Messy Harvest Talk 5.10.14 Rectory Farm
Harvest is an exciting time of year. Christmas is just around the corner (11.5 weeks to go, not long now!), autumn is well and truly on the way, the nights are drawing in and so on. And today we have an opportunity to stop and give thanks to God, and to one another, for all the things we have, that He has provided for us. We live in an unfair world, where some have more than others, but if your family has more than £140 every month, you are in the richest 15% in the world. That’s worth thinking about. We, all of us, can often wish we had more, nicer food and drink, a bigger house, more stuff. Most of us know people who have more than us. It’s easy to be jealous.
When we realize that the harvest has been plentiful for most of us, we have two choices: we can keep everything for ourselves, trying to build up our stocks and stores so that we are never short, and in fact end up with more than we know what to do with, or we can do as God asks us to in Leviticus 23:22, and share some of our harvest with those around us who are in need, or who have no way of getting food themselves. That’s why, as a Church, we support Foodbank. Foodbank gives food and vital emergency supplies to people who have no other way of feeding themselves. It’s easy to think “they’re poor, why should I help them?”, but most of the people I meet at Foodbank didn’t start off as poor. Either they made bad choices, mistakes, or other people hurt them or made bad choices for them, and so they ended up in a difficult situation. We all make mistakes. It could happen to any of us. I would hope that if I was the one to make the mistakes, or someone hurt me so much that I had no way of getting food, there would be people who would be kind enough to share something of what they had with me. It would be sad if they wouldn’t.
There’s a verse in Psalm 67 which talks about the harvest as the Earth’s exuberance, or its excitement. When we get to the time of harvest, when food is gathered in from the fields and stored to feed us in the coming months, the Earth isn’t just doing what it does naturally, or its duty, it is overflowing with excitement to share what it has been growing with us. More than that, I think it shows God’s love and care for us. We are precious to Him, He loves us so much that Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. He died for us, and rose again, like a plant growing again after it has been pruned. We need to eat and drink. We need to share our food and our drink. Jesus said that his food was to do the will of His Father. The will of the Father is that we would love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, with everything we have, and love ourselves, and love those around us. As we do that with this harvest, as we thank God for those who provided it for us, let’s also thank Him that He is always with us, and live together, working out what it means to love Him, love ourselves and love one another.