the above and then some in order to go into the fields of your world and bring in a heavenly harvest on earth that feeds and sustains us all.
This week:
- Where is Jesus sending you and what are the crops ripe for harvesting?
- Does this agricultural metaphor resonate with you? Have you ever grown and harvested crops? How much control did you have over the size and state of the harvest? How does this relate to a life of faith?
- As you survey the state of our world right now, where do you see God at work? Where is the kingdom of heaven near? Where does it feel far away?
- In reading Romans 5, have you ever experienced the trajectory of suffering, endurance, character and hope that Paul describes?
- Read Howard Thurman's prayer "Our Little Lives" in its entirety and perhaps use it in your daily prayers this week.
- In what ways can you work for justice and peace in your family, church and community?
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