Harvest Festival Sermon 2009

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts, be now and always acceptable in your sight, Dear Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Creation was brought to life by the greatest artist of the all time. God had a vision that was the Earth and this vision was borne out of love. You know that it was borne out of love by the way he created it.

Look at the complexity of the human body, which has its own beauty in the way it has many parts that come together and work in unison to make a whole human being.

Look at the beauty of nature, now we have all looked at a flower, but how often do we really take the time to really study it? Again have we looked at the way the animal kingdom exists, the symbiotic way it lives upon the land and upon other species? This co-existence and the beauty we find in creation could not I believe have been made other than with love at its conception.

Harvest is a time when we remember the abundance that God has created and how he created us to tend his creation to bring forth the harvests in their seasons. We are lucky in this country that the weather on the whole is fairly kind to us and consequently we reap a decent harvest. However, there are some areas of the world that are not so fortunate so we need to be doubly thankful for what we able to produce.

I found that the tradition of celebrating of Harvest Festival, as we know it today only began in 1843 when a Reverend Robert Hawker invited his Parishioners at a Church in Morwenstow in Cornwall to a special Thanksgiving Service. Victorian Hymns such as we plough the fields and scatter helped his idea to become popular along with the annual custom of decorating the church with the produce of the harvests. Now we find that whilst we still give thanks to God for the abundant Harvest every year in Churches today, we are encouraged to think of those who are not so fortunate and we give away collected produce to people in need as we do here for the Padley Centre.

We even think of those further away that have difficulty producing a harvest with the ease we do here in the west and I often believe that there is a lesson God is teaching in this, that we should share our resources and our know how through specific projects in the Third World, so that they are able to bring forth their own harvest. As the people of these countries often say ‘its not just food aid that they want, it’s the ability to do it for themselves that counts just as much. Every person has a certain dignity they wish to preserve.

So we are taught through scripture the importance to tend, nurture and preserve all things that God has given us. God created mankind to tend to his precious gift and everything was in place, the sun, the water, the soil and a brain that would grow with wisdom and knowledge to be able to sustain his gift.

However, he gave us another thing, freewill and that has its consequences as not everybody obeys the fundamental moral laws that God had given. Therefore, the climate, resources and certain species of animals have suffered. But then I believe God wants us to be an ever-learning race that can stand up and be accountable; taking responsibility for what happens to the gift he has given us. He needs us to unite as a human race to heal the world and enable this planet to be fruitful for generations to come.

Therefore, we need to look again at the harvest and now I am not just talking about the crops. We need to look beyond the immediate future to make sure that the harvest is sustainable, that the skills and seeds are preserved. If the farmers didn’t pass on the knowledge and skills, if they didn’t preserve their seeds and so on, then how would we sustain the perennial harvest? Just the same with our faith, we must do as the disciples did and take the seed out and plant it and keep the home fields going too, we must pass on our skills of ministering and teaching, this is not just the clergy but the lay skills too. We must pass on our enthusiasm and love for the Lord, as this is the food that the seeds need to grow and multiply. We need to nurture our faith, take it out to others, so they too can come to fruition with us and preserve the Christian faith for the future, so that God’s harvest of his people will last forever more.

Therefore, with all our senses at our disposal, to see, to hear, to taste, to smell and to touch, we can really encounter creation and through this encounter, once again realise that we are an intrinsic part of the created world and we all have the responsibility to preserve it for the love of God. Amen.