Harvest 2021
When I was in my twenties I was traveling in the Causses mountains in the
South of France and arrived in a remote village just as they were bringing in the grape harvest. There was a large open shed where the grapes were being processed – incredibly, there will still being trodden by foot! – and a buzz of energy and excitement as all the village worked together. Of course we were pressed into sampling the new wine. It was a great experience of a farming community still celebrating the harvest as they had done for hundreds of years.
Harvest festival was established in an earlier time, before people lived in cities, when lives were lived around the rhythms of the farming year. From our vantage point of the 21st century we are quite disconnected form the way in which our food is produced. We feel insulated from the sense of vulnerability of a failed harvest. We don’t feel the immediacy of the joy and excitement of the harvest being brought in.
So why celebrate harvest festival in 2021? Is it purely an exercise in nostalgia?
I for one am glad that we continue to celebrate harvest. Precisely because we are so removed from food production and our dependency on plants and animals, we need Harvest Festival to remind us, to help us re-connect with the natural world which is God’s good creation of which we are a part - and which we depend upon for our sustenance.
When I ask people how they experience God, many people say they have a deep sense of divine out walking in the countryside or working in their garden. It’s a common experience and it’s one I share. Yet it’s something we don’t talk about much, and because we usually worship inside a building our worship of God can also become disconnected from our experience of God in the natural, created world. So it’s good to worship outside sometimes as we are doing today!
God creates us as sensing beings, and the beauty of being out in nature is that there is so much for our sense to go to work on. And of course we are wonderfully placed in Whaley to enjoy the beauty of the river, hillsides, moorland, and woodland. On my bike ride on Friday I stopped to pick blackberries, then was struck by the sight of a kestrel hovering, then was assailed by the sweet smell of gorse bushes. So much sensory experience ! It’s good to simply notice what is happening around us in nature, to enjoy it – and to receive it as a gift from God. The sharp sweetness of a blackberry – the aroma of a gorse bush – the kestrel’s hovering flight. Particular, specific, remarkable. It’s good to notice that and say: this is what the grace of God looked like to me today. Noticing God in the moment to moment of life, giving thanks to God for it – this is where prayer begins.
So really looking, really noticing is important. When we are caught up in our own worries and concerns we easily become self-absorbed, and really looking, really noticing what is going on in nature takes us away from our preoccupation with ourselves.
When Jesus was encouraging his followers to re-think their priorities he told them to look. Look at the wildflowers says Jesus, – the lilies of the field, in the old translation of the bible. The dandelions and buttercups, the poppies and the cornflowers. Look at the birds, says Jesus – the swifts calling high in the air, the noisy crows, look at the finches and the nuthatch on the bird feeder.
It’s only human to worry. If we are honest all of us has worries of one kind or another. And Jesus’s first disciples were no different.
They had left their livelihoods to follow Jesus and that had very practical consequences. With no regular income, where would the next meal come from? How would they replace their clothes once they became too ragged to wear? Jesus was encouraging them to a way of radical trust in God. Where would the next meal come from? Perhaps from the hospitality of a stranger, who knows? But for Jesus, there focus was simply on trusting in God for this moment, on this day. This is how the birds and the wildflowers exist – sustained by God in the present moment. No need to worry about tomorrow.
"Give us today our daily bread." Is the prayer Jesus gives us. Jesus invites us to focus on the present day, the present moment, and not to lose ourselves planning ahead and investing for the future. The Lord's prayer names our dependency on God, for bread and forgiveness. Our most basic physical and spiritual needs are in God's hands. We pray for bread for today, and leave tomorrow's needs for tomorrow.
Jesus’s approach was a mindful focus on the present moment, and very much on living for this day.
Living by faith means living in the now, attending to the present moment, to this day, to the place and the people we are with now. The present moment is where we meet with God - it's God's gift to us. The Quakers talk about the "sacrament of the present moment."
Harvest is the season in the Church’s year when we renew our thankfulness in response to God’s love for us in creation. Let harvest be an invitation for you to re-connect with the essential goodness of life on this planet which is God’s gift to you.