Lift Up Your Eyes: Wednesday of Summer Embertide (John 4:31-38)

May 27, 2026, Summer Ember Day I, Wednesday of Summer Embertide

John 4:31–38, Psalm 99, Numbers 11:16–17, 24–29, 1 Corinthians 3:5–11

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you on this first day of Summer Embertide.

Three days ago, on Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the gathered disciples in Jerusalem, with wind and fire and the proclamation of the mighty works of God in languages from across the nations. Three thousand were baptized before the day was over. The great harvest had begun. And on Sunday, Trinity Sunday, we will stand on the mountain in Galilee and hear the commission that opens the long season ahead, when Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18–20, ESV)

Now it is Wednesday. The wind has settled. The fire has become something steadier. And the Church pauses, in this week between Pentecost and Trinity, to observe the Summer Ember Days.

Ember Days are an ancient Western Christian observance that became firmly established by the fifth century and passed into the Anglican Prayer Book tradition after the Reformation, even though their actual observance has varied from place to place and generation to generation. Each set consists of Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. The BCP 2019 sets these days aside especially for “prayers for those called to Holy Orders.” That is their primary Prayer Book purpose: prayer for those whom God may be calling to serve as bishops, priests, and deacons, for those already in discernment or formation, and for those already carrying the work of ordained ministry.

Those prayers naturally widen to the whole ministry of the Church. Every baptized Christian has received gifts to be used for the building up of Christ’s Body, and Saint Peter tells us, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” (1 Peter 4:10, ESV) But Ember Days begin with Holy Orders because the Church cannot simply assume that faithful ministers will appear when she needs them. Jesus commands the Church to pray for laborers.

The BCP also says that Ember Days may be kept with fasting. That is an invitation to bodily discipline joined to prayer, not a test of spiritual seriousness. Fasting may involve reduced consumption, simpler eating, or another prudent form of abstinence appropriate to one’s circumstances, and the Prayer Book reminds us that fasting ordinarily belongs together with prayer, self-examination, and acts of mercy. Its purpose is not to impress God or anyone else. The prophet Joel gives us the right spirit when he says, “Rend your hearts and not your garments.” (Joel 2:13, ESV)

We will return at the end to how we might pray today specifically, but first the readings, because together they ask one fundamental question: who gives the ministry, who gives the growth, and who sends the laborers?

The first reading is from Numbers 11. Moses is exhausted. The people are complaining again. They want meat, they miss Egypt, and the manna is no longer enough for them. In verse 14 Moses cries to God, “I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me.” (Numbers 11:14, ESV) Moses has reached the point where he can no longer pretend that one man can carry the whole burden, and God’s answer is instructive. In verses 16 and 17 he says, “Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel... and I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone.” (Numbers 11:16–17, ESV)

God does not simply make Moses stronger and send him back alone. He raises up others and gives them a share in the Spirit’s empowering work. The burden is shared because the ministry was never meant to rest upon one man. Then something unexpected happens. Eldad and Medad were among the registered elders, but they had remained in the camp rather than going out to the tent. Yet the Spirit rested upon them there, and they began to prophesy. Joshua wanted Moses to stop them, but Moses answered with one of the most striking statements in the Pentateuch: “Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29, ESV)

Moses does not react jealously to the Spirit’s work. He does not treat divine gifting as something to be guarded around his own person. He longs for more of God’s people to know the Spirit’s empowering presence. Heard in the week after Pentecost, that longing sounds almost prophetic, because at Pentecost the Spirit is poured out upon the whole people of God in fulfillment of Joel’s promise: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.” (Joel 2:28, ESV) Pentecost does not erase every distinction of calling or office in the Church. The New Testament continues to speak of different gifts and different ministries. But the Spirit is poured out upon Christ’s people, gifts are distributed according to God’s will, and the whole Body is built up by grace.

Psalm 99 frames all of this from above. It begins with the sovereignty of God: “The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!” (Psalm 99:1, ESV) It names Moses, Aaron, and Samuel as those through whom the sovereign King chose to make his voice heard, and it closes with the declaration, “Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD our God is holy!” (Psalm 99:9, ESV) The King reigns. He calls whom he wills. He gives gifts as he wills. No minister enters the harvest simply by private decision. The harvest belongs to God, and those who serve within it are sent.

Paul makes the same point in 1 Corinthians 3. The Corinthians have begun quarreling about their ministers and attaching themselves to personalities, and Paul answers them directly: “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:5–6, ESV) He presses the point further when he says, “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:7, ESV)

Every minister is a servant. Planting matters. Watering matters. Teaching matters. Preaching matters. Pastoral care matters. But none of it creates spiritual life. God gives the growth. Paul continues, “For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:9, ESV) Ministers are fellow workers invited into the labor of the one who owns the field. They are not entrepreneurs of the Gospel, not personalities around whom the Church is meant to gather, but servants in a field that belongs to another.

