As we enter the autumn season, we are at a time of Harvest and thanksgiving. At this time we explore our connections to the world, to nature and to one another. We reflect on the fragile wonder that keeps us alive, and the awesome power of all that grows around us. Drawing on the Hebrew Bible story of Jacob’s Dream, we reflected on Harvest. The words are below, or there is a SoundCloud recording available too.
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A Harvest Service. A time to reflect on the wonder and importance of the natural world, and the glories of our sustaining surroundings.
I grew up in a very rural area, at the other end of Kent, on the North Downs. We lived in a house surrounded by woods and fields, and I spent most of the holidays in my early teens away from the house and exploring the surrounding countryside. Dog at my side, scrabbling through nature.
Very close to the house was a large field, long and rectangular, on the side of a fairly steep hill. From each of the top two corners there were paths to the bottom, both cutting across in a diagonal and meeting at a single point at the bottom.
Each year, the farmer – Mr Glover – would plant his field with corn, or maybe wheat, and I would see it grow. From the spring through the summer it would grow. From small green shoots, up to sturdy little plants. And then on. Into tall rigid stalks, as far as the eye could see, turning golden as the months went on.
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And, as you walked across those diagonal paths each day, you noticed the crops were getting taller. Up, and up. Taller and taller.
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And then, when the corn reached around head height – and m y memory says it did - there was a short period of total pleasure to be had.
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On a sunny day, with a friend with you, or perhaps a cousin or two, you raced. You started at the top, at a corner of the field, and then you ran. You ran and ran. Down the slope, across the field, faster and faster. The corn becoming a blur as you powered down the field. At that pace where you know you are going too fast.
You could crash and fall any moment.
On, and on. Though the glorious corn field.
We arrived at the bottom, giddy on the experience. Covered in dust from the crops. Grimy, tired. Exhilarated by the sheer wonder and awe of the natural world. Of the blue sky overhead, of the wind in our hair. Of the golden corn at our sides and up to our heads.
Thank God, for the Harvest.
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Few of us, if any, are now working the land. I know some of us are keen gardeners, and yet others, including my father, enjoy the chance to grow fruit and vegetables. Allotment holders, vegetable patch diggers, tree growers. Tree huggers perhaps. We look to the earth to give us food, and pleasure. Very few in this country need to grow things to eat – but the health and nutritional value – from the activity as well as the food itself – presents us with a healthy option. A good way of life.
Yet I suspect no-one here is a large-scale farmer. Whereas a few hundred years ago almost everybody would have had a role to play in growing food for the village, today we do not have that first hand contact with the traditional Harvest.
Yet, despite this, when we hear of the Harvest we are quick to picture an idyllic Harvest scene in our minds:
There are sheaves of corn, there may be corn dollies. We see piles of apples. Green and red. There may be hops, and honey. Carrots and Spuds. A Sussex trug laden with everlasting flowers. A picture of growth – of bringing in the goodness of the earth to our homes and our tables.
Well, that’s my immediate picture. Perhaps yours is similar.
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Our first story this morning – the story of Leyla and Farid, provides a wonderful reminder of the treasure that is to be found within the Earth around us. The value and the pleasure of working the soil with our hands and allowing nature the space and freedom to grow and flourish.
Yet, we do not grow fruit and vegetables.
We do not grow fruit and vegetables.
We simply help the plants do their own business. We might help place the seed in a convenient and rich soil, perfect for the plant to emerge.
We may water the seed, and the seedling.
We might transfer the seedling from a small pot into a larger pot. Perhaps into the ground outside.
We keep the area clear of weeds. We place support stakes around.
We clear the slugs away, we spray water into the flowers.
But we do not grow fruit and vegetables.
We help the plant do its own work. It is the plant that grows. It is the sun that provides the true light. It is the rain that waters in a way that we never can.
The bees pollinate at a far greater rate than you might manage with a cotton bud.
The plant brings forth the fruit of its labours.
It is treasure. It is provided by nature. We might help, yet we are ultimately being given a wonderful gift.
