Laborers in the Field

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Luke 10:1-9:

I have two friends who once ran a 57,000 acre ranch in southern Colorado.  Every year they allowed a company to come in and cut the alfalfa in some of their fields, and in return the company baled hay for their horses.  One of the times I was up visiting, one of the fields had recently been cut and the bales were all still sitting out in the field, when a storm moved in. So we stopped what we were doing, hopped in a truck and rushed out to the field and started bucking the hay.  Bucking hay is the act of stacking it in a truck or barn.  During a normal day it would have only been Lesli and her partner Anna there to get the bales in, but not only was I visiting, but Anna’s mother was there as well, and so there were two extra sets of hands to help get the hay out of the field.  I don’t know how many bales there actually where, but with one person driving and three of us throwing the bales into the truck, and two loads worth, with me spread eagle on top of the load to keep them from falling off on the way to the barn, we were able to get them all back to the barn before the heavy rain started.  And not only did we get the bales out of the fields, but we also got to tangle with a badger who happened to be hiding between two of the bales.  It was the only time I’ve met a badger, and I hope it is my last time, because badgers really are as mean and nasty as everyone says.

Now could Lesli and Anna have gotten the bales in by themselves?  Yes, eventually, but it would have taken them awhile, and they never would have been able to get them out of the field before it started pouring.  So having two extra people certainly helped them out immensely.  Not long ago it would have been inconceivable for two people to even consider bringing in a harvest of hay, or really most any type of harvest, by themselves.  Before Cyrus McCormick invented the mechanical reaper, and I use the term invent very loosely here, and then later marketed the first mechanical bailer, everything had to be done by hand, and therefore had to be done with a large group.  After all the hay was cut, it would be raked into hedgerows and then people using pitchforks would throw the hay up into a wagon, where another person, also with a pitchfork would position the hay in the wagon.  Harvest was the time in which the community would come together and help each other out, not just because it was the neighborly thing to do, but because they had to.  Everyone understood that you couldn’t do these things by yourself.