Here's another excerpt from the book I am working on. It is getting there. I would appreciate your feedback. :-D
And seeing the multitudes, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed, and downcast like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
Matthew 9:36-37
.
Picture with me the flurry of activities that marked the earthly ministry of Jesus. Matthew 9 is a good place to start. Notice his actions: he healed a paralytic; he dined with tax-gatherers and sinners; he raised a dead girl; he gave sight to two blind men; he exorcised a demon-possessed man. The nitty gritty ministry of Jesus involved the downtrodden, the outcasts, and the filth: it was a ministry that met the needs from a thousand different points. The narrative intensifies. Verse 35 tells us, “And Jesus was going about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.” Quite a day for a man on a mission for God! Did you sense the absorbing vigor of Jesus’ activities? The Divine reaching in the midst of the heady stench of human drama, the Glorious One among the wretched.
Why would Jesus go to such lengths? Why would Jesus reach out and talk to sinners, heal paralytics, raise dead girls to life, and even cast out demons? While the compelling reason is to declare the Kingdom of God, there is a deeper inspiration that kept Jesus going. “He felt compassion for them,” our Scripture tells us. Jesus deeply felt for the people around Him, and this was what motivated Him.
Compassion. If mission is the heartbeat of God, then compassion keeps it beating.
Jesus felt the needs and the desperation of the people crowding in on him – each wanting a touch, a word, a little piece of Him. They were distressed. They were downcast – like sheep without shepherd. And so Jesus gave – His power, His wisdom, Himself. It was compassion that drove Him to reach out. It took Him from place to place, and to make Himself available. Jesus saw these needy people – too many of them. He was lead to state an enigmatic declaration. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
When Jesus saw the multitude, He was moved by their situation. Compassion does that. Compassion allows us to feel the needs of others. Compassion is the ability to identify with those who are careworn, and troubled. Compassion is the ability to feel with such deep emotion others around you. It is the deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.
But what did Jesus mean when He saw the difficulty of the people and declared that there is a field ready for the harvest? In a departure from the traditional interpretation, allow me to offer an alternative reading. Jesus did not look at the plight of the harassed and the needy and considered them “harvest.” How can a helpless, beleaguered people be considered abundance? Doesn’t harvest speak of provision and comfort? Here Jesus offers Himself as the harvest. He is the field ready for the harvest – the source of provision for a needy people, the protection for those who are harassed, and the comfort for the afflicted. In an act fitting the Prince of Peace, and Counselor, Jesus selflessly offers Himself as the field ready for the people. It is as if He is saying, “I am here – I am food. I am comfort. I am healing. Bring me to the people who need and who cry out for relief.”
As the field teeming with ripe provision, Jesus is saying He is ready to be harvested and distributed to those who go hungry in the night. He is the golden stalks of grain warm and full. He is the Bread of Life. He is water from the well deeper than anyone realized. He will fill our storehouses to the brim. He is the food and the water that will satisfy and quench our hunger for righteousness. Compassion lead him to action, not just a helpless wringing of hands in the midst of the drought and famine.
He offers Himself. “I am harvest. Bring me to the people,” He challenges us, recipients of His provisions, we who are satisfied by the Compassionate One. Therefore, every act of mission, and evangelism is an act of compassion – not of “bringing in the sheaves, “ as a revered old hymn would put it, but rather it is the bringing of the much-needed relief and comfort from the very source Himself – the Lord of the harvest- to those who desperately need Him.
It was compassion that made Jesus go to be with the people. It was compassion that drove him to stay and be with them. It was compassion that compelled Him to offer Himself as the harvest, the answer to the deepest longing of a people who have gone too long without comfort, to a people who have felt the pangs of need for the longest time.
Comments