As a Parish, we shall be celebrating Harvest Festivals at least three times this year - St Mary’s, St Alban’s, and in School Assemblies, and I shall also be having a trip to St Peter’s, Eaton Square, in London, where Vicky Maunder is now curate, and where I have been invited to preach at their Harvest Festival at the beginning of this month.

Harvest is one of those festivals which provokes a mixture of emotions and thoughts - and is at the same time interesting and also difficult to talk about.

Of course, we want to give thanks to God for the abundance of the earth - plants produce seed in huge quantities; enormous varieties of plants, animals, flowers, birds, sea creatures - as we read in Genesis 1:20:

And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’  

Harvest should bring us to our knees with a huge sense of thanksgiving for all the earth provides, and for those who grow it and bring it to us.

On the other hand, there should be a sense of mourning and repentance.  The earth provides much, but we fail to share it equitably; ‘God saw that it was good’, but we spoil it; we use too many pesticides, killing the birds of the air and the insects of the fields; our food travels 1000s of miles, poisoning the atmosphere as it comes; and in our society’s consumption of the wrong foods, we are causing an epidemic of obesity and decreasing the life expectancy of our children.  All is not well with the food chain and with the diet of the nation.

Thanksgiving and Repentance - two themes of Harvest.  And two themes with a wider significance.  All the older Harvest hymns link our Harvest Festival with the final Harvest when God will bring us to his heavenly home.  We need a sense of Thanksgiving and Repentance as we look forward (with fear and trust) to that great day as well.