At the very beginning of the Bible we can read about the creation of the world, of everything, of all the things we see. Now I’m a scientist, and as a scientist I can see that Genesis chapter 1 is not a scientific text. It wasn’t written to tell us how God creates, but it does have something absolutely vital to say about why God creates. And what we see, God also sees, so in Genesis chapter 1 verse 31 we read this: “God looked upon all that he had made, and behold, it was very good”.
In Toronto last weekend we saw the CN Tower, and of course we went up it. You have to. The view from the top is amazing: in the one direction, the great swathe of urban Toronto packed with skyscrapers; in the other the blue of Lake Ontario, and the green of the harbour islands. You can even stand on a glass floor and look straight down. There’s something a bit god-like about being up there able to see all the world around, or there might be were it not for the hundreds of other folk up there with you.
Certainly while I was up there I did reflect on God looking down on his creation, if only because I knew that when I got back to the UK I’d be straight into harvest festivals. And there seemed a metaphor in the cityscape in the one direction, and the lake with its green islands in the other: the soft edges and natural beauty of the lake, the hard edged brutalism of the city.
A reminder that we human beings certainly stamp our mark on God’s beautiful world! And often not in a good way. A week earlier, we were in Niagara Falls. The Falls themselves retain their natural beauty, grandeur and power, as does much of the ravine and river below the falls, but the town alongside the falls is just a crazy Blackpool Pleasure Beach sort of place, with rides, casinos, fun palaces, motels, bars and Tim Horton’s coffee shops. Elsewhere in the world, plastic pollutes our oceans, species become extinct, the protective ozone layer gets dangerously thin, and we hurl tons of explosive metal at one another. What a mess we’re making!
But although we mess up God doesn’t abandon us. In a way that’s something that lies at the heart of harvest festival. The ancient people of Israel brought the first fruits of the harvest to the temple as a thank offering to the Lord and also to remind themselves that, as Psalm 24 puts it, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all the fullness thereof.”
Our God is the God of love, the God who is like Jesus. We see in Jesus God’s love in a human life and in a human death. And he says to us, “If you truly are my disciples, you must love one another.” A disciple is someone who learns, someone who follows and listens and learns. From Jesus we can learn how God wants us to live in his world, and to behave towards one another.
So in our Bible Reading from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about food and clothes, stuff like that. We do worry about these things of course, and we’re encouraged to worry about these things by the adverts, by magazine articles, by peer pressure too. We live in a very commercial and materialistic society, which no longer really questions why fashions need to change in clothes and decor and food, and why cars and other machines have to be constantly updated and new models produced.
At first sight we might wonder just what Jesus is really saying here. It surely doesn’t work to be like the birds of the air, the flowers in the field! If we don’t work we don’t earn; and if we don’t then starve, we’ll find it hard to get by. It doesn’t seem right to sit back and do nothing, hoping for God to sort it all out for us. Isn’t that the exact opposite of what harvest festivals celebrate? Haven’t we come here to say thank you for the fruits not just of what God gives but what we work for, and to remember and pray for all who work on the land? But of course, when you look more closely at what Jesus says, he’s not advocating idleness. What he is saying is - get your priorities right: work for God, don’t just worry about yourself.
Jesus talks about that as living in God’s Kingdom. That’s what happens when people live and work for God and not just for their own ends. And Harvest is a kingdom festival, in which we give thanks for all that God provides, not only by singing the harvest songs and praying the harvest prayers, but also by committing ourselves to work for God, to live in his kingdom here where we are, here where we work, here where we live.
We are the body of Christ, so Paul the Apostle tells us; and as the body of Christ we’re called to welcome God’s kingdom and to live in it. How shall we do that? Here are some suggestions: we should buy locally, know where what we buy comes from; buy Fair Trade, choose goods that give a fair return for those who make them. Be aware of what we’re using, recycling as much as we can, take what steps we can to care for God’s world. Take seriously the command, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” but widen as much and as far as we can our image of where and who our neighbour is. Make our footprint on this planet as small as we can, with others and future generations in mind.
We’re a small country church, and even at harvest there’s not all that many of us here. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do, and small can be beautiful. The small change I save in a Water Aid box, and send off every so often to help Water Aid do what it does, since dirty water and poor sanitation are a major cause of disease and infant and child mortality in our world. It’s only a bit, it’ll hardly do anything on its own, but added to all the other bits and boxes other people send it can help make sure a big work is done.
God’s been so good to us, so we need not only to be saying thank you but also to live in a thankful way. We are blessed by God: so we ourselves should be a blessing - a blessing to the planet, and a blessing to the people and other creatures we share our planet with. For the best thing to do with a blessing is to pass it on!
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