Sermon 7/7/2019 “Harvest work”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection at Immanuel Chapel, Virginia Theological Seminary
Text: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Day: 4Pentecost, Proper 9, Year C
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I had a big argument with God this week about what to preach today. I really didn’t want to preach about the gospel lesson. I told God all the things that were wrong with today’s gospel lesson in this day and age, and God said, “Be my guest, Jo, preach away on whatever YOU want.”
Do you know what happened? All my ideas I thought I had about the other lessons left my head completely. My brain was totally blank on THOSE passages. So, I gave in to God. And when I began to open my heart to today’s gospel lesson, I began to see and hear things about this passage I had never noticed, never heard, before.
A typical sermon today might go something like this: “Our churches are dwindling, perhaps dying. This is YOUR FAULT because you in the “pews” aren’t going out like Jesus told you to and telling anyone about our beautiful church and lovely organ so those people can come and join us and save us from irrelevance, save us from extinction.”
Now I’m not here to preach Bad News, but the Good News of Christ Jesus. I only share this “old think” because you’ve tried the suggested remedy—the real version, that is—tried it for a long time before we began our redevelopment project, to no avail. Good on you! Most churches don’t even try.
As Bishop Sean Rowe of Northwestern Pennsylvania recently told the doctorate in ministry students here on the seminary campus, in general the church finds it easier in this post-institutional age to bleed than sweat.
But, as Betsy Faga discovered, Bishop Rowe knows all about Church of the Resurrection, knows about our redevelopment project, knows how we are sweating. What Bishop Rowe might not know is that we, like the whole church, are also bleeding, by all the old measures of church vitality. Look around you; we are mostly all of a “similar demographic.”
But what does all this have to do with today’s gospel lesson? Some of you know I’ve become offended lately by many church’s so-called solution to their dwindling measures of vitality: they’ve put a sign outside their building that says something like, “Come join us.”
“To do what?” I wonder. And, “Why should I join you?” So, I drive on by. But today’s lesson offers a strategy for actually addressing today’s church vitality issues.
First—and I hadn’t noticed this before—we are to PRAY. What are we to pray for? Today’s gospel lesson says we are to “ask the Lord of the Harvest [that is, we are to pray] to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Now, you might think that we wouldn’t have to pray for this, worshiping as we do with devout and talented seminarians all around us who are preparing for ordained ministry. They are called, most of them, to work in the barn after the harvest is gathered, the BARN that is the Church. The fields that need harvesting, the places where people are who need to know about Christ Jesus, are beyond the walls of our churches, and THAT is where laborers are needed.
As a lay person, I used to pray occasionally to the Lord of the Harvest that he would NOT send me. And he hasn’t. He’s sent me to you—you who are all potential harvesters—he’s sent me here to the BARN that is Immanuel Chapel to encourage you to tell others out there beyond our walls about Christ Jesus.
I tried that line on God, by the way, and God said, “Nice try, Jo. The harvest is ready, but the laborers are few—get out there.” So, who will go with me? I need a “second,” at least one other person to go with me, because our gospel lesson makes clear this harvest work isn’t a solo task.
Jesus changes the other instructions he give here later in chapter 22, by the way, so we understand the instructions given here about what to take and not take as specific to only THIS mission. But we do need to go two by two.
Where will we go? That’s the mission part of today’s gospel lesson. Jesus sent pairs of disciples to each place he intended to visit. So, where around us does Jesus need to visit? Where, do you think, has God been preparing people to meet us?
The third thing I noticed about today’s gospel lesson is that even Jesus’ disciples got distracted by their success. What distracted them was the power their success brought them. When the forces of evil yielded to them, the disciples seemed to forget their power came from Christ Jesus, came from God, and that they were merely a conduit of that power.
We shouldn’t be too hard on the disciples about this. I read in the paper this week that a Roman Catholic Bishop in West Virginia recently made the same mistake, thinking that all the offerings collected were so he could live in luxury. Well, there are a whole bunch of Protestant televangelists and other ministers who have made that mistake, as well.
The ideas we get when doing God’s work are not OUR ideas, just like the abilities we have are not to our credit, either. We have the abilities we have so we can do the work God has for us to do. Our abilities are all on loan from God.
We can’t get distracted by failure OR success; we just have to be faithful and remember that we are God’s messengers. Results are up to God.
Finally, I noticed that there seems to be a great deal of urgency about completing this “go tell” mission. God’s work will continue in our world, even without us and without—God forbid—the Church. The question is, will God be recognized and praised as God’s work is done? So, the urgency is about having someone who God is preparing ready and able to carry out the work of telling others about Jesus and telling them the Kingdom of God is at hand. Because, make no mistake, the Kingdom of God IS at hand. The signs are all around us, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
So, will you pray for God to send workers out into the harvest? Will you pray for their faithfulness, supporting them in every way you can? Will you pray that God shows them where to go and prepares the hearts of the people our harvest workers will meet? Will you go with me?
