Summary: Regarding harvest, what once required dozens of workers over many days now takes a single operator in a machine the size of a house. The methods have changed. But the truth has not. The harvest is always urgent. The same is true for the harvest Jesus spoke of.
Editor's Note: See footnote 1 for suggestions about how to show the paintings to your congregation. It's also possible to simply describe the paintings.
Take a look at this painting. This is Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Harvesters, painted in 1565. Notice the details: men and women bent low in the fields, scythes flashing, bundles of grain piled high. Some are cutting, some are gathering, some are stretched out in the shade, too weary to keep going in the midday sun. It's hot, backbreaking work. And it takes many hands. Harvest is never a solo job -- it is communal, exhausting and urgent.
Now shift forward three centuries to Winslow Homer's The Veteran in a New Field, 1 painted in 1865, just after the Civil War. A lone soldier, jacket cast aside, swings his scythe through a wide field of wheat. He has traded one battlefield for another. The war may be over, but the work of harvest is its own battle -- requiring strength, endurance and long hours. The crop won't wait. It has to be brought in.
Of course, that harvest looks very different today. In Bruegel's world, it took entire villages. In Homer's world, it took the unrelenting swing of a scythe. But if you drive through Kansas or Nebraska today, you'll see massive John Deere combines sweeping across 350 or more acres in a 12-hour day, with the driver sitting in an air-conditioned cabin! What once required dozens of workers over many days now takes a single operator in a machine the size of a house.
The methods have changed. But the truth has not. The harvest is always urgent. The crop will not wait forever. And when Jesus looked out at the crowds described in today's reading from Matthew's gospel, he didn't see scenery. He didn't see statistics. He saw a harvest -- vast, ripe, ready. "The harvest is plentiful," he said, "but the laborers are few."
Matthew tells us that when Jesus looked at the crowds, he "had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." This is where the harvest begins. It doesn't start with numbers or strategies. It starts with Jesus' eyes and Jesus' heart. He looks at people -- tired, confused, wandering -- and he aches for them. His call for more workers is motivated by the emotions churning in his heart. His love for the people requires that he ask for more laborers.
And note this word "compassion." In the Greek, it comes from a word that means a gut-level stirring, a movement in the bowels. This isn't mild sympathy. It is deep, visceral, almost physical. The English word comes from the Latin, compassio, a noun formed from the perfect passive participle of the verb compati, meaning "to suffer with" (com + passio). Jesus looks at the people and feels it in his body and immediately has empathic and sympathetic pain. So, when we talk about compassion, we're not talking about an optional sentiment -- it is the driving force of mission and without it, we're not likely to get much work done in the harvest.
We can no doubt agree that we live in a time when that compassion is desperately needed. Studies tell us loneliness is at epidemic levels. So many around us are "harassed and helpless," unsure where to turn for guidance, love or hope. If we had eyes like Jesus, we would see what he saw: not simply crowded sidewalks or full classrooms, but sheep without a shepherd. And if we had hearts like Jesus, we would feel what he felt. We'd be bent over with that deep ache of compassion that refuses to look away.
Compassion alone isn't the whole picture. What Jesus is looking at is a harvest so vast it could never be gathered by just one person. "The harvest is plentiful," he says. That's the good news. The surprising news. The challenge isn't the size of the harvest. It's the scarcity of workers.
And this is important to hear: the harvest is not some future event. It's not a distant hope. Jesus does not say, "The harvest will be plentiful someday." He says, "The harvest is plentiful." Right now. The only question is whether the workers afflicted with a metaphorical post-COVID reluctance to work will be moved with compassion. Can the church amass a labor force that matches the need?
And here's the irony. When Jesus does send workers, he doesn't start with the highly trained or the spiritually elite. He calls 12 men -- ordinary men, flawed men, men whose names we still know because of the unlikely mission entrusted to them. Matthew lists them: "First, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him."
Look at this group. Simon Peter was impulsive, bold one moment and cowardly the next, quick to speak and quick to stumble. His brother Andrew was quieter, often in the background, known more for bringing others to Jesus than for leading himself. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, earned the nickname "sons of thunder" -- hot-tempered, ambitious, ready to call down fire on their enemies.
Then there is Philip, who would later struggle to grasp Jesus' identity, and Bartholomew (often identified with Nathanael), a man skeptical at first, asking whether anything good could come out of Nazareth. Thomas carried doubts and questions, and was the one who insisted on touching the risen Lord's wounds before he could believe.
Matthew, the tax collector, had collaborated with Rome, profiting from his own people's oppression -- he was despised by his neighbors. Then there's Simon the Zealot, a man from a radical nationalist movement sworn to overthrow Rome by violence. Imagine those two trying to share a meal: a tax collector for Rome and a revolutionary against Rome!
There was also James, the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus (sometimes called Judas, son of James), men about whom the Gospels tell us little -- almost anonymous, acting as reminders that many disciples served then, as they do today, in quiet faithfulness without recognition. And finally, Judas Iscariot, who would betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
If we were forming a gang of revolutionaries to go to the uttermost parts of the earth and turn the world upside down, this is not the coterie we'd have picked. These are not the Green Berets or Navy Seals or special operatives aided by military intelligence. These are fishermen, hotheads, skeptics, collaborators, revolutionaries, quiet unknowns and a traitor. Not one rabbi. Not one scholar. Not one political insider. By every human measure, this group was an even more fragile, dodgy and unlikely group of collaborators than was the U.S. hockey team that beat the Russians at the 1980 Winter Olympics.2 Who would have guessed that this crew would be immortalized more than a fifteen hundred years later with statues that crown the facade of St. Peter's Basilica, arguably the largest basilica in the world, and certainly the most revered.3
And yet these are the workers Jesus sends into the harvest. Because the harvest doesn't depend on perfect people. It depends on empowered people -- harvesters energized by the Spirit of God!
Why did Jesus send them? Because he was almost sick with compassion. The way we read Jesus' reaction to the suffering masses might lead us to think of compassion less as a noun than a verb.4 Because one can hardly be compassionate without also doing something!
The sacred and beating heart of Christ wasn't interested in rolling out a plan for institutional growth. He was moved by mercy for the harassed and helpless. This is why pastors, popes and theologians have noticed the link between compassion and action. Priest, professor, writer and theologian Henri Nouwen notes, "Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears."5 And Pope Francis once said, "Jesus' compassion is not a vague feeling, but a force that brings healing, life, and hope. Compassion means 'to suffer with.' It is the language of God" (emphasis added).6
When compassion stirs in us, it's often God's way of nudging us into action. FANAFI. Find a need and fill it. This is the essence of compassion. That ache in your gut, that tug on your heart -- that's often the Spirit's way of saying, "These are part of the harvest. Go to them."
So, how do we respond? The fields around us -- our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our families -- are ripe. The only question is whether we will walk by the fallen because we're too busy, don't want to get involved or too afraid, or whether we will step in with bandages, ointment and willing hands to render healing to those who are "harassed and helpless," and thereby answer the call of the Lord of the harvest. We can respond by saying, in the words of a popular worship song, "Here I am, Lord / Is it I, Lord? / I have heard You calling in the night / I will go, Lord / If You lead me / I will hold Your people in my heart."7
A hundred years ago, it took weeks to bring in 300 acres of wheat. Today, with massive machines, it takes a day. Either way, the harvest won't wait forever. The field is ready. The harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. And compassion is the combine that brings in the crop.