Readings: Joel 2.21-27 and Matthew 6.25-33
Looking
back on it now, I had a very privileged child-hood. I grew up in the countryside of Devon and
Somerset. In the summer holidays, I
worked on a local farm, tossing hay-bales onto trailers, looking forward to the
reward of a cheeky glass of cider with the Farmer at the end of the day. In my home churches, Harvest was a time of
great abundance, with goods from fields and gardens displayed in complete
profusion all over the place.
It is
perhaps only those of us who have sweated in the fields to bring a harvest in,
who can really understand the sense of satisfaction at a job completed. In past times, the celebration of Harvest was
as much a sense of relief, as anything else.
Relief that drought had not visited the crops. Relief that there were no injuries to farm
workers, this year.
All is very
different today. Harvest now takes place
every day of the year. If we can’t grow the
food we want in England, we buy it from other parts of the world. Labourers are still needed, but mechanical
systems of picking food are taking over. No-one tosses hay onto trailers anymore. The word ‘Harvest’ just doesn’t have the
resonance that it once had.
And yet, at
the same time, the world of nature has perhaps never been more in our
minds. We are far more aware than we
were in the 1970s of the interconnected nature of all living things. On our TV screens we witness the destruction
of the rain-forests, record breaking temperatures every year, and forest fires
across the globe. We watch the melting
of the glaciers, and we build our heightened sea-walls against the rising of
the seas. Ironically, there has never been
a time when we have been less connected to the land, and yet more affected by it.
The last
few decades seen a marked shift in the way we think about God’s relationship to
creation and harvest, too. In a short
while, we will sing that ‘we plough the fields and scatter’, and celebrate that
our crops are ‘fed and watered by God’s almighty hand’. But actually, I doubt that many of us really
believe that anymore. In fact, we have
far more faith in the science of weather-forecasting than we do in the idea
that God sends the rain – despite the number of parishioners who ask me to pray
for good weather when their birthday party is taking place!
Now you
might think that I’m sorry about that.
After all, isn’t this loss of faith in a God who sends rain a dangerous
thing for the church? Surely, if people
stop praying to God for rain – or any other need – the churches will empty?
Well,
perhaps they will…or at least they will empty of those people who think of God
like some kind of genie, or fairy godmother, who will grant wishes in return
for the right words. My hope and
observation, however, is that with the advance of our understanding of creation
and the harvest, we are in fact growing up.
We are moving away from the medieval God in the sky, who granted – or refused
- the wishes of his farmers. Instead, we
are beginning to glimpse the God who is the energy at the centre of all things:
the God who inspires us to use our intellects to shape and control our own
environments.
Instead of
a Father Christmas God, to whom we cry for solutions to our problems, we are
confronted instead by the actual God of Scripture. This is the God who, according to the great
Genesis myth, creates a beautiful garden and then gives it to his children with
the command that we should ‘take care of it’.
That was my message to last week’s Green Festival, at the Pallant
Centre. I argued that the stories of
religion give us a framework for action in the face of the climate catastrophe. I asked them to consider taking up a new slogan: “take care of the garden”. I suggested that, as a slogan, it has deep
religious roots for those who want to excavate them. It also contains a sense of command, of
imperative, that human beings really need to hear. “Take care of the garden!”
Our abuse
of the planet doesn’t only result in heatstroke and loss of agricultural land
to drought and fire. It also has huge
effects on the populations of countries who are worst affected by these
changes. That in turn leads to wars over resources – including Putin’s present
war to capture the grain fields of Ukraine.
Wars, and famine, lead to mass migration – as people desperately search
for hope in other places. Such people become
targets for modern-day slave-traders, who will promise migrants a land of milk
and honey, if they will “just step into this van, or cargo container” and be
transported around the world. On
arrival, these people find that there is no milk and honey, after all. Rather, they find they have been sold into
illegal slavery – as labourers, factory workers or as sex workers. Can you imagine what it feels like to leave
your home and family, promising them money to tackle their poverty, but then
finding yourself as a slave without any power over your life? The Medeille Trust exists to help such people,
when they are liberated, to get their lives back on track. And that’s why we are supporting them today.
This is the
God to whom Jesus directs us in our Gospel reading. After telling his disciples not to worry
about clothes and food and drink, he says this:
“Seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness: and all these things
will be given to you as well”. Jesus is
calling the world to hear the cry of the Kingdom: feed the hungry, welcome the stranger and set
the captive free to “take care of the garden”.
If only humanity would embrace the teaching, mythology and commands of
the Kingdom! If only justice would flow
like rivers, and the inequities of humanity were washed away. Then, as the prophet Joel says, “the threshing
floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil,
and then you will know that I am the LORD your God, and never again will my
people be shamed”. Amen.
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