Sunday Worship 28 September | Harvest

This morning was our Harvest service. As well as the reflection below, we heard from the chair of trustees at The Bridge and watched a video introducing the BMS appeal Refugees Welcome, and were invited to support both practically and prayerfully.

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

That may not be the Harvest reading you were looking for. Perhaps you were expecting more ears of wheat or lilies of the field. I'll be honest, when I first started thinking about this service, I assumed we would veer away from the lectionary into something more agricultural for a week, but I thought I would take a look at the readings anyway, and this passage from 1 Timothy really seemed to speak to the idea of Harvest as not just celebration but justice.

The passage starts with the idea of contentment, being satisfied with the essentials of food and clothing, because we came into the world with nothing and we will leave the world with nothing. We might read this as advocating for a very ascetic kind of lifestyle, which shuns all worldly pleasures. We might also read it as advocating for a kind of detachment, which does not outright reject but rather holds lightly to all things that are beyond the basic necessities. I would lean towards the second reading, because Jesus promised abundance and I believe there is great joy to be found in the stuff of this life. God did not give us the imagination and the skill to create things of beauty and enjoyment only to demand that we deny them.

For me this verse means that we should be satisfied with the things we need, not grasping after more but receiving it as blessing. I am certain we will enjoy it better if we accept it as a gift than if we strive for it and pierce ourselves with grief in the process. And while the emphasis here is on our own attitudes, the command to be generous that ended our reading tells me that we must make sure that others are satisfied with the things they need too, and are likewise able to receive more as blessing. 

This passage also warns that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. This verse probably gets misquoted as often as it gets quoted, so let's look at it carefully and start by acknowledging that it is not money but rather the love of money that is the problem. Money is a socially constructed tool, and it is in itself morally neutral. It is the way that we use it that makes it a force for good or for evil, and perhaps our greatest failing is treating it as an end in itself and loving it for its own sake, because that leads us to be protective of rather than generous with what we have. 

Which brings us back again to the question of asceticism or detachment. The truth is that we cannot utterly reject money without becoming so disconnected from society that we make ourselves useless to it, and so it is a matter of making sure our attitude is right, not loving money itself but loving the good things we can do and the people we can bless with it.

Back to the verse, and we are told that the love of money is not the root of all evil but a root of all kinds of evil. This tells us two things, that there are many ill effects that can come from the love of money, and that money is not the only cause of our problems. On the first point, we might name inequality and exploitative labour practices as some of those kinds of evil, which is perhaps a good moment to note that we are now in Fairtrade Fortnight. I won't do justice to that this morning, so we will mark it properly next week, but choosing to use our spending power with companies that put people over profits is one way in which we can root out the evil that comes from love of money.

On the second point, we might name apathy and jealousy as other roots of different kinds of evil, although those kinds are perhaps not so different in the end. All evil is in some way a desecration of the goodness of creation, an abuse of that which God has made and which we are called to love.

There's good news here though, because we are not hardwired for greed. We learn to love money because that is what the world teaches us, but we can learn differently. We choose to make money our goal because that is the aspiration the world presents us with, but we can choose differently. We can pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. We can fight the good fight of the faith and take hold of the eternal life to which we are called. We can put our hope in God who is faithful instead of wealth which is so uncertain. These are all choices that are within our power.

They are choices we need to keep making and remaking, and this Harvest celebration seems a good time to commit or recommit to them. So as we celebrate the goodness of the earth and reflect on what we do with that goodness, may we make the love of God and neighbour a root of all kinds of goodness. Amen.