Sermon Archive
Harvest Thanksgiving
Sermon preached by Donald Reid at Holy Communion on 2 October 2005, Creationtide Harvest Festival
Deuteronomy 8:10-18 ; John 6:25-35
During all the discussions that went on around the time of the Make Poverty History events in July someone - I forget who – reported on a conversation they’d had with a woman (a mother of a family) in a developing country, to whom they had explained that in Britain every household had as much water as it needed simply by turning on a tap. The woman was astonished to hear this, and exclaimed “If that is the case, then in your country everyone must be very happy indeed”.
In this world, some people really do still live in the desert, in the place of exile, where daily living is a struggle, as the people of Israel did before they came to the promised land; and we here live, by comparison, in a land truly flowing with “milk and honey”, in that very promised land.
That suggests we are much blessed by God; and that woman assumed we are therefore ‘very happy’ here. Are we? It seems more the case, as the Old Testament writer warns in today’s lesson, we have so settled down in our abundant land, have built fine houses and have watched our affluence increase and our goods multiply, that our hearts have become proud and we have forgotten God, the giver of these gifts. And, as the writer also points out, we have the tendency to praise ourselves, not God, for this abundance: “Our power and strength …. have produced this wealth for us”….and, by comparison we judge poorer societies as feckless, their poverty must be their fault.
So there is an both arrogance and a lack of thankfulness in our societies, for all the gifts that make us so comfortable. And consequently, no, we are not happy for how can we be happy – which is a graced state the human spirit can attain, but not when it is choked by arrogance and lack of thankfulness.
Therefore we are here at this eucharist – the word means ‘thanksgiving’ – have something important to say to our society in its relationship to things, to its superabundance of things, to its affluence. Don’t tell me the church is irrelevant – in a society so cut off from the land and the earth, from creation – we have more relevance than ever before, arguably. So what can we say?
Well about human arrogance, we can recall the stories in Genesis giving an account of creation to put humankind in its place. People commonly assume that on the 6th day – the final day - of Creation, when Genesis tells us that God made human beings in his image and likeness – that that was all that happened on that day. But look at the text and you see that on that same 6th day of creation, God made living creatures of all kinds, wild animals of all sorts and creatures that move on the ground. So even though we are the pinnacle of Creation, nevertheless we shared a day with the animals and are not so exalted above them as to merit a unique day of creation just for us.
Also we forget that we come not only from God, being made in God’s image and likeness – but also from the dust, from the earth, the soil, the humus. Human beings are then a bridge between the earth…and the earthiness of the earth, the stuff of creation ..and heaven, if you like. Both are of God, and if Genesis tells us anything, the whole created order is a manifestation of God’s goodness and generosity and personality. But human beings are the ones – unlike the animals – who are meant to be able to see this, to see God behind everything, to see the world as a sacrament; this outward and visible stuff as signifying an inward and invisible reality. God.
But if truth be told, we have been more animal than human, we have consumed the earth not just according to our needs, as the animals do, but according to our greed, a very human vice. And in our industrialised societies we have lost the closeness to creation to be awed by it and have instead come to see creation as a supermarket from which we take what we want, with no thought for future - or for the giver of all these things. God.
In the Gospel we hear Jesus remarking that people flocked to him in the desert because they’d heard about feeding miracles where bread had been multiplied and distributed. So people were coming for the bread, with not a thought for the giver of the bread.
These are all ways of saying we have de-spiritualised the material order. We no longer see God in it. And it’s hard to see God in a tin of chopped tomatoes or a pizza. But God is there. Even these mundane things, if we but remembered it, have a meaning beyond themselves.
This is what people label as “materialism” – and I know what they mean – but I think that’s the wrong word; because it leads to us seeing the material world as ‘not God’. This is part of the problem of seeing creation as a supermarket, as a superquarry from which we extract what we want, as stuff which is not God, therefore not valuable, to be possessed, used and abused, discarded.
This is a totally unChristian attitude to creation. In fact, if anything, shouldn’t Christians be the true materialists? The ones who understand that the creation is a gift of God, holy, to be revered and valued – that we as the bridge between the earth and heaven, should hold the two together, giving thanks to the creator for his gifts and valuing and appreciating every thing.
Two points to conclude?
First; it would help us individually and collectively if at this weekly thanksgiving which we call the eucharist – we simply did that…that is to say, give thanks. For things. So that’s my suggestion number one to write on a leaf to put on this tree. Resolve, every week, or every time you pray, to think of one or two things to give thanks for, to God. Chopped tomatoes. Pizza. Flowers. Tap water. That would be a good discipline and a good way of making worship useful and practical to think each time of some things to give thanks for.
And this might help us open our eyes to see these things around us. Easy perhaps to see God in a sunset, or a wildflower or a grain of sand. But what about more everyday things. We need, in short, to recover a liturgical way of looking at the world. I don’t mean that we should sing hymns at the bus stop – not unless you want to be locked up. No I mean that we should learn to see the giver behind the gifts, and offer thanks. So let’s remember all the things here, in liturgy, which we forget even though they’re staring us in the face. Think of our core rituals – baptism, confirmation, eucharist, marriage, anointing – somehow we don’t see things indispensable to those rituals – water, fire, bread, wine, oil, human flesh. This is the flip side of de-spiritualising creation; we have also de-materialised our worship, or over-spiritualised it.
The eucharist, for example, has deep symbolic meanings. But it is also a meal and in the early church it was a meal at which all – including the poor – were fed. A parable of community which we lose at our peril.
So we need to recover a worshipful, liturgical, thankful way of looking at the world.
Lastly, the church has things to say about sacrifice – not just in the sense of making things holy, which I’ve covered, but also in the more common sense of giving up things.
Sometimes the environmental debate seems to be about acknowledging that things are running out – oil, gas, whatever – and that we need to manage these things to make them last longer, or find substitutes to keep our rates of economic growth. But economic growth is not the only form of human growth: indeed perhaps an obsession with wealth impedes some forms of spiritual and social development.
Let’s face it: we do not need everything we have to live abundantly. Indeed perhaps the more we have the more cluttered our spirits become. That’s a general truth but perhaps we are also at a juncture in human history where we will be forced to face certain realities – that we cannot always be growing our economies, and that we may have to be content with what we have, or less. So sacrifice. Not a popular idea. Let’s talk then about living more simply.
This is what the Sabbath day or the time of Lent or the discipline of fasting are about. To show that we are not just animals consuming the world, but creatures who can stop and reflect and know what it is we need and therefore what it is that is truly of value; and creatures who can take care of the world, and anticipate the future.
So my second leaf is an attempt to suggest how I might live more simply, in ways less costly to the earth. If we all do this, it will be significant, Fasting, like communion, is meant to be a communal act not an individual one.
So Harvest Thanksgiving is less about the actual Harvest than about thanksgiving. Remembering our blessed state that we can turn on a tap and get as much water as we want – but some do not. And that there are generations to come who will be blessed our blighted by choices we make today. In the church, we should be the very ones conscious of our responsibilities in time and across time.
Earth be Glad: Environmental issues at St John's
Worship >> Sermons >> Sermons