Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” (NIV)
Jesus wanted to make a point about the harvest, but it was December or January; the harvest in Israel wasn’t until late April or early May. Perhaps Jesus was quoting the disciples (“Weren’t you just saying that there were four months to harvest…?”), or perhaps he was just bringing it up (“Wouldn’t you say that there are about four months….?”), or perhaps he was quoting a children’s proverb about the Hebrew calendar, something like Tebeth is the tenth - month; four months more, then har-vest.
It doesn’t matter which of these was the case, or something else. What matters is that Jesus wasn’t pointing at the fields at all. From the village of Sychar, Samaritans were starting to come out of their houses and shops and barns to find out what all the noise was about as the woman Jesus had spoken to told and retold the news: The man over at Jacob’s well knew my whole life story, and I’ve never met him before! Could he be the Christ? The wonder was building inside those people, and it was time to tell them more. It was time for the disciples of Jesus start learning to be more than disciples.
Disciple means “follower.” A disciple followed a teacher as we walked, going from place to place to teach or simply walking back and forth as Jesus would sometimes do beneath Solomon’s Colonnade in the temple in Jerusalem (John 10:23). But the disciples of Jesus were being trained to become apostles, as well. An apostle is not a follower. He is a messenger, sent out (Greek apostello) with a specific message or task with the authority of the sender. Jesus himself could be called an apostle; the apostle sent from God the Father to be both high priest and ultimate sacrifice (Hebrews 3:1-2). Jesus was directing his disciples to learn to carry out the same task he was performing here in Samaria: teaching and preaching repentance and forgiveness, the law and the gospel.
With fields, the sower and the reaper might both be hired men, but at harvest time they would both profit and benefit from the harvest. With the spiritual harvest, the “crop for eternal life,” the sower and reaper are often different people as well. The one who sowed the seeds of faith in these Samaritans was in part Moses, who wrote the five books that the Samaritans held to be Scripture. And Jesus sowed a greater understanding in the woman, who even now was tending some of those spiritual plants with her news. But Jesus is pushing his disciples forward to begin proclaiming the message, too.
There was profound wisdom in choosing the time and place as Jesus had. The disciples were on foreign soil, but the people spoke their language and read the same Moses. There was no chance of bumping into anyone they knew here, but it was a marvelous opportunity to practice sharing their faith. Here were people ripe for the message of the gospel.
Look around. The fields are still ripe, but now you’re the one God has put into place. It’s a simple message, but don’t forget to listen to it yourself, first: Your sins are forgiven. You’re at peace with God.
Something extra:
Psalm 20:7-8
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
8 They are brought to their knees and fall,
but we rise up and stand firm. (NIV)
In David’s time, chariots were not yet a part of every army. A Semitic race called the Hyksos had first brought chariot warfare to Egypt during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties (around 1650-1550 BC, just before the birth of Moses). The Assyrians used chariots at about that time, too. Assyrian chariots during David’s lifetime (1000 BC) were square wooden boxes on top of a single axle (usually balanced toward the rear of the box) holding a single man.
Chariot from about 1400 BC
The wheels of these early chariots only had four spokes, held just one man, and they only seem to have worked well on flat, fairly smooth ground. But they were still fearsome.
David’s army didn’t use them. In David’s last large-scale campaign against combined foreign nations, he killed seven hundred Aramean charioteers (2 Samuel 10:18). In these verses of Psalm 20, David was teaching his men to trust in God rather than in chariots. Using a tool is a fine God-pleasing thing. But we need to remember that we trust in God over that tool, whatever it is: chariots, science; reason. These things are part of God’s creation, and his creation serves us; but we serve him, today and always. He is the one in whom we trust.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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