CARLTON-ON-TRENT
Sept 25, 2005
Harvest Evensong

 
Let me begin by thanking you (once again) for inviting me to come and lead, share and join in your annual Harvest Thanksgiving. As something of a ‘townie’, it’s good to come into the countryside for harvest. It’s so easy to drop into the mentality that thinks our food comes off the shelves of the supermarket, in cans and packets. This year a week’s holiday on a working farm in Cumbria served as a reminder of where our food really comes from!

There’s something more basic than that, of course. Yes, the farmer sows the seed, grows the grain and harvests it, but-
A verse from Genesis, from chapter 8 and verse 22 reminds us of God’s promise to Noah after the Flood
As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.
The round of day and night and of the seasons on which seedtime and harvest depend, will never cease. They can be utterly relied upon. There are years of good harvest and bad, but never a year with none. And God himself guarantees us of this. We may rest and trust on the One who is Creator and Sustainer.

 Our reading from Joel reminds us of the same thing- I am sending you grain, new wine and oil. Now Joel was, of course, looking prophetically down the corridor of time to that day when God will intervene in human history to establish his rule, to that time when all the results of mankind’s sin, of mankind’s abuse of the environment, of mankind’s injustice to fellow human will be set aside One of the things of that day is “I (will) send you grain, new wine and oil”.
I would like briefly to draw three points out of this.

- God’s goodness

- God’s concern with all aspects of life

- that it sometimes works out so differently

 So, firstly: God’s goodness

If we go back to basics, if we go back to Noah, we see this. God sent the flood because of human wickedness. Those whom God had created had turned their backs on him, declared ‘UDI’. In so doing they had be the come wicked. It all comes down to a word which flouts the very basis of modern Political Correctness. Sin. To just mention that little word today is to beg the question of what kind of reaction it will provoke. But sin is sin is sin. And because of sin, because of human wickedness, we read in Genesis chapter six and verse 6:
The Lord grieved that he had made man on the earth and his heart was filled with pain.
God was grieved; it hurt him. But because there was one good man, Noah, God did not wipe humanity out. He sent a flood, but kept Noah and his family safe, and then there was the sign and promise of God’s goodness- never again a flood, seedtime and harvest would follow and never fail. And God gave a sign of this promise. The rainbow. Whenever you see a rainbow, remember- God is good. Indeed, however evil we are or can be, however much we turn our backs on God, he is good. Harvest should always be a time when we remind ourselves of this fact.

Then, secondly: God’s concern with all aspects of life

God is not just concerned with what we do here in church. God, in fact, is not just concerned with the ‘spiritual’ side of life. Yes, he delights when we come into his House to offer him our worship. He is delighted when we offer up our prayers, our thanksgiving, be it here or in the privacy of our home.
But God is equally concerned with the physical side of life. He made us body, mind (or soul) and spirit. We share in – to use the long word, the Judaeo-Christian heritage. But because the church came into being in a world where Greek philosophy was very dominant, we get the idea that there is something inherently wrong, or, at least, second-rate about our bodies and that it is our spiritual side which is ‘trapped’ in the body, and which needs cultivating.

But the Hebrew outlook on life is much more holisitic. Body and spirit belong together; they are equally important. Our body is not just a second-rate part of our being, So you see, Joel’s promise of ‘grain, new wine and oil, enough to satisfy you fully’ That, of course, is not license for over-indulgence. In fact, God’s interest in every part of us, behoves us to take good care of our bodies and not to abuse them. And we can trust a good God to provide food for the body to keep in health.

 But it doesn’t always work out quite like this. So we have, lastly, to consider the result of human greed, and the question this begs- why does God ‘allow’ such things?
How often do we see on out TV screens, starving, (mainly) African children? Against this is the fact that the world produces enough food to feed its population. That, because God is good.
  But that is all thwarted by human greed. People starve because- without going into detail of the why and wherefore, the world’s food resources are very unequally distributed, unevenly shared. And in face of all this we are tempted to ask- “Well, if God is good, why does he allow this to happen?” Why doesn’t God act to stop all the world’s injustices. One part of the answer is: where would you have him stop? Because it all comes uncomfortably close to home. Am I not part of the problem? How would it affect me, how would it hurt me, if God were to act?
And the other fact is that one day God will act. God will act decisively on that day when he intervenes in human history. Let me end with some more words from Joel chapter two, words which precede this evening’s reading.

The day of the Lord [that day when God will intervene] is great. It is dreadful. Who can endure it?....”Even now”, declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart….return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate”