Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Elisha Secures the Food

³⁸ So Elisha returned to Gilgal. Now the famine was in the land, and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him. He said to his servant, put on the large pot and cook a stew for the sons of the prophets. ³⁹ One went out to the field to gather herbs, and he found a wild vine^[a] and gathered wild gourds from it and filled his cloak. Then he came and cut them into the pot of stew, but they did not know what they were. ⁴⁰ They served the men to eat, but when they ate from the stew, they cried out and said, “There is death in the pot, O man of God!” They were not able to eat it. ⁴¹ Then he said, “Bring some flour,” and he threw it into the pot. He then said, “Serve the people and let them eat.” There was nothing harmful in the pot.

³¹ In the meanwhile the disciples were asking him, saying, “Rabbi, eat something!”^{[a] 32} But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³ So the disciples began to say^[b] to one another, “No one brought him anything^[c] to eat, did they?”^{[d] 34} Jesus said to them, “My food is that I do the will of the one who sent me and complete his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months and the harvest comes’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already.^{[e] 36} The one who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, in order that the one who sows and the one who reaps can rejoice together. ³⁷ For in this instance^[f] the saying is true, ‘It is one who sows and another who reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you did not work for; others have worked, and you have entered into their work.”