Wanting more to join in

Rhona Cathcart October 11, 2023 5 4

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Matthew 20: 1 (NRSVA)

‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.

‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.

The hardest day’s physical labour I have ever put in was probably when I helped some friends to bale hay.

They had been growing hay for their horses and the weather was about to turn. Rather like the landowner in Jesus’ parable my friends needed to gather willing workers as quickly as possible so they could get the job done before everything spoiled. In our case, before the rain came and everything was ‘drookit’ (completely and utterly sodden).

The landowner in the parable is happy to take on anyone, even those who couldn’t be bothered or weren’t able to get up early enough to do the full day’s work. We tend to use the parable to remind ourselves that God is more generous than we are sometimes.

Certainly as I baled hay on that baking-hot, energy-sapping day I would have been rather resentful of someone who swanned in for an hour or two and then acted as if they had every right to be as tired as I was!

But I hope I would still have welcomed them, still made the day fun for them (and it was fun, even if exhausting). I wonder sometimes if we put off some potentially willing workers in God’s fields of mission by making it seem like an onerous, or boring task.

Wouldn’t it be great if instead of being soaked by the sweat of our labours, or drenched by the tasks we haven’t enough hands to complete, we were instead ‘drookit’ with people longing to join in because we’ve been able to show them how rewarding it is to serve God’s kingdom?

PRAYER:

Generous God

You understand how tired we can be when the work is plentiful and the workers few

Yet how foolish we are to think it is all up to us,

Or that you want us to work harder and harder,

Instead you nudge us to notice how satisfying it can be to help with your harvest.

Nurture in us the camaraderie that invites others to participate, and encourages those who are already working to find joy in our shared labour.

Amen