I guess those who find errors in the Bible must be correct. After all, Jesus must have miss spoke in the Gospel for today. He told us to pray the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. Now He must be wrong because what we need are church planters, not church harvesters. We need people to fix our broken churches and turn them around so that they will grow. We need mission planters and developers and not mission harvesters and reapers. Surely Jesus miss spoke. He meant to say, “Pray the Lord of the field for planters and tenders to sow, weed, and water the kingdom.” Yes, that must be it. Either Jesus miss spoke or it got translated wrong, right?
Yes, that was sarcasm. Jesus did not get it wrong. We got it wrong and get it wrong. We think far too much of what we do in growing the Kingdom and for too little of what God does. That is why we are always taking credit for what we did not do. We did not and do not bring people to faith in Jesus. We did not and do not decide when and where to sow the seed and what fields are worth sowing and what are not. We are not marketers of God’s brand but the people of His Word, who believe it for ourselves and who speak forth that Word so that God may accomplish His purpose in the sending of it.
It is a good thing to have some folks with a good head for business to make sure we do not squander God’s resources but none of us dare presume that the kingdom of God comes through our expertise. It comes now as it came then and as it came to us – by speaking the Gospel. You can call it preaching but for now lets stick with speaking the Gospel. What this means is that the story is not our story. The witness which we have for the world is not about us or how happy we are to know Jesus or what great people we are or how Jesus has rewarded our faithfulness, even how good Jesus makes us feel. The story we have to tell is Christ’s story – it is the Gospel of His suffering, death, and resurrection.
Christ’s was the body planted into the earth like a seed. We are here to reap for the Lord the fruits that proceed from His life once offered, from His body lain in the dust of the earth, and from His resurrection never to die again. We are here to speak forth what this Gospel means in the forgiveness of our sins, the redemption of our lost lives and the resurrection of our dead bodies to everlasting life.
The Gospel of the Kingdom is not that you need to find Jesus or come to Him but that Jesus has come to you. He came to where you were, wore your flesh and blood, was tempted as you are tempted, suffered more than you will ever suffer, and endured the rejection of people more than have ever rejected you. But in so doing, our Lord built hope where there was only despair, restoration where there was only judgement, forgiveness where there was only condemnation, healing where there was only pain, peace where there was only upset, and life where there was only death. This is what we have to say, the hope we should be always ready to speak when we are questioned.
Our great temptation is to be enamored with our intelligence or inspired by our feels. We are so smart we think this marvelous world and our complex bodies were an accident of nature without the hand of God to make them. We are so smart that we cannot even define a man or a woman even though any child can. We are so smart that we think because we can prevent pregnancy, babies are not important. We think because we know what life is worth living and what is not, we can flush a baby out of the womb, ease the aged out of their suffering, and check ourselves out when we think life is not what we want anymore. We are so smart that we think God is a crutch for the weak and an answer for the ignorant and that technology and science will give us all the answers we need.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Is it any different today? All around us our world is filled with people inside and outside the Church who are harassed by the troubles and trials of the day, bounced around by the changes and chances of this mortal life, and helpless to fix anything and everything. We are still like sheep without a shepherd – everyone going his or her own way, oblivious to the dangers around us, content to feed our faces on what we like or consume entertainment and amuse ourselves into thinking this is happiness.
Ours is a world ripe for the Kingdom of God. The Gospel is not less relevant than it ever was but even more necessary than we realize. Our problem is that we think people come to faith or leave the faith is about us. How foolish we are. Jesus puts is clearly. We harvest where God plants and raises up the seed of faith. We cannot make anything grow – not even ourselves. But the Lord has given us a purpose and a calling to harvest what He has planted by His Word and Sacrament, tended by His means of grace, and brought to new and everlasting life in Christ.
Jesus is still the speaker of His Word whether it is spoken by the pastor or the parent or the people in the pew. Jesus is still the speak of the Gospel to the stranger near or the one half a world away. We offer Him our voices but it is always His Word speaking and His Spirit working through that Word. But let us not become distracted by the cares of this world or all that glitters around us. The answers we need are solely in the Word of God. God is working through that Word and it will not return to Him empty but will always accomplish His purpose in sending it. That is His promise to us. His Word, His Seed, His Work. His fruit.
So what do we do? We harvest what God has planted. We bring the budding faith to the House of God where God works to bring to completion what He began. We encourage one another not with pious sentiment but with the Word of Truth. We care for our spouses, our children, and our neighbors with the compassion and forgiveness God has shown to us. We become a people of mercy in a world of indifference because mercy is how God has dealt with us. While the world surely needs us to speak out God’s Word it does not need or want us to sit in God’s seat and judge them. Neither is that our place. We are not a silent witness but our witness is God’s Word and we are not an indivisible people but a people active in mercy. The glory of fatherhood is to make this Word the center of our homes and the witness of our lives. This is the fatherhood that reflects God our Father.
And, as I said last week, that means encouraging boys to become men, men to become pastors, girls to become women, women to become church workers. The harvesters go where God sends them and do what God bids them. He does not need our advice but He delights in using our voices, our hearts, and our hands. For that we are grateful beyond measure. Amen.
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