In the Gospel for today we hear that
“… 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.
Jesus looks at all with love and compassion,
every single person wherever he went.
He saw and sees the condition of suffering for each one;
he sees the helplessness they experience in the face of their suffering.
He knows it all.
Nothing escapes from his loving gaze –
your pain and mine, hidden and known,
the suffering we admit to
and the suffering we hide
out of the shame of not being self-sufficient,
not having it all together.
And then there is the suffering we are not even aware of,
the ways in which we are bound by the limitations of our perceptions
and the timidity of our faith.
Jesus saw the crowds and he had compassion for them
because they there harassed and helpless and leaderless.
In his compassion he sends out his disciples to minister to them
just as he would minister to them.
“The harvest is plentiful,
but the laborers are few.”
In this Gospel reading for today,
I think we can get it about who the laborers are, the 12,
but what exactly is the harvest?
Is it a harvest of saved souls?
Is it a harvest of testimonies and stories of healings and liberations
that have come to people?
Or perhaps one could think of the harvest in terms of
what the disciples harvest from Jesus:
of the authority he has to give them to carry out their mission
of healing and setting free
and proclaiming the Kingdom come near.
They harvested from Jesus the authority
to cast out unclean spirits and to cure every disease and sickness.
This was not their own capability, or even what they learned in seminary,
but pure gift through the Holy Spirit.
And these disciples don’t have to go far –
those needing to hear the good news
are those even of their own household of faith.
Can’t make an assumption about them
that there is no need for release from unclean spirits or disease.
This proclaiming of the Good News of the Kingdom of God drawn near
is not for the purpose of making the Samaritans,
or other neighboring peoples,
into good Jews.
Rather right within the “right believing” Jews
were many who were lost,
who were silently suffering in their own private situations
of pain, grief, bondage, alienation, loneliness, anger,
and all other forms of human wretchedness.
So Jesus begins with his closest disciples and sends them out.
Is this message just for the original 12?
We say no, but for all disciples, including ourselves.
First Jesus sends the 12.
They are only to go to Judean and Galilean towns.
Later he will send 72,
and the text says he sent them to all the places he was going to go.
Then he sent 120,
who had gathered in the upper room the day of Pentecost,
and they went out into all the known world at that time.
Starting close to home, the circle then ever widens.
Next he sends us.
And if we look at this passage and his instructions,
then this is quite a lot to ask of the average pewsitter.
We are not just to proclaim in word some spiritual good news,
but also to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers,
cast out unclean spirits
and make no provisions for ourselves
but rely on those who receive this ministry to take care of our needs.
Say! We don’t even ask this of the clergy!
And this is not what you would find in the call process for a new rector!
But what Jesus is telling the 12 here
is that they are to go out and do exactly what he had been doing, right?
And to do it in the same way Jesus did,
that is, with utter trust that your basic needs will be met.
Jesus had no home, no paycheck, no pension plan, no credit cards,
not even carry on luggage.
So Jesus knew this was way beyond the capabilities of the disciples,
and all the rest of us too.
In actuality the disciples would be doing these things
not out of their own capabilities
but Jesus was going to be working through them.
It is Jesus who does the work, not us.
When acting as evangelists for the Gospel, remember:
we are not the ones who are doing the saving.
It is Jesus.
The healing and casting out or liberation,
which are signs of the Kingdom of Heaven drawing near,
are done by Jesus.
And they are done by him through the open and willing bodies
of his disciples.
We would like to think that these disciples were ordinary folks;
there were fishermen and a tax collector among the 12,
we know for sure.
But they were extraordinary
in that they were responsive to Christ’s call for them to follow him.
They got it about the huge compassion Jesus expressed
through his words, his actions and his very being.
They were magnetized by that,
and so when Jesus drew them, they responded.
And they came with openness –
openness of mind, openness of heart and openness of hand.
So the implications for ourselves here today …
“The harvest is plentiful,
but the laborers are few.”
From Romans 5: Paul writes that we can “boast in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
and hope does not disappoint us,
because God's love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
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