Jesus has been busy. In the past two chapters of Matthew, Jesus has cleansed a leper, healed a servant, healed Peter’s mother – and when people saw what he had done, people from the whole area brought him their loved ones to heal. He healed a hemorrhaging woman and a little girl thought dead. And he wasn’t done. Wherever he goes, Jesus cleanses the lepers, heals the sick and brings wholeness and healing. And people kept coming. I wouldn’t blame him for getting tired of the constant demands. But Jesus doesn’t despair or complain. Instead, seeing how harassed and helpless they are, Jesus has compassion on the people. He compares them to a “sheep without a shepherd.”
Sheep without a shepherd -- that was like saying parents who abandoned their children on the freeway. Jesus expected the leaders – both the religious leaders and the king to care for the people, like shepherds care for their sheep and as parents care for their children. But Jesus could see that they were not doing that – rather the opposite. They were only caring for themselves.
However, instead of complaining about the leaders who were not doing their job, Jesus invites the disciples to pray. He says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Pray to God for laborers. Notice, he doesn’t ask them to pray for a new shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He asks the disciples to pray for laborers. So, I imagine that they did. After all, if you had been following Jesus, hearing him teach and preach and heal the people and Jesus asked you to pray for laborers for the harvest – of course you would pray.
And then, Jesus answers the prayer by making the disciples the laborers! Maybe the lesson is: be careful what you pray for! Jesus then gives his disciples authority over unclean spirits, instructing them to “cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with skin disease, cast out demons.” Or in other words, Jesus says: “Do what I do.” They become not only disciples – followers of Jesus – but apostles which means, those who are sent out.
How did they do? Matthew doesn’t say. But what we do know is that the world is not much different now. People are still harassed and helpless and in need of health, healing and hearing the Good news of Jesus.
And Jesus still has compassion at the sight of the world today and says to you and to me, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Jesus is inviting you to pray – and I urge you to pray boldly. Because when we pray with all our heart for God to heal the injustices of our world and of our community, God listens. For Jesus still has compassion for us and our world. And sometimes, God answers our prayer in the way that we pray it. Sometimes God acts in a way that only God can act. At other times, God uses our prayer to stir our hearts into action, sometimes to do things that we never thought that we could do.
A few weeks ago, I was reminded of a few of the times in which our prayers turned to action. At our first meeting of the New Creation Neighboring and Justice Visioning Group, we were sharing the gifts we already have. One of our questions was to a recall way in which we as a church responded with love to our neighbor. One person wrote, “The Emily Wood Fundraiser.”
That note pricked my memory. It was 2013. We had been praying for Emily – a young person from our congregation – for a long time. She was a healthy teenage gymnast but she suddenly was sick and needed medical attention. I will never forget how people from this congregation, her family and her father’s workplace, came together to raise funds and to support this family. We became the answer to our prayers for we became the laborers, the hands and feet of Jesus, caring for our neighbor.
The same thing happens every year at the Near Foodshelf Christmas giveaway. Parents come to the Crystal community center to “shop” for gifts, hats, mittens and blankets for their kids. The whole place is full of boxes and boxes of gifts given by you and me and other faithful people like you and many of you help distribute those gifts, walking with the parents, getting to know them and their children and helping them to find the perfect gift. In doing this, every year, we become the answer to prayer. You become the laborers, the hands and feet and voice of Jesus.
And yet… it is easy to get busy, to focus on our own tasks at hand and put off the work that God is calling us into through the needs of the neighbor. A nurse was just starting her rounds when an older man who was not doing well reached out to her and asked, “Can you sit with me for a while?” The nurse had many stops to make so she said to him, let me go and take care of the rest of the people on my rounds and then I’ll come back to you.” But when she came back, he had already died. She so deeply regretted not making it back on time that she started an organization whose purpose was to provide presence for the dying so that no one would have to die alone.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
There are many ways in which we can become the answer to Jesus’ prayer. Whether it is working together to get affordable senior housing in our neighborhood - which is how Robbinsway came about -- or by making sandwiches for people at Agate housing, or tying blankets for LSS or assembling bags of food for school children’s families with EveryMeal or protesting the cruel and unusual treatment of citizens and immigrants by ice officers, or donating money for food to NEAR, all of these are ways in which our prayers have turned to action.
Most of these examples are intentional service-oriented actions. And these are great. But also, be ready for those times in which, in your everyday life, like the nurse who was asked to stay for a moment longer with the patient – you may be asked to take a moment longer with a visitor at church, let a harried mother cut in front of you at the checkout line, listen to a stranger, invite a neighbor over for a cup of coffee or give a ride to another neighbor. For God doesn’t just work through our pre-planned programs. Be aware of the ways that you can be the answer to Jesus’ prayer to be the laborer, or to be the hands and feet, and heart and voice of Jesus.
This is the work that Jesus calls us to do in our church, our neighborhood and in our community. This is not new. This is the work of Jesus that is never done as long as there are people who are hungry; people who are hurting; people who are in need of a good word and a listening ear, people who are in need of hearing the Good News of Jesus in the midst of a hurting world. And Jesus not only prays for laborers but invites you and me to pray too sends YOU out to do it.
As Teresa of Avila, a woman who was a reformer, a poet and a mystic from the 1500s wrote a poem encouraging people then and now to live out their faith in both words and deeds. She writes:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Christ Has No Body byTeresa of Avila (1515–1582)
Sisters, brothers, sibling in Christ, may your eyes look upon the world with the compassion of Jesus and may your feet, your hands, your eyes, and your mouth do what Jesus did and bring wholeness and healing to our church and to our community. Let us do it all in Jesus’ name. Amen.