A SERMON FOR HARVEST FESTIVAL

Harvest Festival
Oct 31, 2004

Today we are celebrating a rather belated harvest. The harvest was in fact gathered in some months ago. However, today is the last day of summertime, so perhaps it is appropriate to think of the harvest.

We need to realize that the people of Israel in Bible times were living in a largely agricultural society. Everything depended on a good harvest. Without a good harvest, the people would go hungry. This is difficult for us to understand today, when we can buy imported food from South America, Africa and the Far East all year round, and eat fruit and vegetables out of season. But the people of Israel were dependent on the seasons. Everything was calculated in relation to the moon and stars. The sight of the full moon indicated the beginning of a new month, and the sighting of the first star in the sky indicated the beginning of the Sabbath. There were no clocks to indicate the time and no alarm clocks to wake people up in the morning. They worked while there was light and slept while it was dark. Modern men and women have lost this contact with nature by working during the hours of darkness. sometimes at the cost of insomnia and mental problems.

Many churches, even in the towns and cities, hold harvest festivals every autumn. This is understandable in an agricultural society, where a farmer’s livelihood is dependent on a successful and abundant harvest. It is God who gives the harvest, and it is God whoi deserves our thanks and praise. In fact one of the earliest promises in the Bible concerns the seasons and the harvest. In Genesis 8, immediately after the Flood, God gives this promise to Noah: ”As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” This is a promise for the whole of mankind, not just the farmers who plant the seeds and harvest the crops. Without seeds there will be no harvest, without the harvest there will be no food, without food there will be no men and women on the earth. So whether we are farmers or not, we are indebted to God’s promise of regular seasons and regular harvests.

The idea of harvest time is present throughout the Bible. The Old Testament feasts are often connected with harvest. Jesus’ parables, for instance the Parable of the Sower, are often connected with harvest, and Jesus in fact told his disciples to pray that God would send out workers into HIS harvest. ”The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest.” They understood well the need to gather in the harvest before the crops were destroyed by the autumn rains and left to rot. This is a Bible text that is often used to encourage Christians to leave for foreign lands as missionaries, but if you think about it, farmers did not leave their own land and harvest someone else’s fields, they stayed at home and harvested their own crops. The question is, then, where is God’s harvest? For some the harvest will indeed be in foreign lands, but for the majority of us the harvest is on our very doorsteps. This harvest is usually thought of as human souls, the need to save people for the Kingdom of God, and this is doubtless part of it. But we perhaps need to think of the harvest in terms of every good thing that God has prepared for us.

I love the words of the old 1662 Prayer Book: ”all other benefits of his passion”. In the communion service the liturgy refers principally to forgiveness of sins as the result of Jesus’ passion, but there may be many other things, such as reconciliation, healing, peace, edification, etc. that result from his passion, as well as many things we may have never thought of. Let us not be content with only some of the benefits: we want all the benefits of Christ’s work for us.

So when we thank God for the harvest, we think also of the spiritual harvest in the Kingdom of God. This is relevant to all of us, not just farmers and country-people.

Let us take a brief look at the biblical roots of the harvest festival.
In Leviticus 23 we read of the festival of the firstfruits. When the harvest was gathered in, the firstfruits were devoted to God. These were not just the first fruits to grow but the pick of the crop, the very best, top quality fruit, grain and vegetables. Rotten or damaged, undersized or deformed crops were not acceptable, just as the lamb was also to be without defect.The lamb, of course, leads us to think of the perfect Lamb of God sacrificed for us. So too the firstfruits represents our ”sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving”. Only the very best for God! But this also means remembering the poor and the alien. Some of the crops were to be left for the poor and needy. This is what is recorded in the book of Ruth the Moabitess, the great-grandmother of King David, who collected the leftovers of the harvest. She was both poor and an alien.

This is what we are doing in this service. We thank God that he had given us our daily bread, our daily food, and that we have enough to share with the poor and aliens. None of us are poor, we all have enough and more than enough to eat, but just across the border in Russia people are starving. So our offerings today of food and money will go to some of these poor aliens, whom most of us will never know. Just as in the biblical feast of the firstfruits, the recipient of the crops that are left in the fields were unknown, so we can help strangers with our surplus.

The Old Testament feast of the firstfruits is referred to in the New Testament, in I Corinthians, where Paul calls Jesus the ”firstfruits of the resurrection”. The Finnish Bible obscures this reference by calling Jesus the esikoinen, the ”first-born”. Jesus is, of course, the firstborn Son of God, but this is not what Paul meant here. He is referring to the firstfruits. What is God’s harvest? - a question we asked earlier. It is the resurrection from the dead. God’s harvest is to raise the dead to eternal life in the Kingdom of God. And Jesus is the firstfruits - the first example of the resurrection, but also the best, perfect and flawless example. Just as the firstfruits represented a good, abundant harvest, so the resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee of an abundant harvest. There will be many who are raised to eternal life, but how many remains in God’s hands. It is He who decides, not us. He is the judge, not we.

Jesus’ parable of the fig tree reminds us of two things about God - first, that He is a severe God. He will cut down and destroy fruitless trees, fruitless people and fruitless churches. But He is also merciful - He delays the judgment so that we have a second chance, for many of us, a third, fourth or fifth chance. And furthermore He delays His judgment in response to the prayers of his servants, the gardener in the parable.

So let us today give thanks for our food, and also pray that God will show mercy towards our families, our churches, our nations and our governments. For, as Jesus foretold, the time will come when ”the earth will be shaken” and there will be ”signs in the heavens above and on the earth below”. Before the Kingdom of God comes on earth, the very seasons and harvest-time will be shaken. Do we see signs of this at the present time? Perhaps. Let us not despair but let us commit ourselves to the mercy of our gracious God and Saviour, with whom there is no change.

Amen.