6-8-20 - Harassed and Helpless

You can listen to this reflection here.

Congratulations – we have made it through the seasons and festivals and holidays that span Christmas through Easter to Pentecost, and have arrived at that long stretch we call “Ordinary Time.” From now until Advent, minus a few feast days, we will hear stories from Jesus’ ministry and teaching. We have an opportunity to get to know him better, and to explore our own callings within his ongoing mission.

We come in at a good spot – next Sunday’s Gospel reading drops us at the start of Jesus’ travels, with his instructions to his disciples before their first foray out. Let’s listen as though we were one of them, for, indeed, we are, and the mission field Jesus described then, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” is as urgent today.

We will also find resonances in what Jesus encountered:
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 set out to proclaim the Good News of God’s mission to restore and renew all of creation to wholeness, and to demonstrate that mission by healing every ill person he encountered. As he went, he also responded with compassion to what he saw – people who were harassed and helpless, rudderless, leader-less.

The ones Jesus encountered lived in poverty and fear, under the thumb of the Roman occupiers and further oppressed by their own religious leaders. People of color we encounter may have grown used to harassment, discrimination, even fearing for their lives when they go out. Young people we meet may be furious at the legacies of inequity and a ruined planet we are leaving them. People of privilege we know may more often be harassed by the demands of wealth than poverty, but many are also seeking direction, to be led to safety and green pastures and still waters. So many people are hungry for meaning, thirsty for purpose and the kind of love only God can give. We have access to these gifts – will we share?

Who do you know who is harassed or helpless, or both? Who is awakening your compassion? How might God be sending you to that person or people with a message of promise and life?

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

This is a time of action, when churches are mobilizing to call and work for greater justice. Are we ready to be sent, to be God’s messengers of peace in the fray? Ask God in prayer to show you where and when and how and to whom. Just say the word – God will send you into the harvest fields.

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