#ebug alert

[stereax]

[ducksplaypuck]

y'all I—

[woodworkingpastor]

Help Wanted -- Matthew 9:35-38 -- Sunday, November 8, 2020

Scott Foster is an unassuming accountant who lives in Oak Park, IL.  In his college days, he was a goalie for Western Michigan University, a hobby he continues today as the goalie in a Chicago-area rec league.

On an otherwise ordinary evening in March 2018, his wildest dream came true. NHL teams always have an “Emergency Backup Goalie” under contract.  It’s an unpaid gig; well over 99.9% of the time the “EBUG” (as they’re called) watches the game from the press box, eating nachos.  

But on this night, things were different.  The Chicago Blackhawks regular goalie was injured, and their backup goalie got hurt right before the game started. Their third goalie was doing well, but started to cramp up in the third period.  

That’s when the call went to the press box for Scott Foster to head to the locker room and put his gear on. He entered the game in the third period to protect a 6-2 lead—which he did, blocking all seven of the shots on goal he faced.  And to make an already feel-good story even more feel-good, the savvy Blackhawk fans recognized the situation and even began chanting their Emergency Backup Goalie’s name: FOS-TER! FOS-TER!

All of creation

Over the next three Sundays we will consider what the word harvest teaches us about life in the Kingdom of God.  The sermons between today and Thanksgiving each come from a text where the word harvest appears. What will we learn about Jesus from these passages?  How does looking at Scripture in this way expand our understanding of the faith we share and cause us to grow closer to Jesus?

This is one of those Biblical passages that somewhat lends itself to being read over too quickly, without our giving it proper attention.  If we pause and look more closely, we learn that Jesus’ love for humanity comes with a sense of purpose (v. 35).  Jesus knows things because he was with people, going to where the people are.  We can be a bit too quick to say things like, “Well, of course Jesus knew things about people—he was God, he knew everything.”  We play that card too quickly; Jesus does not assume that people will come to him, even though they sometimes do. Jesus knew the sufferings of the people because he was with the people:

…teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom…

We might look at the people to whom Jesus ministered and say, “But these are not our people.  They’re not part of our group.”  Between sermons and our recent webinars on media and bias, I’ve said a lot recently about how we treat people who we think are “the other.”  It’s so easy to look at those who are “other” as some kind of adversary, as if all of life is a zero sum game where someone else gaining something inevitably means that I must lose something.

But with Jesus, we are all other, and we are all the object of his work. You and I are God’s possession, and God’s plain has always been to reclaim that which is his.  Jesus’ view of ministry is shaped by what God told the Hebrew people all the way back in Exodus 19:5, just three weeks after bringing the people from Egypt:

the whole earth is mine; you will be for me a kingdom of priests.  

There is no square inch of creation that does not belong to Jesus,

for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created (Colossians 1:16).

Jesus was not going to some foreign place to meet some people one who “other.”  He was going to that which was his to reclaim those who belong to him. SPOILER ALERT: He would later—in the Great Commission—tell us to do the same.

Going to where the people are took Jesus to where the problems are.  Towns and villages are filled with both people and problems, and Jesus ministered to both.

We need not create a false dichotomy where our view of the soul is separate from our view of the body, the spiritual separated from the physical. Jesus was concerned about both.  Jesus went about

…curing every disease and every sickness.

“Every sickness” refers to the variety of ailments that befall human beings.  It doesn’t really matter if someone was sick from a virus or if they were injured when their ox stepped on their foot. Jesus went about curing all sorts of diseases and ailments and injuries and sicknesses, simply because these things keep people from the fullness of life.  Jesus was a good shepherd and he spent time with his flock.

A compassionate shepherd

Calling Jesus a “good shepherd” loses something for modern hearers.  It is a powerful Old Testament image often used in a tragic sense: the flock has been scattered; the people are lost, and there is no one to regather them.  It was an image people understood better by living closer to farm life; they might not have raised sheep themselves, but they understood how shepherding worked.  

Many of us find it a powerful image because of the influence Psalm 23 has had on our lives

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…

What does the shepherding image convey?  The important aspect of a shepherd is that they were responsible for the whole flock. We know from the Parable of the Lost Sheep that the shepherd will leave the 99 to go in search of the one. Shepherds have responsibility for tending to the life and health, the protection and well-being, of the entire flock.  

Having a vision of care for the whole flock inevitably changes your attitude, because the shepherd knew of no “other” sheep; there was only “this” flock. They are all part of the group.  The sufferings of one impacts all.  And so rather than railing against one that is sick, or wounded, or prone to wander off, the shepherd is filled with compassion for his sheep, which is why Jesus was moved by the crowd’s harassed and helpless state.   The word for compassion in the Greek is a strong one; it refers to our bowels, which was the seat of emotion in that culture.  Today we might say that Jesus’ heart was touched.  

Help wanted

Being moved by the suffering of the sheep causes Jesus to turn to his disciples with a request, one that we might not see coming:

ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

Jesus sees a situation that touches him in the deepest place of his humanity. We have this window into Jesus that is deeply personal and emotional and human. But where we might expect (or hope) that Jesus would reply out of his divinity and just solve all the issues, he doesn’t.  He tells the disciples to put out a “Help wanted” sign.  Talk to God about this.  Workers are needed.  Even an Emergency Backup Goalie can make a difference.

Jesus asks the disciples to pray for you and I.

There is both urgency and uncertainty in this request.  It is urgent because Jesus encounters real people with real needs and real challenges; being “harassed and helpless” is common to our humanity.  What becomes of harassed people who never find peace and calm? What becomes of the wounded and sick and injured who never find healing, safety, and security? What happens to people in need of a shepherd but don’t have one?

But the request is uncertain.  Will the disciples pray? Will we pray?  

We often pray to know God’s will for our lives.  But I suspect we often overthink that one.  Jesus’ prayer request is for the Lord of the harvest to send laborers. Move people from one place to another place where there is work to do. That doesn’t mean some place far away.  Jesus himself encountered people in his normal travels; as we go on our way and about our day, we will find the same sorts of people that Jesus found.