“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”[1]

Jesus gives instructions to his followers in today’s Gospel. And each of their names is listed: “Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.”[2] We must be careful, here …

Receiving instructions from the Lord can be hazardous to our spirituality when we mistake Jesus’s words to be meant for individuals. When we interpret the message of Christ only through the autonomy and separateness of individuals, we miss so much.

Whenever we read from the bible about sin and salvation especially, we may easily be tempted to make it all about me and Jesus; it’s up to me to make it right, to do the job. We read these sacred texts, admittedly, from our individual point of view.

A month or so ago, the confirmation class planted gladiolus bulbs in the ‘Faith Garden’, as we call it. On that day when the young teenagers put the flower bulbs into the ground and covered it with earth, we prayed, gave thanks for the gift of the earth, and blessed our act.

It also poured rain that day. So, we were pretty hopeful that those bulbs would take and grow.

But until a couple days ago it has not rained a drop. In fact, wildfires across Canada have burned to date an area larger than the entire land mass of Costa Rica. It has been dry, to say the least. If anything in our garden was to grow, let alone survive, someone would have to water it regularly.

I live a 45-minute drive from the church property and when I am in the city I normally don’t think of watering a garden as part of my work schedule. It struck me just recently that those bulbs may not have received a drop of water since the day we planted them.

And I despaired. I was catastrophizing: What a failure! What a poor showing if the confirmation class of kids from Ottawa would see that their flowers, dedicated to their faithful growth, not only didn’t grow but died in the ground.

When I took a walk to the garden the other day, however, I was shocked to see several of the bulbs bursting out of the ground. How did that happen? I learned that over the past month, other members of the church regularly went to the garden to water it.

If it were up to me alone, faith wouldn’t happen. If it were up to us, individually, to make it right, to grow in trust and faith and joy in the Lord, it can’t happen. The truth is we are connected one to each other in the bond of love, grace, and presence of God.

We often approach our life of faith, our daily practice of faith, however that looks like, as a solitary act, something we do by ourselves, alone. From the outside, that’s what one may see: I’m praying. I’m visiting others. I’m donating money. I’m doing this by myself. And it’s on me to make any good from it.

But Jesus addresses his disciples as a group. It’s the second person, plural, that is implied: “You”. And, Paul writes to churches, not to individual members of that church. Whether he is writing to the Thessalonians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, Corinthians or Romans, Paul addresses the community as a whole. And he writes in his letter to the Corinthians that we are the “Body of Christ”[3] with many parts serving a larger purpose.

It is the body that is the focus, and all that we do is for the “common good”.[4] Collectively we take responsibility for our faith.

Notice in the Epistle reading for today from Romans, Paul doesn’t use one singular pronoun. All the pronouns are plural: “us”, “we”, “our”.[5] We are in it together.

The gift of God’s grace and the love of God poured into our hearts is much greater than all our sins combined. The gift of God’s grace places us all on a level playing field. There are no superheroes – some better than others – in the land of God’s love, mercy and grace for all people. We are truly in it together.

For six years in a row, including the pandemic years, Finland has ranked No. 1 as the happiest country in the world.[6] There’s a beautiful concept expressed in the Finnish language. Talkoot is an old Finnish word that doesn’t have a one-word equivalent in English. Talkoot basically means: “working together to do something that one would not be able to do alone.”[7]

In agricultural times when someone had a big project at their farm, such as building a barn roof, they’d hold a talkoot. Here in Canada we’ve perhaps witnessed the Old Order Mennonites do a similar thing with a ‘barn-raising’. Neighbours gather voluntarily and put in a day’s work to help, then celebrate with a festive meal.

This kind of culture extends to why, for example, Finnish people often feel positive about their civic duties and helping the wider society by sacrificing their private comforts and desires of the moment. “They see it as essential for the good of the whole.”[8] Our faith is not about ‘what’s in it for me’ culture but rather, ‘how can I be part of the solution for the greater good’?

Paul uses the image of ‘pouring’[9] to describe how much we have to give. Not a trickle. Not a drop. When we’re in it together, we experience I believe the depth of grace. Just like the Faith garden receives an abundance of water from members who water it regularly and an abundance of rain, like it did just a few days ago when it poured, the grace and love of God has been poured into our hearts. Therein lies a deep reservoir of grace and love for the good of all.

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[1] Matthew 9:37-38

[2] Matthew 10:2-4

[3] 1 Corinthians 12

[4] 1 Corinthians 12:7

[5] Romans 5:1-8

[6] http://worldhappiness.report

[7] From the world’s happiest country

[8] Ibid.

[9] Romans 5:5