Then we come to the Gospel from John 4. The disciples had gone into the Samaritan town to buy food. Jesus remained at the well and spoke with a Samaritan woman whose life was being turned toward him. When the disciples returned and urged Jesus to eat, he answered, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” (John 4:34, ESV) The disciples are thinking about food. Jesus has just sent this woman back toward Sychar, and soon the Samaritans will be coming out to see him. Against that backdrop Jesus says, “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” (John 4:35, ESV)

The harvest is not merely something that will arrive someday. It is already before them, and the question is whether there are laborers ready to enter it. Jesus then says, “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” (John 4:38, ESV) That sentence ties the whole morning together. The harvest that is white today was planted by someone else. Moses labored. The prophets labored. One generation plants, another waters, another reaps, and God gives the growth. Nobody owns the field, nobody works alone, and nobody begins the story.

So what does this mean for us on this Wednesday of Summer Embertide? It means first that the Church must pray. Jesus does not merely tell his disciples to recognize the need and work harder. He says, “Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:38, ESV) That command stands near the heart of the Ember Days. We pray especially for those discerning a call to Holy Orders, for seminarians and ordinands, for bishops, priests, and deacons already carrying the work of ministry, and for the Church that must discern, form, ordain, send, and support them. Our prayer then widens to the faithful exercise of every gift Christ has given his people. We cannot outsource this prayer to bishops, seminaries, or diocesan committees, because Jesus gives it to the whole Church: pray to the Lord of the harvest.

Ember Days also teach us to recognize what God may be doing in others. Eldad and Medad were not unappointed outsiders, but the Spirit’s work among them still surprised Joshua. He wanted it stopped. Moses wanted more. Part of the Church’s work of discernment is learning to notice gifts that God may be bringing forth in people around us. Sometimes that means saying to someone, “I see something in you. Have you ever considered whether God may be calling you to serve his Church in a particular way?” That is not ordination by congregational encouragement, and the Church must still discern carefully, but vocation often begins to become visible through the Body before the person fully understands it himself.

And then we need to hear John 4:38 not merely as a description of the apostles but as a description of ourselves: “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Every one of us entered a harvest we did not plant. Someone prayed for us before we understood what prayer was. Someone preached the Gospel to our parents or grandparents. Someone taught the faith. Someone built this congregation long before we arrived. Someone gave, served, cleaned, taught, repaired, visited, prayed, and endured so that there would be a church here when we came.

We have entered into their labor, and if God is gracious, someone else will enter into ours. The worship and prayer and service and giving that happen here now may become part of a harvest that another generation will reap. We may never see all of it, and we do not need to. Paul tells us why: we plant, we water, and God gives the growth.

So how might we pray today? The BCP 2019 provides two Collects for Ember Days on page 634, and one simple way to let both shape these three days is to pray the first in the morning and the second in the evening. That is not a Prayer Book requirement, but it is a useful devotional pattern. At the Eucharist, the BCP appoints the Preface of Apostles with either Ember Collect.

The first Collect, The Ministry of the Church, begins by addressing God as “the giver of all good gifts” and asks him to give grace to those called to office and ministry, to fill them with “the truth of your doctrine” and clothe them with “holiness of life,” so that they may serve faithfully for his glory and for the benefit of his Church. The second Collect remembers that God led his apostles to ordain ministers in every place and asks that the Church, “under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament,” and may uphold them in their work for the extension of God’s kingdom.

Notice the order of those prayers. God is the giver. God calls. God gives grace. God guides by the Holy Spirit. The Church then discerns, chooses suitable persons, ordains, and supports them. That is Ember theology in miniature. Vocation is neither self-created nor mechanically produced by the institution. God acts first, and the Church responds faithfully to what he is doing.

Beyond the Collects, the practice can remain simple. If it is prudent for you, keep some form of fast or simpler eating and allow that physical discipline to become a reminder to pray. Pray by name for anyone you know who is discerning Holy Orders. Pray for our bishop, priests, and deacons. Pray for seminarians and those in formation. Pray for congregations without clergy and for dioceses seeking faithful pastors. And ask God to examine your own calling as well. Not everyone is called to Holy Orders, but everyone belongs to Christ. What gifts has he entrusted to you? Where has he placed you? What work has he already begun around you? Are you faithfully entering the labor he has given you?

The Ember Days will return again in the autumn, and the Church will ask these questions again because we are prone to forget whose field this is and whose work we are doing. The fields are white, but the field does not belong to us. The harvest belongs to Christ, the laborers are his, and the growth comes from God. We are invited into work that began before us and will continue after us, and even our faithfulness within it is sustained by grace. So on this first day of Summer Embertide, let us ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest and to give us grace to enter faithfully into the work he has already begun.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.