Reflection for Harvest Sunday 2020

Readings at Mass:

[…] The LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you. 

Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. 

Deuteronomy 8.7-18.

Then [Jesus] told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’ 

He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. This is the word of the Lord. 

Luke 12.16-30.

Mahatma Gandhi once said that 'the earth can provide enough for humankind’s need, but not for our greed’. And Desmond Tutu that 'a person is a person because of other people’. 

The parable which opens our Gospel reading this morning is a startling and a harsh one: it’s all about human greed as opposed to need. The farmer in the parable, having been abundantly blessed by God, greedily stores up all the grain he has in barns and then praises himself (not God) for his good fortune. It’s also quite clear that he has no intention of sharing this grain, giving thanks to God for his good fortune, or even of putting it to good use: Instead he intends to keep it all for himself. The problem is that grain kept in storage can easily go off, and bad grain can make you very ill indeed, just google Ergot poisoning. Grain is for eating, and it is for sowing so that there will be harvest next year, and that those who are in need are fed. But this farmer was greedy, and hoarded it all to himself, to the detriment and hurt of others, and to his own shared humanity. He had let his greed overtake the humanity he shared with those around him, and he was the less for it. 

Creation is a gift and a blessing from God, a gift and blessing that have been entrusted to humanity (that is the message of our reading from Deuteronomy). And like all blessings it is to be shared, not hoarded. (When you are sent out at the end of Mass with God’s blessing, this is so that you might share that blessing with those whom you meet, and with creation.) [---] On the whole we here in the England have enough. Our needs are mainly met, and we do not go hungry. When things do go wrong, we have Foodbanks, hospitals, and the remnants of a social security to system to help us find out feet. 

But when we do have enough, then we are called to share from our abundance with those who do not have enough, or who have nothing at all. In essence we are called to share the blessings we have received with those who have little or nothing. Our harvest celebration is a chance to do just that, to share from the blessings of abundance of blessings we have received, so that others might too have something in their need. 

So to conclude: just as we have received a blessing, so we are called to share that blessing with others, because in doing so we are doing the will of God, and are expressing our shared humanity. After all the earth provides enough for our needs, it does have enough to fulfil our greed. 

So when we receive the blessing a the end of Mass, let us remember that it is a blessing to be shared with others and not to be kept for ourselves alone. And as we celebrate harvest, let us give generously of what we have, so that those who are without may have something.