Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Trinity: Harvest – preached at the Eucharist, Sherborne Abbey, on Sunday, 25 September 2022 by The Reverend Robert Green. (Deuteronomy Ch 26: v 1 – 11; John Ch 6: v 25 – 35)
For nearly thirty years of my life August Bank Holiday Monday was always the next Monday after 1st August. It was moved in 1971 to the last Monday in August in order to space out the holidays through-out the year, but there is a reason why it was connected to 1st August as that is the feast of Lammas, or Loaf Mass. This was the occasion when the first fruits of the new harvest were milled, and the flour used to make a loaf to be offered at the Mass- hence Loaf Mass. The reason for this can be traced right back to the passage we heard read from Deuteronomy this morning: “You shall take some of the first of all the ground which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name” By making an offering of the first fruits, it was making an act of faith that the harvest would be plentiful, and that an offering be made to remind us that it is the Lord’s provision for his people. So harvest has two parts; the initial offering of the first fruits, and then the Thanksgiving when all the harvest has been gathered in, which we are doing today. All this was beautifully illustrated on my holiday recently in Sicily when we went to a farm which had a vineyard and we gathered bunches of grapes from the vines. These were then pulped and pressed to produce grape juice which we then sampled- the first fruits of the harvest! The remainder was poured into barrels to become wine.
In an agrarian society, harvest is the culmination of the year, and having spent much of my ministry in rural areas the Harvest Thanksgiving was a very meaningful occasion. I remember one service when there were 37 people at Evensong out of a total population of around 50 in the village, so when in our Gospel reading Jesus proclaims that he is “the bread of life”, not only is this a breath-taking claim, but it spoke to a society which was predominantly concerned with working on the land, either as farmers or vintners. This is followed up by an even greater claim; “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” In this verse the English translation does not do justice to the Greek original, which is very strong. It is saying that there is no possibility of either hunger or thirst, and it all revolves around this word ‘come’. Indeed our Harvest hymns echo this: “Come ye thankful people, come!” and the farmer in Deuteronomy is asked to come to the Lord with his offering, and so we come with our gifts today.
The events of these past weeks have reminded us how fragile this planet earth is. In one continent there are extensive floods, while another has drought and famine. Much of this is the consequence of plundering the earth’s resources, which has caused serious changes in our climate, and the delicate balance of creation has been thrown off course. We really need to redress this failure in stewardship of the earth’s bounty, and become less and less dependent on finite sources of energy. Even though there is still a plentiful supply of oil and gas in the world, it will eventually run out, and alternative sources will have to be found. Those alternatives are already readily available in wind, solar and tide, and have a much smaller carbon footprint. Much of these disasters are ‘man-made’, and are constant reminder that we ignore all these signs at our peril.
These are the physical facts of our living on this planet, and Jesus’s audience, having been witnesses of a miraculous feeding of 5000 people could only see this in a physical dimension, but Jesus takes this further into a spiritual understanding. Physical bread is finite, but the spiritual nourishment which he wants the people to receive is infinite. “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you”. As long as there is physical food many are satisfied, and see no need of anything more, and as the cost of food continues to rise, there is much anxiety. Now we all need food to live, and our gifts today will be going to those who are finding it difficult to feed their families; and rightly so, but are we tapping into these infinite spiritual resources? Jesus invites us to come to Him to receive spiritual nourishment. At this Eucharist we physically receive Communion in Bread and Wine, but are we receiving the spiritual nourishment that it can convey? In other words are we expecting an encounter with Jesus the Bread of life, the Bread of God which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world?