Harvest Sunday - Year C

Deuteronomy 26.1-11; Psalm 100; Revelation 14.14-18; John 6.25-35)

Harvest is the feast of abundance. It is a celebration of what our good earth produces, what sustains us and all beings in life; it prompts us to give thanks for the most elemental needs of food and clothing, needs that we can take for granted. Harvest is the feast of abundance, because the earth produces, year after year.

It is no doubt easy for that abundance, that process of production, to be romanticised. For our Harvest celebrations to wax lyrical about the fat of the land, and the fruit of fields, whilst few of us are involved in the hard graft of Harvest, or engaging with the questions of how we regenerate the land to keep producing, or adapt to changes and unpredictability in our climate. It’s true, of course, that those of us who live urban lives are bound to feel a certain distance from the business of food production, and even from the very elemental aspects of creation. We are several steps away often from the growing of food stuff, the hard work, and fragility, of harvest; the sense of dependence on weather in our changing climate.

The name Harvest as the feast of abundance is not to take it lightly; harvest is not to be taken for granted. It is instead to be celebrated and cherished. for the Creator, the giver of life and fertility, to be recognised and thanked. Out of abundance the first fruits are offered. In Deuteronomy we heard the injunction on the people when they come into the land, into the place that will feed and provide them, that they are not to take it for granted. The first fruits are offered in a way that explicitly links that abundance back to the hard times, to their previous life of oppression and slavery; and to the mighty acts of God which liberated and brought them into the present abundance. It is a text that imagines what it is like to move from insecurity to security, displacement to home, fear of shortage to rejoicing in abundance. It is important to note too that in the verses immediately following our first reading this morning, the people of God are called to set aside a portion of their harvest for those at risk of marginalisation, at risk of not sharing in the abundance: orphans, widows and those from other countries living amongst them are all named as needing the fruit of the land to be shared with them. This offering to those in need is explicitly linked to the abundance that have received and celebrate.

It is therefore appropriate to say that Harvest is the feast of abundance. But I don’t think it is just our urban lifestyles that mean that we might find that characterisation hard to relate to. We don’t feel surrounded by abundance. Despite the wealth of produce on our supermarket shelves; the incredible technology easily and accessibly available to so many of us now; despite that abundance, our collective conversation and sense seems to be of a world of increasing scarcity. We worry that the next generation’s lives will be harsher than our own; that abundance is giving way to scarcity. The reality of climate change seems so grim in its implications, that it’s easier to ignore it, or blatantly deny it, claim it to be a hoax. A true celebration of the earth as abundant, as providing all that we collectively need, feels very distant to where we are. Scarcity, rather than abundance, seems to be the dominant fact of our times, and that opens the door to our fears that there is not enough to go around; that life, rather than a celebration of abundance, is a battle for scarce resources. The orphan and the widow and the alien are not see as those to be cared for out of our abundance, but as those whose need threatens to overwhelm us. When scarcity, rather than abundance shapes our common life, then fear, always the opposite of faith in Jesus’ teaching, begins to shape us, shape our ways of relating to each other; to the stranger and those in need. Scarcity makes for fear to dominate our thinking and acting. Fear flows from scarcity; faith is rooted in a sense of abundance, of God’s grace and generosity being the most fundamental reality that there is. And so our Harvest celebration threatens to ring hollow in our threatened and threatening times.

Jesus said, ‘The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

At the heart of our Harvest celebration, as every Sunday, is the Bread of life offered to us all. The bread of life which gives life, in all its abundance, to the world. That small wafer of bread, fruit of the earth and work of human hands as it may be, placed in each outstretched pair of hands, that wafer is not literally going to feed the world. It will not meet the seemingly overwhelming physical needs of so many, but it can, and does, feed our faith. The faith that begins to address our fears and reframes the world, nourishing our faith. We gather around the altar, around that bread of life, in our common humanity, and need. To discover again what it is that we truly need. The bread of life reminds us that faith flows from a sense of God’s abundance; our collective thanksgiving gives voice to the fact that the world, in all its fragile beauty, is a gift that can nourish and sustain life for all. We do not need to act in ways shaped by our fears, fighting over the scraps in a word of scarcity. We are people of faith, fed by the bread of life, to be the Body of Christ.

The needs are real. Our fears – particularly in the light of climate change – are all too real. Harvest asks us to deepen our faith to meet the challenge. A faith rooted in God’s abundance, generosity and love. For that is what finally matters.

A prayer from Janet Morley:
God our creator,
You have made us one with this earth,
To tend it and to bring forth fruit;
May we so respect and cherish all that has life from you,
That we may share in the labour of all creation
To give birth to your hidden glory;
Through Jesus Christ. Amen.