Harvest
Preached: 4 October 1998May I speak in the name and to the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
"Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"Harvest is a wonderful time, a time of plenty and of preparation for the winter months, a cosy, comforting time. But as we contemplate harvest and plenty other pictures also spring to mind.Greed is an extremely destructive thing. Not surprising that it's one of the seven deadly sins. The Hebrews, while wandering through the desert whinged and whined to God that they had no decent food, and he provided manna. The only proviso was that they collect only as much as they required per day and kept none overnight.
"However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell."We expect a great deal in the west, we suffer from an oversupply of good things and like poor little rich kids we clamour for more, fearful that we're going to lose out on something.Because we love money, economics and our own comfort so much more than God we poison our rivers with industrial, household and farming chemicals, we disease our cattle by feeding them on the remains of their own kind, we poison and disease ourselves and other living creatures as a result of both. To restore the balance of nature, if it's possible, because sometimes it is irreversible, takes a great deal of time and effort on the part of dedicated and caring people, often unpaid volunteers. We're reaping the harvest of greed at the end of this millennium. And what do any of us do about it other than wring our hands in distress, if we even think about it?!
We have little appreciation in the West of our good fortune. We complain about too much rain or the threat of a hose-pipe ban because of our precious gardens. Water is a harvest of which there can be feast or famine. I have little experience of destructive floods such as those in Bangladesh but, having grown up in Africa I do know drought. I have childhood memories of only being able to flush the loo once a day, also, of an inch of water in the bath, shared by the whole family for washing, then saved and carefully carried out to water the vegies - and we were lucky!
My Father has spent most of his working life teaching effective land use, water conservation and farming techniques to native people. So I've been fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough, to see first hand how harvest in such a world is a matter of life or death - if harvest fails there's no corner shop to visit - you go hungry.
Honey is quite a good little earner. A Zimbabwean can, once she's scraped together £10 to build a hive, earn up to £20 - per annum, from the crop of one hive. This money usually goes towards school fees or necessary medicine which would otherwise be unaffordable. Harvest really means something to her!
This is not to suggest that we would want to, or should, live such basic lives, but we do take a great deal for granted and we should be aware of this. Everything we buy, use or do has an effect on the rest of the world. In our own country sheep farmers are having to destroy large quantities of livestock because the supermarkets won't buy them, or if they do, they're purchasing them at half the price of last year (25p for lamb! Judas' 30 pieces of silver come to mind!). The resultant products are then sold to you at greatly inflated prices. Farmers are being driven to bankruptcy daily - surely this cannot be right. They only produce the quantity they're asked to, it's suicide, quite literally, to do anything else, but market forces change the rules, and lamb is imported instead! Our national harvest turns to dust and ashes. This trend is reflected in industry too. Soon, there'll be no traditional, or industrial, harvest for us to celebrate!
Why? Because we buy as the supermarket dictates - we bow down to the great god of false economy and convenience!
No matter how we interpret the creation narrative in Genesis, whether literally or as allegory, we believe that God is the source of the world and all that is in it. To be more concerned with wealth and material possessions than with our environment, be that the environment of human relationships or that of the natural world, is sinful because it indicates that we're only looking out for ourselves during our particular life-span and maybe, at best, making some provision for the next generation of our own family.
As Christian people we have a duty to be good stewards of everything under our control and to keep a balance between economics and ecology, pennies and people.
In the Mass we bring before God the fruits of our labours for his use:
"Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life."But we bring before him, and offer to him, not only bread and wine but ourselves, and everything we do, or do not do, in his service.
This isn't a one way street, we're not just receiving the living Bread of Christ into ourselves at the Eucharist - we're being converted into a sacrament of his love in the world. We are Christ's harvest. He was born, lived, suffered and died to redeem and re-create us. He was the first-fruit of the dead - the harvest of the tomb and we are called to be like him.It's up to us to see that we leave the world no worse than we found it. Indeed, we must do more. If we're to be Christ-like in our actions, then we must imitate God, our creator, redeemer and Sanctifier. We must be creative in adapting the world of nature to our needs without endangering it, we must try to put right those aspects which others before us have spoilt. That would indeed be helping to redeem the natural world, industry and society.
We must recognize the genuine worth of allcreation: the rocks, the air, the bacteria, all living creatures great and small, and one another. God's Holy Spirit is in all creation.
We're to endeavour to be godlike in the way we act towards creation, as befits those who are made in the image of God.But, I hear you say, what can we do?
Bishop Montefiore's Environmental ten Commandments have some practical suggestions:
- "l am the Lord your God: you shall have no other gods but me. You shall not make to yourself any graven image or idol, such as Gross National Product or possessions or riches, whether in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth: you shall not bow down and serve them.
- You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain by calling on his name, but ignoring his natural law.
- Remember that you set apart one day in the week for true festivity, or you will be bored stiff in the technological age you are bringing on yourselves.
- Honour your father and mother, but do not seek to prolong their length of life so that they are miserable.
- You shall not murder future generations by your present greed.
- You shall not commit sexual sin by producing more children than is your right.
- You shall not steal the inheritance of posterity.
- You shall not bear false witness against your overseas neighbours by lying to yourself about the extent of their need.
- You shall not covet an ever-increasing standard of living.
.... Lord have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our hearts we beseech thee."In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."If we make up our minds to do so, we can help to create the environment, heal the environment, and respect the environment. This is a great and noble task set before us.... to respond to God's love with our own, to worship him, and to enjoy him forever."
