Harvest

"Then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and villages. He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd. 'What a huge harvest!' he said to his disciples. 'How few workers! On your knees and pray for harvest hands!'" Matthew 9:35-38. The Message.

When I was in my teens, I went on several mission trips to Mexico. I think I've been there at least ten times in fact, doing everything from handing out tracts to shingling roofs. And I'll never forget this one trip. From what I remember, we'd brought with us a huge trailer fully equipped with stadium style sound equipment. Evidently, since the translators were few, speaking louder English would help the poor Mexicans understand what was being said. 

And so, the first task was to get as many pounds of rice and beans to the villagers as possible. And while doing that, hand out Spanish invitations to the middle-class white American version of Vacation Bible School. 

Looking back, the logistical nightmare of herding hundreds of people into one centralized spot was simplified through many years of practice. If you could get them all to take their kids to VBS, you could plant the sound equipment with a loud and obnoxious man preaching right in the middle of the crowd. And so the process was flawless. There was a harvest and we had the workers, so there was no better way than to lure in the fruits of the harvest with brightly wrapped pieces of candy. Never mind that the loud and obnoxious man yelling into the microphone wasn't speaking English. As long as people heard the message, the spirit would translate for them. And after the spirit would translate for them, they would willingly oblige to walk down the aisle and get saved. 

Saved from what?

Saved from the inevitable fiery and tormenting destination they were all headed to if they didn't let the words of the loud and obnoxious man ring their eardrums and awaken them to the reality that heaven was waiting. 

The harvest was plentiful that day. The gum and the candy and the tracts and the loudspeaker all worked just as planned, and many hearts accepted a Jesus whose soul responsibility was to save souls from hell and damnation and guarantee them a place in paradise. 

It usually shouldn't take more than five days to make all this happen, and the people should be set up to start doing the good work of gathering their own harvests after the white Americans leave. 

That's the mission trip I grew up with. Lure 'em in, save some souls, and get the heck outta dodge so you can get home and tell the church about it. 

From what I understand, this is still the basic outline of how mission trips work today, with the exception of some additional humanitarian work thrown in as part of the bait and switch. But my question is, "Is this really what Jesus meant by 'the harvest is plentiful but workers are few'"?

 You've probably guessed that I don't think this is what Jesus meant. 

As far as I know, Jesus didn't need to lure anybody in to hear the message he was preaching. He didn't need to throw tricks to catch people's attention. He was almost a lone wolf save the hesitant disciples who I think were more confused by his antics than anything else. 

Jesus looked upon a city that needed a shepherd, not an authority figure. He saw a population of people who were convinced they needed the religious elites and government authorities to tell them how to live in order to find the good life. But Jesus saw underneath the surface. He saw what the religious elites and Roman authorities were doing to the people. They were manipulating them to the point of getting something in return. The lure of the manipulation was so sweet and so promising that the people didn't even know they were following a dead end road. 

The taxes - both temple and state - were bearing down on the lower classes. The religion of the times told them to give, give, give, and in the process they'd be smiled upon by both God and government. Caesar was Lord and so was the temple sacrifice. The business of saving souls was already a staple when Jesus arrived on the scene. And the religious leaders had found a way to convince the people that if they could just hope in a better place after death, they wouldn't be so concerned about the horrible place they were living in currently. 

And Jesus knew this. He knew it because he'd grown up with it. He knew the peasant life. He knew the religious life. He knew the political life. He'd seen how the temple authorities demanded much but offered little. He'd seen how the government demanded higher and higher taxes in exchange for "peace." He'd seen the torment involved in having to choose between paying the temple tax or eating dinner that night. 

So was Jesus really about joining in with the same crowd of people, preaching the same message of theological escapism, or was he about digging into this life so fully that once you got around the facade of status quo, you stepped into a completely different "dimension" of existence that welcomed in qualities like peace, trust, compassion, and love?

I go with the latter. Jesus wasn't about saving souls and gathering as many people as he could find to save more souls. 

He was about teaching people how to become fully human. He wasn't about going to other neighborhoods and telling people they needed to change their lifestyles, or telling people they needed to pray a prayer, or getting people to walk down the aisle and ask him into their hearts. 

He was about teaching people how to go deeper right where they were. And to go deeper for him meant to acknowledge that real oppression existed throughout their daily lives, but also real beauty. Real manipulation was happening all around them, but also truth. 

Jesus had a message for the peasant, the tax collector, and the Roman soldier. It didn't matter how deep into the bogus world system the person was. He had a message that transcended all of that. And he pointed to a God who lived within and not without. He pointed to a God that could be discovered by digging deeply into one's own heart. He pointed to a God that didn't demand taxes or sacrifices, but that resonated with the heartbeat of a common humanity. 

He pointed people to the God that they'd already experienced glimpses of - the still, small voice inside that most of the time got blotted out by the loudspeakers of religion and state, sacrifice and taxes. 

So, as a follower of Jesus, how do I interpret his message of gathering harvesters in today's world?

Help people awaken to the presence that's already within - the ultimate reality that's already dwelling within their own hearts and minds. Help people lose their fear of death, and gain courage to embrace this life fully to the point that life is made of millions of loosely strung moments in which the divine intersects the humane. 

The harvest is plentiful but I'm afraid the workers are few. You see, Jesus wasn't so caught up in the religious game that he saw people as unsaved or saved, lost or found, Jew or non-Jew, heaven or hell bound. He saw people as deeply emotional, profoundly spiritual, and truth seeking human beings. He didn't have a dogma to pour down peoples' throats, but had a message of a God who loved and cared deeply and that already resided in the hearts of each. 

Today, I want to participate in the movement that Jesus initiated. I want to be a part of embracing my own journey of becoming fully human, but also to help other people embrace what that means as well.