Spaghetti Hoops and the Bread of Life

Texts: Deuteronomy 26.1-11 and John 6.25-35

It’s that time of year again—Harvest Festival.  The day when, across the land, vicars feel compelled to say something profound about tins of beans and packets of pasta.  I’ve even heard Harvest sermons that wax lyrical about spaghetti hoops, as though they were manna from heaven.  But perhaps that’s the point.  Perhaps the miracle is precisely that God can use something as humble as a tin of beans, or a loaf of bread, to open our eyes to the truth that all life, all sustenance, all hope comes from him.  

Our first reading from Deuteronomy reminds us how Israel were taught to bring their first fruits before the Lord.  They didn’t just stumble into worship with the leftovers of the weekly shop.  They offered the first and the best.  And then they told the story.  A wandering Aramean was my ancestor, says the text.  The point was never just the grain and the figs and the honey—it was the memory.  The reminder that this land was gift.  That freedom was gift.  That all good things are God’s doing.  

Fast forward to John’s Gospel, and the crowd chasing Jesus across the lake after the feeding of the five thousand.  They’ve seen a miracle, but they’ve misunderstood it.  They’re still fixated on bread to fill their stomachs, when Jesus is trying to point them to the bread that gives life itself.  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life,” he says.  And then he makes that bold, startling claim: “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  

So here we are, in Havant, with our tins, our apples, our loaves, trying to get our heads around what it means to bring first fruits, and what it means to seek the bread of life.  

Harvest is not about nostalgia for village greens and hay bales.  It’s about reality.  And the reality is this: we live in a world groaning under pressure.  Our farmers—like those Colin Headley works with every day—are under immense strain.  Supermarket price wars, climate instability, and government bureaucracy are squeezing them from every side.  It is no exaggeration to say that the future of British farming hangs in the balance.  If we don’t support our farmers, one day soon we may find we have no one left to bring in the harvest.  

And then there is the wider creation.  We’ve just been recognised as an Eco-Church, with a silver award—thanks to Sue Tinney and her Eco-Team.  That is no small achievement, and I want to pay tribute to them.  But silver is not gold.  And even gold is not enough.  For the task before us is nothing less than the safeguarding of the integrity of creation itself.  That’s the fifth Mark of Mission of the Church of England, and it will need to shape our five-year plan as a parish.  If we take Jesus seriously, if we pray “thy kingdom come” with integrity, then our worship must be joined to action that protects the soil, the rivers, the forests, the air that every child of God depends upon.  

And that action can be gloriously practical.  Like Kevin Edwards’ work to get solar panels onto the roofs of this church and the Pallant Centre.  Imagine the irony if the people of God, with a south-facing roof the size of a small football pitch, were still relying entirely on fossil fuels.  Imagine if, in fifty years’ time, our children looked back and said: “Why didn’t they act, when they had the chance?”  

Or take our Fairtrade commitment.  Every cup of coffee we serve, every biscuit we offer, carries a moral weight.  Because it says: “We care about the dignity of the farmer in Kenya or Colombia as much as the shopper in Havant.”  Harvest is global now.  The fruits of the earth come to us from every corner of the world, and every purchase we make is a spiritual act, a choice between justice and exploitation.  

Closer to home, we might also celebrate the work of our Churchyard Team—Colin, Mike and Jim—who labour quietly, week after week, to keep our churchyard both beautiful and biodiverse.  They remind us that creation care is not just about far-off rainforests, but about whether bees can find nectar in Havant, whether wildflowers can thrive among the gravestones, whether a child can come into this churchyard and discover that nature is not dead but alive, vibrant, buzzing.  

This is the stuff of Harvest.  Not just bringing tins to the altar, but asking the dangerous question: “What are we working for?”  Are we working for food that perishes, or for food that endures?  Are we satisfied with cheap bread that hides the cost to farmers, to soil, to rivers—or do we hunger for the bread of life, which is justice, peace, sustainability, and ultimately Christ himself?  

And maybe this is the challenge for us, right now, as we shape our parish’s five-year plan.  We could choose the easy route—balancing budgets, maintaining buildings, keeping the show on the road.  Or we could choose the harder, holier route—the route of the Five Marks of Mission.  Proclaiming the good news.  Teaching and nurturing disciples.  Loving service to our neighbours.  Transforming unjust structures.  And safeguarding creation.  These are not optional extras, like toppings on a pizza.  They are the bread of life.  They are what it means to be the people of God, in Havant, today.  

I sometimes think that Harvest is one of the most radical festivals of all.  Because it refuses to let us forget that everything is gift.  That we are dependent—on God, on the earth, on one another.  It punctures the myth of self-sufficiency that says we can survive without farmers, without ecosystems, without God.  It dares to tell us that gratitude is political, that thanksgiving is revolutionary.  

