At a recent service I attended at Welshpool Methodist Church, the minister got us placing missing pieces - we’d all been given one each - into a jigsaw puzzle of Noah’s ark. Her theme was jigsaws rather than arks, but I couldn’t help but notice that one of the beasts waiting to enter the ark was a giant panda, and that felt sort of wrong; surely the animals Noah brought into the ark would have been ones that were actually present in the Middle East at that time, which doesn’t include pandas. Of course, the Bible does say that Noah brought two of every sort of animal into the ark; but the logistics of getting every animal in the world into one boat left my head spinning. Having said that, though, the giant panda is a very potent symbol of endangered species, and of our impact on what is a very fragile environment and ecosystem; so if the jigsaw picture was not so much about Noah back then but where we are today, I guess the giant panda should have been there after all.
There are only about a thousand giant pandas left in the wild today, along with maybe another hundred or so in captivity, and scientists are very concerned about how viable a population that small can be. Loss of habitat is a big concern, as it is for many other species; a habitat may not be completely destroyed, but quite subtle changes can unbalance things in ways that affect particular species. Scientists are noting huge falls in frog populations all around the world, from Australia to Central America. No-one really knows why they’re disappearing so fast. Maybe global warming. Maybe a build-up of chemicals like pesticides in the environment. Maybe places that used to be wet are drying out. Maybe there’s more than one reason, it could be that frogs more sensitive to change than some other creatures. I was reading an article on the subject that suggested that by the time we know for sure why frogs are declining, it’ll be too late to do much about it.
I trained long ago as an environmental scientist, so these are issues that will always interest and disturb me. Countryside birds that used to be common – lapwings, corn buntings and even house sparrows – are on the decline, and again, it’s hard to know why. The natural environment is complex and sensitive, and changes in the way we do things, changes in farming, in lifestyle, in trade, may happen too quickly for the ecosystem to cope. We so much power, maybe too much.
So if the minister’s jigsaw that day was as much to do with conservation today as a great flood back then, it reminds us of the need for modern day Noahs. I remember singing a song in school assembly that begins “The world is a garden you made.” I think it was written for the Worldwide Fund for Nature. It does all begin with a garden if you look back to chapter 2 of the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden of Eden, where everything’s in harmony, and the sun sparkles on the morning dew.
When Adam was the gardener there, he didn’t need to do much gardening. It’s only when we read on into the next chapter, with the serpent and the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then Adam and Eve thrown out of Eden - that’s when he has to start doing real gardening, the kind that gives you blistered hands and an aching back.
Harvest Festival prayers often speak about us as being stewards of creation. But creation wouldn’t need any stewarding if it wasn’t for us human beings and the way we mess things up. Things in the natural world would roll on quite nicely without us; but with us, so much is vulnerable and there’s a need for conservation and care. Maybe the giant panda could represent the many species that might well be better off if we weren’t around.
But what would be the purpose of a world like that? In Adam and Eve and their descendants, people to till the ground, to blast the rocks, to invent and make all kinds of things, a new phase of creation begins. God’s creation becomes conscious of itself and of its God. Through human beings what God has made, like moulding clay on a potter's wheel, ceases to be inert and thoughtless and can choose and reason - can reach out to its creator, or not, as we choose. We’re free agents, we can worship or we can ignore the hand that shaped us.
Last week my daily paper informed me that we human beings have only twice as many genes as the fruit fly, and many of them are just the same. Scientists use fruit flies a lot in genetic research. They are smaller and simpler and arguably a rather less intelligent than us marvellous men and women, but like us, they are also (if I may borrow some Bible words) fearfully and wonderfully made. They are made of the same stuff as we are. Scientists tell us that, but so does the Bible. In Genesis chapter 2 we find that we and all other living things are formed from the dust of the ground.
And fruit flies too have their place in the order of things, just like pandas, frogs, sparrows and for that matter blue whales and three toed sloths: each one of them the outworking of God's creative love, each one of them precious in his sight. And so are we, of course, as the cross of Jesus must always remind us. But unlike pandas and whales and sloths, we know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we know that they are too. Knowing that confers a responsibility upon us; Harvest Festival is a time to remind ourselves that as stewards of what God made we should make sure our earthly home has space and food not only for us, but for the myriad living things that Adam once gave names to, and that our Lord created out of dust and love.
I’m really glad to be with you tonight, because Harvest Festival is one of my very favourite times in the church year. And as we sing our harvest hymns let’s not only pray for the land around us and all who work on it; and let’s not only give thanks for the fruitfulness of the harvest we’ve brought in, but let’s take the wider perspective in which we see how it all links together; one harvest of all the world, in which the skill and labour of all kinds of people near and far helps keep us fed and clothed and provided for.
But there’s more than that. Harvest isn’t just stuff, it’s also people, souls, lives. We ourselves are harvest, and we’re right to think tonight about the harvest of our souls, the harvest of our faithful response to God. Thankfulness is expressed not in what we say, or not only in what we say, but in what we do; our actions are what make our words credible, and those who are truly thankful will show their thanks in sharing and using well what they’ve been given - using the gifts of harvest in a way that honours the giver. Our prayers today will touch on those whose harvest is poor, and who may suffer or starve without our help.
Harvest Festivals look forward and look back; back to those who worked this land before us, to the old harvest hymns and to traditions we don’t want to lose, stories of past faith and service. But also forward to those who inherit this earth from us - they need to receive it in good order, so that they too, future generations known and unknown, can have a secure and plentiful harvest. It’s been well said that we don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. And Harvest Festival should also look outwards; so we think not only what we can have and own and use, but of pandas and frogs and sparrows, as well: how poor the world would be if there was not also a harvest for them.
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