A Harvest Sermon

It is good to celebrate Harvest because it is a celebration of what the Church is all about.

If you were about to go to a foreign country the first words you would learn would probably be ‘Please, Thank you, and I’m sorry’ ‘os gwelwch yn dda, diolch, mae’n ddrwg gen i’ along with greetings like Hello and How are you? They’re basics of conversation, they help us to be understood, they make people willing to listen to us, because to use them is polite, not to use them is impolite.

We teach them to our children and encourage them to use them. And in the same way theta they’re useful in conversation when we pray, when we talk to God, and listen to Him, as we do in Church and in our lives we need to use these words in prayer. In our prayer we ask God for things, we say thank you to God for things, and we say sorry for what we’ve done wrong or haven’t done. It is important that our prayers just like our every day conversation are appropriate and polite – it helps form our character, and helps us to live out our faith.

Harvest is mostly about saying thank you to God, for the gifts of his creation, for the food we eat, for all that the earth provides As well as recognising the gift we realise that it is also our duty to share what we are given with the hungry, the poor and the need, so that all may be fed – it is no good living in a world where people go hungry – it produces enough food so that everyone can have enough to eat, so that everyone can say thank you to God for the gifts of his creation. It is up to us as the church to ensure that we live out the generosity which we receive from God in Our Lives.

This caring sharing vision of the world is what the prophet Isaiah envisions in his vision of the Kingdom of the Messiah – That’s here and now, it’s not some future hope, but rather it’s how we’re meant to be right here and now.

The celebration of harvest is not a new thing – it goes back to the central festivals of Judaism – Jesus gave thanks for the harvest – and so should we, because in giving thanks we recognise the greatness of God’s generosity, we recognise our own dependence upon God and each other, and we help to ensure a culture of thankfulness.

        In the feeding stories in the Gospels, one of which follows our second reading, Jesus thanks God and blesses the offerings of food. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist bread and wine are taken, blessed shared and given so that we the Church can carry on doing exactly what Jesus did, not because it’s nice or fuzzy or nostalgic but because he tells us to do it, and we listen to him. Christ alone can satisfy our spiritual hunger and thirst – only when we are fed by Him, the living bread which came down from heaven can we have eternal life in Him.

As the Prophet Isaiah says: ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ We see this most fully in God’s gift of His Son, to show humanity how to live and to give Himself to die and be born again, to take away our sins and to restore our relationship with God and each other. It is an act of supreme love and generosity – giving people something which they do not deserve so that they may be transformed by it into the loving generous people God longs for us to be.

The miraculous feedings and the Eucharist point to the Cross where Christ gives himself for love of us- our response should be one of generosity and service, because it matters. The Church is decorated with the fruits of the Harvest through the generosity and effort of people who want to put their faith into action – we are grateful that they have done so much to help us celebrate – to help us to say thank you to God, to recognise all that we have to be thankful for. In our saying thanks to God, let our thankfulness not be something we do here once, but rather let it form our lives so that we may be thankful at all times and in all places. May we be grateful people, loving people, sharing people, whose faith shines through all that we are or say or do, nourished by the Word of God, by the sacraments of the Church so that we may filled with God’s love and transformed by His Grace, that we too may be an offering to God, sharing our love and our faith with the world around us, putting it into practice so that it too may reap a great harvest, a harvest of souls, to the Glory of God.

Let us work to prepare for a harvest of love, of generosity, and forgiveness, sowing seeds of love in the soil of our lives, and those of others, confident in the promises of God that He may reap the harvest, that the world may be transformed to sing his praise, to rejoice in his love, and to share it with others.

 Here is the proclamation of the covenant faithfulness of God, which finds its fulfilment in Christ, As we are mindful of this we give thanks to God and let that thankfulness become a defining characteristic of our lives, overflowing into all that we are or think or do, Thus we live out our faith, we live life in all its fullness and encourage others so to do so that they may believe and give Glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.