So today, let’s bring our tins and our loaves, our apples and our prayers.  Let’s give thanks for our Eco-Team, our farmers, our Fairtrade partners, our solar panel dreamers, our churchyard gardeners.  Let’s tell the story again: a wandering Aramean was my ancestor, and the Lord brought us out of slavery with a mighty hand.  And let’s hear again the promise of Christ: “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”  

And then, brothers and sisters, let’s work, together, not for food that perishes, but for the harvest that endures.  

Amen.

Flags, Fears and Forgiveness

Readings: 1 Timothy 4.12-end (advice to a young church leader) and Luke 7.36-end (a known sinful woman bathes Jesus' feet) 

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It’s hard to know what to say about the world this week.  A young man, Charlie Kirk, gunned down in cold blood.  A sea of patriots, so-called, marching under banners of fear.  NATO rattling sabres at Russia, and Russia rattling them right back.  And over here, the President of the United States has popped in to remind us that truth, in the mouths of politicians, is always (what shall we say?) a negotiable commodity.

In the middle of all that, we get these two readings.  One from Paul—or at least from someone writing in Paul’s name—encouraging young Timothy not to be cowed by the sneers of the powerful, but to set an example “in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”  And one from Luke’s Gospel, where a woman’s tears of repentance are turned into a banquet for Jesus’ feet.  Two different texts, but both with the same quiet insistence: don’t just copy the noise of the world; show another way.

Simon the Pharisee sees a woman whose reputation is mud.  He sees her sins, but not her sorrow.  He sees the scandal, but not the love.  Jesus, on the other hand, receives her gifts without condition.  He allows her to touch him, even though she’s unclean by the law.  He accepts the strange, uncomfortable truth she brings: that forgiveness is real, and love is the right response.

Now, what would happen if we practised that same discernment in the world around us?  Because if I’m honest, it’s all too easy to look at a march of 150,000 flag-waving men and women and see only the ugliness—anger, nationalism, slogans painted in blood-red letters.  And speaking of flags—have you noticed the new campaign to hang them from every lamp-post in the country?  Apparently, that’s how you prove you love your nation.  Trouble is, after a week of rain, traffic fumes, and seagull droppings, they end up looking less like proud symbols of heritage and more like dogs marking their patch.  A little territorial, a little tatty, and mostly ignored by passers-by.  If that’s patriotism, I don't recognise it. 

But Jesus insists that beneath the surface there is always a story.  Beneath the roar of the crowd there is a fear.  Beneath the anger there is often grief.  Beneath the lies there is still a human being, aching for dignity and belonging.

We don’t excuse hatred.  We don’t baptise lies.  But we try to see the person behind the posture.  Because if God’s grace could reach into the life of a woman everyone else despised, then God’s grace can reach even into a shouting mob, even into a blustering president, even into a dangerous tyrant.  And yes—even into us.

That’s where Timothy comes in.  “Let no one despise your youth,” Paul writes.  In other words: don’t let the world set the terms of the debate.  Don’t be cowed by those who are louder, older, angrier.  Your task is not to match their volume but to model a different way.  Speech, conduct, love, faith, purity.  Not power, slogans, sabres, lies.

I think that’s where our hope lies.  We can’t silence the marchers, or rewrite the manifestos of world leaders.  We can’t end war with a snap of our fingers.  But we can choose how we live, how we speak, how we listen.  We can choose whether to sneer at our enemies or to try to understand them.  And understanding, in the Kingdom of God, is often the first step to love.

Because here’s the truth: every so-called patriot who marched through the streets carries fears they can barely name.  Every politician who blusters on the world stage has wounds and insecurities that drive them.  Every general who rattles a sabre is afraid of losing control.  And every one of us, too, is a bundle of half-formed knowledge, fake truths, and borrowed fears.  Yet Christ meets us in that mess.  He lets us weep on his feet.  He receives our shabby gifts.  And he calls us to receive others the same way.

So yes, it is a dangerous world this week.  But it is also God’s world.  And the Kingdom still creeps in wherever forgiveness is offered, wherever understanding is attempted, wherever enemies are listened to instead of shouted down.  That is our vocation.  To be a people who look beneath the surface.  To be a community where the broken can bring their gifts.  To be disciples who model a better way.

That, at least, is something Charlie Kirk will never again have the chance to do.  But we who remain—we can.  We can set an example.  In speech.  In conduct.  In love.  In faith.  In purity.  Not because it’s easy.  But because that’s what Jesus did when a sinner knelt at his feet, and what Jesus still does when sinners—like us—kneel before him.  Amen.

Saints, Sausage Rolls and the Spirit of Truth

On the Feast of St Birinus

First Reading: Ecclesiastes 2.12–25

So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly; for what can the one do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done.  Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.  The wise have eyes in their head, but fools walk in darkness.  Yet I perceived that the same fate befalls all of them.  Then I said to myself, ‘What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?’ And I said to myself that this also is vanity.  For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten.  How can the wise die just like fools? So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me – and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun.  This also is vanity.  So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labours under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it.  This also is vanity and a great evil.  What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.  This also is vanity.

