Sunday Worship 27 September | Harvest

This was our harvest service. We took up offerings for the Farming Community Network and Leicester South Foodbank, and brought beautiful things from nature to add to our harvest display. Each offering was accompanied by a reading and short reflection, and a time of prayer.

Matthew 13:1-9

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

I chose this as our first reading simply because it is about a farmer. Normally when we read this story, we focus on the interpretation that Jesus later gives his disciples. The seed is the gospel and the different types of soil are the different responses to it. But today I would like us to think about the story just at face value, thinking about what it tells us about farming, which is mostly that it is hard and unpredictable work. If you want good soil you have to get the rocks and the weeds out, and even then you could lose your whole crop to a flock of hungry birds. 

Farming will have changed a fair amount since Jesus’ day, but it is still hard and unpredictable work, and it is work that for many of us goes unseen. I know there are folk here who have allotments, and so will have a greater appreciation for what is necessary in order to make things grow, but even so I think most of us would struggle to imagine the long and strenuous hours of the farmer’s working day. And yet without that work, we would not enjoy the wide variety of foods that grace our dinner tables, and so it is work we should be immensely grateful for.

Deuteronomy 24:19-22

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.

These gleaning laws are stated at least three times across Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and they are referenced elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures too, most notably in the Book of Ruth, where the title character catches the attention of her future husband while she gleans in his fields. They are not simply an agricultural practice, but an expression of the justice and compassion of God, intended to make sure that even the most vulnerable would have enough to eat. Interestingly, gleaning is making a comeback, and the picture on the screen is from an article about a group gleaning produce that would otherwise go unharvested in Cornwall, to pass on to food banks.

The gleaning laws are a reminder to us as individuals that we should not take everything we can lay our hands on, even if we think it is ours by rights, but should make sure we leave enough for others. They are also a reminder to us as a society that we need to make sure just and compassionate practice is hardwired into the way that we organise ourselves. These laws are not about private charity but about systemic kindness. Unfortunately our systems are not as kind as they ought to be, and so while we use the influence we have through our elected representatives in order to improve them, there is still a need to do what we can as individuals and through charities.

Psalm 104:10-18

He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the sky nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate—bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread that sustains their hearts. The trees of the Lord are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the junipers. The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.

Those verses are a wonderful picture of the bounty of the earth. There is space and there is water and there is food for all God’s creatures. But the best thing is that none of these are purely functional, they are abundant in beauty too. There are ravines and plains and mountains, endless variety to the landscape. The springs pour and flow, babbling and glittering as they do. The produce of the land not only sustains us, but gladdens our hearts and makes our faces shine. 

I was fortunate that during the course of my sabbatical, I made it from the west coast of Wales to the east coast of England, and from the heart of France to the islands of Scotland. I chased sunrises and sunsets. I swam in a loch that I spotted dolphins swimming in two days later. I watched a squirrel pick an apple from a tree. And I started to collect little bits of the world along the way, little reminders of beauty and delight. I turned them into watercolour sketches and cyanotypes and clay decorations. You can see some of them on screen, and I’ve brought some with me too. None of them do justice to the thing itself, but it has been a joy to surround myself with these reminders that the world is extraordinarily beautiful. 

In the book ‘if nobody speaks of remarkable things’ by Jon McGregor, two characters watch a flock of birds rise up from where they had been sitting on the roof of a house, and marvel at the way they are able to fly around one another without ever crashing. One of the characters says to the other “if nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can we say they are remarkable?” So let us remember to speak to one another of the remarkable things that are all around us.