I was living in Port-au-Prince in 2015 when Hurricane Matthew crashed into Haiti’s southern peninsula. News trickled in of the devastation, and my colleagues and I began gathering truckloads of food, medical supplies, and construction materials to send down with our team of volunteers.
“Are you going with them?” A friend asked.
“Oh no,” I said. “I am not the one you want in a disaster. I can’t lift heavy things. And I cry a lot.”
“This is true,” my friend said.
Luckily, I knew the people you do want. They were on my speed dial, always saving the day when the car broke down or the power went out. They are people who are unfailingly calm and capable. They are the ones you want in a disaster.
In next week’s Gospel,* the disciples seem to have been looking for those people, too. Go ahead and ask, Jesus tells them, perhaps sensing they were overwhelmed at the “harassed and helpless” crowds before them. “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field.” This is good news, because though 2020 is a different kind of disaster, I too am wondering who is going to come save the day. Asking God for other people to come fix things sounds like just the right level of engagement: caring, but without having to get my hands dirty.
What Jesus neglected to mention, however, is that we disciples are the harvest workers. Just one verse later, it becomes clear that the help we’ve been praying for is… us. He sends us out as healers, even the fishermen and tax collectors and people who type in Excel spreadsheets all day. He bids us go, though we are equipped with little more than the promise of the spirit’s authority and the knowledge of how our own wounds have been tended by the One who loves us.
This is not exactly what I had in mind. I’d rather keep identifying as part of that helpless crowd, terrifying though it may be. But as a disciple, I’ve been assigned a different role in this story, one I’m hesitant to embrace. It turns out that the only thing more terrifying than not being able to do anything at a time like this is being able to do something at a time like this.
What if I prayed for the harvest workers knowing I’m meant to be one? What if, instead of praying that those calm, capable, trustworthy other people will deliver us from the pandemic, the police violence, the racism – what if instead I am willing to embrace the authority to get out there and start healing?
–Erica Lloyd, Seekers Church
