The Harvest is Plentiful, but the Laborers are Few
If you grew up or are living in Midwest farm country, the meaning of these words is crystal clear. Just take a drive a few miles out of town, and you’ll see mile after mile of open fields, with the debris of cornstalks lying on top of our beautiful black soil. We’re so familiar with the cycle – the hopeful little plants poking up from the ground, soon to become tall, sturdy stalks with dark green leaves. In a few weeks, the heavy ears of corn appear and the leaves bleach out to a pale cream color. The harvest is indeed plentiful, and what could be worse for a farmer who is ready to bring in the harvest, only to find he doesn’t have the equipment or the workers available to get the job done?
Just about every year we hear of a farmer who has been injured or has a serious health problem, and the neighbors rally around to bring in his crop. To see that huge machinery rolling through the fields, making short work of acres and acres of corn and soybeans is certainly an impressive sight, and when you realize that busy, hard-working people are donating time and equipment to help a neighbor, you see God at work in them.
I grew up in a very small farm town, my grandparents farmed, and most of my friends lived on farms, so Biblical references to fields, crops, planting, weeding, and harvesting, have always created clear pictures in my mind’s eye. In Genesis we learn of God’s promise to Noah after the flood: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” The Psalms include thanks for good harvests, and we learn from the Old Testament how every household needed successful growing seasons, both for their own food and to have something to sell or barter to obtain other needed items.
The Gospel of Matthew is densely packed with parables and lessons Jesus taught his disciples, and many spoke of their natural environment. “Consider the lilies of the field” told the disciples how God would care for them, and the image of weeds growing up among the wheat was used by Jesus to teach how sin could sprout up anywhere and needed to be rooted out. Jesus and his disciples were criticized for picking a few heads of wheat to eat on the Sabbath because that was considered work, and of course Jesus made that a “teachable moment.”
In Matthew 9:35-38, we are told how Jesus had been traveling about, teaching, preaching and healing, and when he saw the crowds who came to see him, he told his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.” The straightforward meaning of our Lord’s words is a call to every one of us. There are people all over the world as well as right down the street from us who are waiting to hear the Good News, and here is Jesus’ call to us to share it by both our words and our deeds.
Your friend in Christ,
Mary Rogers