Hands to
the Plough
Following Jesus forward with our eyes on the road ahead — Luke 9:57–62
Harvest Sunday has always felt, to me, like a Sunday that pulls in two directions at once. It draws our eyes backward, across the months just gone, to fields gathered and barns filled, to the faithfulness of God who provides. And then it asks a different question entirely: what comes next? What do we do with what we have received?
This morning we came together at St Paul's and St Barnabas for Harvest Sunday, and I found myself standing in front of a passage in Luke's Gospel that captures exactly that tension. Not the comfortable, picture-postcard harvest of golden fields and plenty, but a much more demanding picture of what it means to receive God's goodness and then get moving with it.
The Road to Jerusalem
Luke 9:57–62 places us on a road. Jesus is heading to Jerusalem with purpose and with pace, and along the way three different people approach him and express a desire to follow. The first comes with enormous enthusiasm: “I will follow you wherever you go.” The second is called directly, and asks to bury his father first. The third volunteers, but wants to go back to say goodbye to his family before committing. Three conversations, three responses from Jesus, and three kinds of would-be discipleship that remain as relevant today as they were on that dusty road two thousand years ago.
I began the message by drawing a simple contrast: driving a mile and walking a mile. When you drive, the journey is an interruption between two places. When you walk, you notice everything. You see the neighbours. You feel the weather. You are in the world you are moving through. Jesus was walking, and he wants followers who are present on the road with him, not people for whom faith is merely transportation between the comfortable moments of life.
“No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9:62Three Encounters, One Invitation
The first would-be follower comes running with excitement. There is nothing wrong with enthusiasm, nothing wrong with wanting to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. But Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about cheap grace and costly grace, and I think about that distinction here. This person wants the grace, the belonging, the warmth of following Jesus, without yet understanding that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Discipleship is not a lifestyle upgrade. It costs something. And when we meet Jesus with enthusiasm but without counting the cost, we are setting ourselves up, sooner or later, for disappointment.
The second person is called directly, which is striking in itself. Jesus says “Follow me.” The response is not a refusal: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” This sounds, on the surface, entirely reasonable. But what if the father is not yet dead? What if this is another way of saying: let me wait until all the obligations are discharged, let me wait until the timing is better, let me follow you when the circumstances are clearer? There is always another reason to delay. And Jesus’ response is quietly devastating: “Let the dead bury their own dead.” The kingdom calls now, not eventually.
The third person volunteers, but with a condition. “First let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus speaks of a man ploughing a field. If you look back while you are ploughing, the furrow goes crooked. You cannot make a straight line while your eyes are somewhere else. Divided attention is no attention at all. And the kingdom of God requires our gaze.
A Harvest of Gratitude, a Future of Faith
C.S. Lewis, in the Screwtape Letters, writes about how a faithful person, when tempted away from trust in God, always returns to gratitude and patience. Not a nostalgic looking back that prevents movement, but a gratitude that becomes the very fuel for going forward. That is exactly the spirit of Harvest Sunday at its best. We look back at what God has done, at the faithfulness of a God who has provided and sustained and carried us, and we allow that looking back to fill our hearts with such thankfulness that we can turn around and move forward with renewed energy and trust.
We have so much to be grateful for. The concert last Friday raised £2,510 for the church, and I want to say again what a magnificent effort that was from Joni and everyone who helped make it happen. Our 175th anniversary services just a few days ago were, I believe, genuinely extraordinary. The bishop said words of encouragement that meant a great deal, and the confirmation of Glenn, Lisa, William, Francis, Ian and Owen at Lisburn Cathedral was one of the most moving parts of a remarkable week. Kate and Maxine gave our church a harvest display of real beauty. Sam led our music with his usual grace. The choir, singing The Lord is My Shepherd and Ancient Words, set the tone for the whole morning.
But here is the thing about harvest, and about this passage in Luke: we are not called to sit among the abundance and congratulate ourselves. The field has been worked and gathered. Now there is new ground to plough. And ploughing straight furrows requires that you keep your eyes forward.
We have been through an extraordinary season as a congregation. One hundred and seventy-five years of faithful witness in this part of Belfast is something that deserves genuine, heartfelt celebration. And we celebrated it beautifully. But the anniversary is not the destination. It is a waypoint. A place of orientation, where we look back long enough to see how faithful God has been, and then we turn around and walk toward what he is calling us into next. Hands to the plough. Eyes forward. That is the shape of discipleship on Luke's road to Jerusalem, and it is the shape of ours too.
An Urgent Harvest
There is one more layer to all of this that I do not want to lose. Jesus says these words in the context of a harvest that is not about grain. Earlier in Luke 10, he tells the disciples that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, and he asks them to pray that the Lord of the harvest will send out workers into his field. The harvest of Harvest Sunday, at its deepest, is people. It is neighbours and colleagues and strangers. It is the people of this city, of York Street and the streets around us, who have not yet heard that God knows them by name and that Jesus walked a road and died and rose again for them.
That harvest does not wait. It will not wait while we find convenient timing. It will not wait while we say goodbye to our old ways of doing things. The plough is in our hands. The furrow is before us. And the Lord of the harvest is walking the road just ahead.
I am more hopeful about St Paul's and St Barnabas than I have ever been. That is not a glib thing to say. It is what I genuinely believe, because I have watched this congregation over these years, and I have seen what God has done, and I know that he is not finished with us yet. Hands to the plough. Let us go.
Wednesday Bible study continues through Acts. Thursday community drop-in is open to all. Food bank and baby basics collection ongoing.
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