Harvest
The first letter of John begins, ‘we declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…’
I’d like to begin with a little story… One day Bill went out hunting in the woods. It had been a slow day and he hadn’t found one single bear to shoot. Suddenly, he heard a noise behind him. He whirled around and saw two ferocious looking bears coming towards him. He quickly raised his rifle to his shoulder, took aim and pulled the trigger. Click.
Nothing - the rifle misfired. He reloaded and fired again Click… click… click.
Again, nothing - the gun just wasn’t working. By this time, the bears were almost on top of him.
In desperation, he threw down his rifle and ran. But the faster he ran, the closer the bears got. Finally Bill came to the edge of a cliff.
As there was nowhere to go, he dropped to his knees and began to pray.
“O Lord, I pray that you make these bears Christian bears that they will show some compassion on me.”
As Bill looked up, he was surprised to see the bears kneeling just a few feet away from him.
And as he listened, he heard one bear pray; “For what we are about to receive, May the Good Lord make us truly thankful. Amen”
Harvest Festival is a time when we give thanks to God for his goodness to us. It is a time to celebrate – to thank God for his good ness in providing the food we eat and the many other blessings which God has for us in our lives.
We live in a society where we have so much that we often take it all for granted. Yet it is important to give thanks and celebrate God’s goodness to us – and to realise how blessed we are.
But as we celebrate we must also remember our responsibilities as Christians and work for justice for all people, and share what we know of the good news of Jesus. Yesterday at the Diocesan Conference the Archbishop quoted the former United States President Bill Clinton who said, ‘When you think you have the truth you tend to impose it on others.’
As Christians we have a great truth that we celebrate at harvest time and all through the year – the truth that in Jesus we have each been set free through his death and his resurrection.
And so we must ask ourselves using the logic of Bill Clinton if we do enough to impose our views of this marvellous truth on others. From Monday to Friday of this week Helen and I had a holiday in Krakow in Poland and while we were there we visited Auschwitz – there are many observations from that trip that I will make over the coming weeks I’m sure, but just one for today – over the entrance to the camp is written in German ‘Work will set you free’.
Of course this was a lie – there was nothing that the prisoners of Auschwitz could do to set themselves free – only the end of the war could do that, but in Jesus we are celebrating the man who brings new life and new hope into all kinds of situations – good or bad… We give thanks because even in the darkest moments of our lives, Jesus is alongside us. And that is the truth we must seek to share through our words and through our actions.
Many of you will have seen the film ‘Fame’ which is a huge favourite of mine. Having already confessed that ‘Neighbours’ is about the only thing that I watch other than ‘West Wing’ and sport on the television, I have to confess now that I was also a big fan of the television off shoot from Fame, ‘The Kids from Fame’.
My justification is that it was a long time ago, and recently when I saw that the DVD of the first series had been released I did manage to resist buying it, but anyway one of the songs from the show was called ‘Life is a celebration.’ It’s a tremendous vibrant and catchy song, but this song is partly sung by the character Leroy, played by Gene Anthony Ray.
While his song talks of life being a celebration it certainly wasn’t either for the character or particularly for the actor that played him – he died in 2003 aged just 41, after a stroke, brought on, doctors say, by continued dependence on alcohol and drugs – he was also HIV positive. In the film and the television show Gene Anthony Ray had found fame himself, and he had earned a fortune, that he later wasted.
Life should have been good for him according to all of our worldly standards… but it wasn’t… And when I heard this song earlier in the week I just thought about how easy it is to speak of happiness and contentment and celebration and thanksgiving but not know anything about those things.
And I think the reason for that is that he and many other people really have nobody to thank. In our lives we need something to celebrate and we need someone to celebrate with – it may come from a marriage or a great friendship or from a child, but only from Jesus will we find an unbreakable partnership and a perfect person to thank.
Many people talk of the God shaped hole that each human being has inside them – the hole that whether they recognise it or not needs to be filled by Jesus. And as we look around at the world today and much closer to home at our own communities we can see that many people are actually looking for something. In John’s gospel Jesus spoke of how the fields were ripe for harvesting (John
And so as we think of harvest we have a number of responsibilities.
The first must be to share what we have in terms of food and resources with others – Bob Geldof this week spoke to the Labour conference and, in typical Geldof fashion, used some words which perhaps are not best shared in a pulpit, but one thing that really struck home was when he said that tonight 90% of children in Africa will go to bed hungry, really hungry, and tomorrow it will be the same, just as it was yesterday.
As Christians we have duties to be Jesus to other people – to reflect his love and his personality into a world that desperately needs him. So we must do what we can to share what we have with others – but sometimes giving physically or financially is not even enough.
And so secondly we need to be prepared to speak – some are better than others at this, but as Churches we must be prepared to take up campaigns which can make a difference to people who we will never know. Sometimes we have a temptation I think to look for results all the time when actually what we really need to do is to do what we believe is the right thing, and pray and trust that God will do the rest.
Thirdly we must thank God all the time. Reading a book recently by Philip Yancey he talks of one woman who he describes as the most prayerful he has ever met, and when he talked to her about prayer she described a relationship with God where she tried to make her whole life a prayer – she did nothing without consulting God, and received nothing without thanking God.
At harvest we give a special thanks to and for all the people that do so much to bring in food for us, but ultimately we give thanks to the God who makes these things possible – the God who actually makes all things possible.
And fourthly we need to reflect our thanks to others. Many people criticise Christians for not obviously living out their faith… one of the most obvious ways in which we can live out our faith is to show our thanks to God because we have received what John described as the ‘Word of Life.’
If we have heard, if we have seen, if we have touched Jesus then we must respond with praise and thanks to him, and lives lived out in joy – John goes on a little later (1 John 1:4,5) to say that he is writing these things so that joy may be complete – that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
This is the truth we celebrate and this is the truth that we are compelled to share, and we do that by showing some evidence in our lives that we know something and someone that people will want and need to know.
With Jesus life is indeed a celebration – knowing him is the reason we can give thanks, and knowing him is the reason that even when things seem dark or miserable or we feel lonely or afraid, we can still give thanks – thanks for food, for friendship, for fellowship, for so many things, but above all thanks for his unchanging, never ending love. AMEN
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