There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil.  This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and heaping, only to give to one who pleases God.  This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.

Gospel Reading: John 16.1–15

I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling.  They will put you out of the synagogues.  Indeed, the hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.  And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.  But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.

I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you.  But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.  Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.  And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine.  For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Sermon

It’s odd, isn’t it, when you hear words of Scripture that don’t sound terribly religious at all.  Ecclesiastes says, “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation.”  That’s not the kind of verse you’ll find printed on a Christian fridge magnet.  It’s brutally honest.  Vanity of vanities, says the preacher.  The wise man dies just like the fool.  

And yet, Ecclesiastes smuggles in something important.  If all our striving comes to dust, then perhaps the best we can do is enjoy the gifts God gives in the moment.  Eat, drink, find joy in our work.  Because joy is a gift, not a possession.

Now, compare that with Jesus in John’s Gospel.  He doesn’t sugar-coat life either.  Jesus warns his followers; “They will put you out of the synagogues.  Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think they are offering service to God.”  This is not a recruiting slogan.  You can’t imagine it printed on a poster outside St Faith’s.  “Join the Church: guaranteed persecution and probable death.”  And yet, he says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”

So Ecclesiastes and John agree: life is tough, often unfair, sometimes lethal.  But alongside that grim honesty is something else.  God gives joy in the midst of futility.  God gives the Spirit in the midst of suffering.  And that brings us to Birinus.

Birinus was not a likely candidate to win fame.  He wasn’t born into a great dynasty.  He wasn’t a general or a politician.  He was a monk from Lombardy who decided, somewhat rashly, to set off for pagan England in the 630s.  His original plan was to head north, beyond the Saxons, to convert the barbarian tribes.  But he never made it.  He landed in the South—Oxford, Berkshire, Winchester—territory of the West Saxons.  Wessex.  He stayed, he preached, and astonishingly, the West Saxon king, Cynegils, was baptised, right there in the Thames at Dorchester.  Birinus, a foreigner, convinced a king.  That’s not bad for a wandering monk with a dodgy Latin accent.

But let’s not romanticise it.  Birinus didn’t arrive in a leafy Hampshire postcard.  He arrived in a violent, fractured society, riven by warlords and superstition.  He had to navigate the politics of powerful kings, and preach a Gospel that sounded ridiculous.  One God?  A crucified Saviour?  Eternal life?  It made no sense to the Saxon mind.

And yet he persisted.  Not by clever strategy alone, and not because he had all the answers, but because the Spirit of truth was at work.  The Spirit, as Jesus promised, takes what is Christ’s and declares it to us—again and again, across cultures and centuries.

Which makes Birinus a particularly good saint for us to remember, because he reminds us that holiness doesn’t always happen where you expect.  Sometimes God plonks you in Hampshire and says, “Yes, here will do nicely.”

Picture him, if you will, turning up in modern Hampshire.  A wiry Italian monk, stepping off the train at Havant.  He looks around for the pagan Saxons he’s meant to convert, and instead finds a Greggs, a kebab shop, a Poundland and a drunk man shouting after a bus.  Would he despair?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps he’d roll up his sleeves, grab a sausage roll, and start talking to whoever would listen.

Or imagine him on a Sunday morning in Havant High Street, trying to preach the Gospel between the perfume counters of Boots and the smell of Macdonald’s burgers.  “Repent and believe the good news,” he cries, while shoppers hurry off with discount trainers, and someone asks him if he bought his walking staff at TK Maxx.  He’d be baffled, of course, but then he was baffled back in Dorchester too.  The Gospel has never been an easy sell.

And yet—somehow, against all odds, Birinus converted a king.  He baptised Cynegils in the Thames at Dorchester in Oxfordshire.  That was the beginning of the Church in Wessex.  From that watery moment flowed Winchester Cathedral, Chichester, Portsmouth, Havant.  All of it traces back to an immigrant monk who thought he was in the wrong place but turned out to be exactly where God needed him.

So don’t despise the day of small beginnings.  Birinus didn’t set out to be “the Apostle to Wessex.”  He just did the next faithful thing.  Preached, taught, baptised, trusted the Spirit.  He died, like the wise man and the fool of Ecclesiastes.  But unlike the fool, he found joy in God’s gift.  And the Spirit of truth carried his work far beyond his own life.

Which leaves us with a question.  If Birinus could find God’s purpose in seventh-century Hampshire, can we find it today?  In our discount stores, supermarkets, harbours, housing estates?  Or do we convince ourselves that God is only really at work somewhere else, in somebody else’s story?

The Spirit of truth still moves through these streets.  This is sainted space, holy ground.  The joy of God is still offered, even in our sense of futility.  Birinus is proof that even in a land of pagans—or Greggs pasties—God can plant a seed that will change a kingdom.

So let’s not look down on our own patch of ground.  We live, after all, in the land of a saint.  Amen.