Send Out Workers (Matthew 9:9-38)

Send Out Workers

March 1, 2026

Matthew 9:9-38

By: Pastor Mike Conner

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“Jesus continued going around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness” (9:35 CSB). Matthew gave us a nearly verbatim summary of Jesus’ ministry back in chapter 4, but there is one subtle yet significant development here at the end of chapter 9. In chapter 4, Jesus began to go throughout Galilee; now, he continues going. This is important because everywhere that he has gone in Galilee, the crowds have been waiting for him, following him, pressing in upon him.

Day after day, the people have come to him carrying the heavy burdens of their need for truth, healing, and acceptance: men with leprosy, a Roman soldier pleading for his sick slave, two demon-possessed men in the graveyards of Gadarene, a dead little girl, a woman who has bled for 12 years, two blind men. They all began as faces in the crowd, yet they were people to Jesus, people worth the gift of attention and care. It would’ve been so easy for him to stop going from town to town once he had experienced the cost of being so open and receptive to the pain of the crowd, of choosing to treat each one as a unique child of God. Yet he was willing. His love was and is always ready to say Yes. He continues going, revealing to us the steadfast commitment and compassion of God. 

Now, here’s the thing: If every person in the crowd is indeed a person to Jesus, if being an instrument of healing requires a willingness to be redirected (the leader the sick daughter) or interrupted (the bleeding woman) or imposed upon (the two blind men), then Jesus, by himself, was never going to be enough.

Now, that might sound strange. How could Jesus, the Son of God, who reconciled the world to God through his death and resurrection, not be enough? 

Yes, Jesus is the firstborn, the font, the cornerstone of a new humanity, but for his gifts to be offered in history, in every moment and in every place, Jesus needs companions. He needs those around him through whom and in whom he could extend his own life and love. And so, with a tender and fierce love for the world, he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest” (9:38).

It brought Jesus immense pleasure to share his life and ministry with others. His joy really comes through in John’s Gospel, where he says to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. …You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit.”

To be a worker in the fields of God is to be a friend of Jesus, and it’s to do what he did—what he never stops doing through those who share his Spirit. Giving away time and attention, receiving people and their mess without judgment, calling forth the truth of who they are as beloveds made in the image of God. 

One of the things I’ve learned about ministry while serving here in Pocatello is that the burdens and the joys are meant to be shared. I can’t do it on my own; none of you can do it on your own. We need one another, and we need God to raise up more workers!  This has been on my mind recently for a number of reasons.

Most of you know that our tenant daycare center, Tender Loving Care, has been struggling to make ends meet in recent years, and that things really came to a head in January. When I got the phone call that their board had voted to close the center, I was afraid and overwhelmed by the needs of everyone involved: the teachers who would be losing jobs, the families who would be losing care, the children who would be losing community, and our church, which would be losing a source of necessary income.

But luckily I’m a little wiser now than I was five years ago, and instead of sitting in that panic and anxiety by myself I started making calls, and within a few days, I had the most remarkable people coming alongside me share in the work, the work of the harvest, which, remember, is not about bringing souls in to conversion but about being sent into the crowd to be sources of divine attention and care. As of today, TLC is still open, and they’re even opening up an infant room. 

We had a parent town hall meeting on Thursday night, and I got to see someone from the United Way educate parents about the systemic challenges to childcare in Idaho, got to see several parents with grant writing experience meeting with one another for the first time. There are simply more workers in the room than there were even two months ago, and I credit that to God for raising them up. All I did was ask for them: God, if you want this to happen, if you want this center to be saved, send me the next right person, because I can’t do this on my own.

You’re going to hear later about some staffing changes at the church. About a year and a half ago, we welcomed Renzo as our new Office Manager; this month we hired a new Custodian and Caretaker; now we’re searching for a new Bookkeeper, and through each transition, I pray, “God send us the next right person to help us rise to the opportunity and privilege of working in your harvest, of sharing your grace with the world around us.”

And God has been faithful to raise up and send out the workers. Think about our 2023 process to become a Reconciling congregation, our 2024 campaign to put a new roof on our building, or the steady daily needs for leaders to offer care and education to others. Right now, we’re struggling to bring together enough adults and elders to sustainably serve our church’s young people and children, so I’m continuing to pray, “God, send workers into your harvest.” 

