Messiah Lutheran Church

Third Sunday after Pentecost

June 14, 2026

Plentiful Harvest
 

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks of the church’s mission with images drawn from daily life. The harvest is already plentiful, he says, but laborers are needed for work in the fields of daily life. What are we to do? We are to do that to which our worship invites us: Let our conversation be shaped by the good news, extend Christ’s peace wherever we find ourselves, and share our bread with the hungry.

Moses tells the Israelites that they are called to be a priestly kingdom and a holy people. Jesus sends out the disciples as laborers into the harvest. In baptism we too are anointed for ministry, sharing God’s compassion with our needy world. From the Lord’s table we go forth to proclaim the good news, to heal the sick, and to share our bread with the hungry.

Comments from the Cloud of Witnesses

You are like stones of a temple of the Father, prepared for the building of God the Father, hoisted up on high by the crane of Jesus Christ, that is, the cross, using the Holy Spirit for a rope. Your faith is your windlass, and love is the road that leads up to God. So you are all traveling companions, carrying God and temple, and Christ and your sacred things, and being fully arrayed in the commands of Jesus Christ. Pray constantly for others. Permit them to be instructed by you, at least through your deeds. To their anger, be meek; to their boasts, be humble; to their abuse, utter your prayers; to their error, be steadfast in faith; to their savagery, be gentle. Let us be zealous to imitate the Lord, so that no plant of the devil may be found in you, but with all purity and sobriety you may remain in union with Jesus Christ, in both flesh and spirit.

—Ignatius of Antioch

[Ignatius, in The Apostolic Fathers: An American Translation, ed. Edgar J. Goodspeed (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 209-210.]