Biblical Texts: 1 Timothy 6v6-10, Matthew 6v25-34
Our verses this morning might seem odd choices for a Harvest festival. First, there’s nothing from the Old Testament, where we can find plenty about harvest in general and food in particular. Second, there’s a lot about money. That’s not traditionally been a fun subject to talk about in church, and on harvest we don’t bring our money and lay it at the front, we bring cans of cannelloni and packages of pasta.
Harvest is an odd festival for us now. Personally, I’ve always lived in cities or suburbs. Even here, in Kidlington, surrounded by fields (or lakes perhaps), I don’t feel particularly close to the season of harvest itself. I don’t sow seeds at one time of year, and patiently wait and hope for a harvest later. I work week in, week out, and at the end of the month, I receive a paycheck. Compared to most of human history, the return on my work is quite fast.
But of course, that doesn’t mean the festival of Harvest is meaningless. Harvest is a connection to the rhythms of life that exist, whether we personally experience them or not. Harvest helps us to remember there are people who help provide the food we eat, the goods we consume, most of whom we will never meet. And the principles of the harvest festival are important in how we think about our faith.
It strikes me that even if most of us are not farmers, if we no longer experience the rhythms of the agricultural year in the same way, the basic principles are often the same. We work, we toil, and we hopefully see a return for our efforts. Some years that return is good, some years less so. But we all have the same decisions to make, farmer or not. What do we do with that return? How do we respond with the blessings we have?
When we bring food to church on Harvest Sunday, food that will then be taken to the Foodbank, we’re intentionally giving away the produce of our work. If you’re retired now, you’re giving away the harvest of years of work, of time and effort. But why? Just because it’s that time of year? Or is something deeper going on?
Neither Jesus nor Paul lived in a capitalist society, but the passages we heard this morning are certainly no less important now than when they were written. Jesus’ words come over halfway through the sermon on the mount, just after he has told us to store up treasures in heaven, and to be generous with our wealth. And we can see in the passage we heard, he understands the temptation to care so much about our basic needs, that we can miss the more important things.
Jesus also understands, as does Paul, the power money and possessions can easily hold over us. It is so easy for our decisions to revolve around what we want to earn, to buy, to hoard. In the passage before ours in Matthew, Jesus’s words are stark. ‘You can’t serve God and money.’ He’s very clear. Paul is the same. In typical Pauline fashion he doesn’t sugarcoat things. ‘Love of money is the root of all kinds of evil,’ he says. So ‘don’t desire to be rich.’
What does this mean for us? I am well aware these are difficult verses to read…and perhaps even more difficult to live. Perhaps. And I am preaching as much to myself as I am to you. But we can’t escape them, and neither should we. I don’t think the bible calls all Christians to a life of poverty, but what we do with our money and our possessions matters. These are not trivial issues…and we shouldn’t try and spiritualise these verses to avoid their impact.
I want to offer a couple of brief thoughts on what it might mean for us here, in the 21st century.
First, what we own can so easily end up owning us. Possessions have a way of demanding our attention, and can often distract us from what is more important. And, they can often cause us to be worried and anxious. Bringing food to the front at Harvest helps remind us that what we have been blessed with, can bless others. And it also helps reorient our own lives. But what if we didn’t limit it to food?
Second, I want to mention a quote from a writer called Richard Forster. He wrote a fantastic book called, Money, Sex, and Power, because he recognised the three areas that so often trip us up as Christians. What he wrote about money has always stuck with me. He said, ‘instead of asking, ‘how much of my money should I give? we should be asking, how much of God’s money should I keep?’ It took me an embarrassing length of time to realise he’s just rephrased David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29v14, ‘all we have comes from you, and of your own do we give you.’ We’re so used to thinking of all we have as ours, but if we recognise that all we have is Gods, everything changes. We might wonder, who needs what I have?
But why do we care about any of this? Well, it’s because often our love of money and possessions keeps us from seeing the beauty of God’s kingdom all around us. If we, as Jesus tells us to, can seek first God’s kingdom, then everything else will fade find it’s proper place. That’s when we’ll find godliness with contentment.
Ultimately, harvest is our reminder that whatever we have, whatever the produce of our work, the point is not the money, nor the possessions, but the God that gives them. And this is not any God. This God is the creator of the world. This God is a god that gives abundantly. This God gives that we might be blessed, AND be a blessing to others.
Amen.