Because there is a harvest to be had. Kids are growing up in a scary world with failing institutions, a culture at war with itself, a planet careening toward climate disaster. Not to mention all the normal hard parts of childhood and adolescence: difficulties at school and at home, feeling powerless to protect yourself from the hardest changes, keeping alive the spark of your authentic self. We don’t have to address this need on our own; we can pray for more workers. If every face in the crowd is a unique person with a unique set of stories and needs who is worthy, in God’s eyes, of care and attention, then we must do what Jesus tells us to do and pray, “God, send out more workers!”

What would a church be like that prays that prayer over and over and over again? 

Well, first, it would be a church that leans into the world and not away from it. It would be a church rooted in the compassion of Jesus, that sees the crowd and doesn’t run away or complain or turn them away but wants to receive and help each person. It would be a church that sees the harvest not as a tally of souls to bring in and convert but as a field of potential relationships to go out and explore. You can only pray to God for more workers if you care in the first place. 

A church would also be humble. We can’t do everything alone. Praying every day for God to send out more workers would give us eyes to see the potential for partnerships with other members of our community. Because God will raise up whoever God chooses to raise up. They don’t have to look or sound or believe like us. And that humility would extend to how we see each other. We can be curious about the trajectories of service and call that each of us is on, wondering where and to whom each of us is being sent.  We don’t determine this for other people, because God is the one who sends people out, but we can anticipate with joy, and we can speak the truth of what we see in others, we can invite and we can affirm. 

So a church that prays for more workers to be sent out into God’s harvest would be a church that loves people fiercely, lives in joyful anticipation of the good works prepared for us beforehand, to borrow a phrase from Paul, and yet doesn’t grasp or control its members. I think we do a pretty good job at this. I see the joy you take in one another.

We would also be, I think, a grateful church, humbled by the power of prayer. If we pray for God to raise up workers for works of healing and love, couldn’t we flip that idea around and recognize ourselves as, at least in part, the fruit of others’ prayers? I think of this in terms of my upcoming ordination as an elder in the Methodist church. I am going to take literal vows this summer to be one who is sent out wherever God calls, but my journey is the fruit of so many other peoples’ prayers—beginning with my grandparents through pastors and youth leaders to friends and colleagues and even all of you. I’ve exercised my own freedom in my story, to both participate and resist God’s call, but maybe one way that grace flows is that someone out there looked out on a crowd of people full of sickness and fear and shame and prayed, “God, send workers into your harvest” – and here I am, and here you are.

Our lives are not our own. The prayers of the saints have sown their own seeds in us. And if God has raised us up to be workers in the harvest, then God will surely trust God to provide for us.

Disciples go out. They—we—disperse. We are sent among the people to be peacemakers, to be merciful. In John’s Gospel, Jesus actually says that we’ll do “greater works” than his (14:12 CSB), which is pretty wild if you think about it. That word “greater” might be understood a few ways, but there’s at least, I think, a sense of doing greater things by a property of multiplication. 

It is God’s harvest – the Spirit prepares, gives growth. God’s harvest needs workers, so we pray for them to be raised up and sent. And sometimes, perhaps, we recognize ourselves as the worker that someone else has prayed for, and we get to work. With that frame of mind, we can be a humble, joyful, expectant, and grateful church. And think of what can happen! 

Jesus saw Matthew sitting in his tax booth and said to him, “Follow me.” Running a tax booth on a public road would have set Matthew at odds with most members of his community. He was working the occupying empire, for Rome. Matthew was sitting in the isolation of his work, with questionable integrity. But he got up, left that situation, and walked with Jesus. And then in the very next verse we see Jessus sitting down in Matthew’s house, surrounded by tax-collectors and so-called “sinners,” having a dinner party. Matthew goes from being solitary to being communal. Matthew goes from being seated—stuck—in a booth that separates him from his neighbor to being seated—joined—at a table that creates fellowship. By the end of the day, a whole posse of tax collectors and other social pariahs had dropped in to spend time with him and with Jesus. Matthew went from being on the fringes to the very center of the gospel’s movement in the world. God raised him up and sent him out, and through him God would raise up others and send them out.

Greater by multiplication. And it can be so with us. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.