TRUSTING LIKE THE FARMER
Author: Fr. Mike Byron
July 07, 2019
In the past
couple of weeks, I’ve had to make a few round trips to Rochester, MN for
meetings. If you know that stretch of
Hwy 52 then you are aware of how much verdant farmland there is along the
way. What was so striking this year
though is how far behind schedule are the crops—and how in some places there
was nothing planted at all. The spring
was so cold and so wet that it delayed everything by a lot—and it was clear to
see along the highway, with corn and beans just starting to emerge from the
earth during the late weeks of June. It
was a very stark, visual reminder to me of what a risky business is farming.
To be in
that profession is necessarily to be a gambler—and probably a pray-er,
too. It’s hard to think of another way
of life that requires so much up-front investment every year, followed by
months of exposure to threats that nobody can control—the temperature, the
rain, the hail, the draught, the bugs, the weeds…
To be a
farmer requires that your eyes always be fixed on the harvest up ahead, and
what kinds of wise decisions are necessary now in order to get there. For at least a few of those farmers along Hwy
52 this year the decision was that it’s too late and not worth the risk. But for most it was a different
judgement. We’ll see. Either way, farming is an occupation that
demands that you’re either all-in or all-out by about Memorial Day. There’s no half-way kind of commitment to
growing crops, and no way to change course at this time of the summer. It’s a radical trust.
That’s the
kind of experience with which a lot of Jesus’ audiences would have been very familiar
in the land of Israel, and it is surely no accident that he appealed to images
of agriculture in describing what kinds of expectations were to be placed on
Christian discipleship. It’s a risk. It involves vulnerability to people and
events that you can’t predict in advance. And it requires a total and absolute “yes” right now if you are going to
be a part of it. You can’t wait until
July to see how things are working out. Courage and wisdom are both required right up front. There’s no other way.
Today’s
gospel of Luke finds Jesus making that very clear. He is sending 72 messengers out ahead of him
to prepare for his arrival in towns all over the country. But he does not sugar-coat any of his
instructions. He warns the disciples
that the journey will be difficult. Some
places will welcome them. Others will
not. The harvest is great, but the
workers are few. Which means there’s a
lot of work to do. And you don’t know in
advance where the journey will take you—into whose homes, around what dinner
tables, amid what disturbing or threatening situations. Into what astonishing, unexpected
rewards…even amid trials.
And yet at
the same time his words are reassuring. He tells his followers that it is necessary to journey with an
exceptional degree of trust, deliberately not arming yourself for every
possible danger that could arise. Yes,
we can feel as lambs among wolves—but still, don’t worry about money or
provisions or shoes or companions or the future. Really? Yes!
At least
farmers can buy crop insurance. Jesus is
offering nothing like that—yet he is promising that we will be OK if we stay
near him and his mission.
So the great
question and challenge and consolation for us today is: Is Jesus enough? Not Jesus and provisions and a 401k and
health insurance…But just Jesus? It’s a
pretty stark offer, but our Lord is assuring us that it is trustworthy—and
necessary.
So what does
all that mean when we get out of bed in the morning? It means exactly what it meant for those 1st 72 preachers: It means proclaiming that
the kingdom of God is at hand—through our words and our way of life. It means speaking and acting as if God truly
is the single, reliable source of our hope—which means saying a very loud NO to
all of those other pretenders, like wealth and power and glamour and militarism
and popularity polls and violence and fear and instant gratifications of all
kinds. As in Jesus’ day, we will
encounter some communities who will be elated and liberated to hear about that,
and some others that will be terrified to know of it. He has told us not to waste our time with the
terrified ones. Shake the dust and move
on. Trust with all—in kind of trust,
like the farmer. The harvest will
come…if we can hang on for the ride.
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