A letter from the Area Rector for October

The Rectory

October 2021

I have an old apple tree in the rectory garden. Since we arrived in July 2016 we have had a crop each year to harvest, with last year's being a bumper crop. This year however, there are very little, if any, apples. We have harvested a large amount of tomatoes – thank you to the kind generosity of those of you who brought me the baby tomato plants during my confinement due to the heel injury! Potatoes and cabbages we have also grown this year – cabbages for the first time. We’re having a competition with the caterpillars as to who gets them first! We have much to celebrate as we eat another meal with our harvested home grown produce.

Celebrating harvest goes very deep in us – it seems to stir in us a sense of our country roots, memories of a land that lived by agriculture before the Industrial revolution. Harvest marks the end of a sequence in the church/country calendar. Plough Sunday in January, when the farm implements were blessed; Rogation Days just before Ascension Day in May, when prayers were made for favourable weather for the growing crops; Lammas Day (not when we celebrate Lamas!) at the beginning of August, when the first loaf made with flour from the new crop was offered in token thanks, and coming full circle, (though it was introduced much later on the liturgical scene, in the 19th Century) Harvest. Time for a pause before it all starts again. Time to be thankful, to remember God’s mercy and goodness, enjoying the sight of full storehouses and barns, pantry shelves and freezers. Time to feel secure against the coming winter. It is good to be thankful, and we come gladly, enjoying the colour, the smells and sometimes gathering together for a Harvest meal.

But there is something uncomfortable about Harvest, too, especially now that we can see on our television and computer screens that there are people who haven’t got a harvest to celebrate, some who haven’t had a harvest for years, perhaps because the rains have failed, perhaps because civil war have made it impossible to cultivate the land. The Jewish people faced the same situation on a smaller scale. Reading the instructions in Deuteronomy we are reminded that God’s people have always been told to be generous and help the poor to share our good fortune. Deuteronomy speaks of very different farming methods, but the message is clear: don’t keep it all to yourself, leave something for those in need.

And the New Testament warns us against taking things for granted, being pleased with our achievement. That man who pulled down his barn and built a bigger one, stuffed it full sat back feeling pleased with himself got a sharp reminder – ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’(Luke 12:16-21) That’s the question Harvest asks us too.

In the Bible, harvest and judgement go together – the parable of the wheat and the tares puts the point very starkly (Matthew 13:24-30). So it’s right and good to be thankful, but we have to ask ourselves how our thankfulness can find expression in making it possible for all humankind to be thankful. We can’t ever sit back and say we’ve done enough – not while there are those children with stick limbs and swollen bellies looking at us hopelessly from our screens.

Imagine if my apple crop this year was a year in year out event and it was what I relied on for food for myself, my family and community. We need to support our local food banks and ‘Helping Hands’ and support those in need. We also need to support the agencies who work to improve farming methods, but also with those who challenge the leaders around the world to remove world debt. We must keep asking the questions and seeking action. Harvest is the point where, far from sitting back and thinking how fortunate we are, we have to prepare to sow the seeds and encourage the growth for the harvest to come, when the will of God will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Rev Margaret Sherwin

Area Rector