I did study biology. I do know in simple terms how a plant grows. I know the scientific explanation.
Yet it is still magical. It is an amazing coincidence of natural forces and human nurture.
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It is magical. It is magic.
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Science explains how things grow – but that doesn’t stop the wonder of the natural world from being a valuable source of spiritual sustenance and growth.
We too, we humans, are simply structures of atoms. But, somehow, those atoms work together and manage to produce movement, thought, speech, sight. All quite magical.
So the ability of the natural world to simply exist is amazing. That it does this in spite of all our attempts to ruin it, and that it can continue to provide the food on which we all survive is truly remarkable.
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In our second reading, the story of Jacob’s ladder, we heard the story of Jacob’s dream. Jacob was sleeping outside, using a stone as a pillow, and during the night he saw a vision.
In true big Biblical style, Jacob saw the angels and all the usual religious trappings. But he also received a message from his God.
Jacob was told that the land all around was to be Jacob’s and his offspring. His offspring, you may recall, was going to be fairly numerous – like the dust of the earth.
Spreading to the north, south, east and west.
And all the families of the earth were to be blessed.
When he awoke, in the morning, we heard that wonderful cry –
“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
He’s outside. He’s just woken from a dream in which he saw his God. And he’s slept with a rock for a pillow.
Yet this place is awesome, and will provide for him and his family and all his descendants for ever.
No wonder he was pleased.
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Now, as I said in the introduction to that reading, I am not persuaded that any of these early Bible stories are factual, nor indeed that they were ever intended to be read as such.
Instead, they are stories put together by religious leaders and teachers. Those who meditated on the meaning of life, and how the community in which they lived, the Jewish tribes, could be helped to understand their history, their future, and their relationship with their God.
And this story of Jacob in the desert is a good one.
Here is a man who does not need to be given money, power and all the other trapping of success. No, instead, after a rough night, he is overjoyed to be told that the land will belong to his descendants.
And this is not manicured farmland. It’s desert. In the open air – in the desert – all this land will be his.
And for Jacob, this is awesome. This place is none other than the house of God.
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That passage will be used by different people for different ends.
But I hope that one of the key messages we might all take from it is this idea that the land, the world around us, is not just something we might take for granted.
It is a gift.
It is given to us on loan. Some might say it is a gift from God.
The idea of God will be different for each of us. For the fictitious Jacob, and for the very real early tribes of Israel, God was a very personal idea of a supernatural Creator – a being that was distinct and separate – yet all powerful and, importantly, giving. He gave the world to Jacob, didn’t he?
For us here, our idea of God may be similar to Jacob’s. Or it may be something very different.
For me, God is everything. It is the magic that weaves the scientific world together. It cannot be explained, yet it is. It simply is.
For many, the word God will not be a helpful one. Yet the idea of the ‘something’ that is binding us together is one that is shared amongst us.
All of these ideas can support the story of Jacob. A recognition that this Earth is not ours by right. It is a gift to us, a gift from something unknowable and unexplainable. And, moreover, it is a gift that is given to all of us to share and to be passed on to many more. To as many of us as there are grains of dust.
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The beauty of this Earth, and the immeasurable value we must place upon it, is enhanced further if we consider the whole piece to be a gift to us and others.
We are the temporary dwellers in this world. As numerous as dust, and to dust we shall return.
Yet this world will continue. For our families, for our descendants, and simply for the generations to come – in the north, the south, the east, and the west. This is not our world. It is a gift. In fact, it is a loan.
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The world is at a perilous point. The United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change – along with 98% of climate scientists - warns of the impact human activity is having on the climate – how the way we live our lives today will affect adversely the lives of millions and billions in the future.
Despite our current Government’s bizarre decision in recent weeks to do all it can to reverse any progress we might have been making towards Net Zero, and cleaner air, we can all help keep this world beautiful. We are all able to play a part, rather than look the other way.
We don’t have to go along with those that live in the short term. Instead, we can, along with millions of others that care, we can take steps for the long haul.
We can make the difference. We are able to bring heaven here today, to this world.
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This combination of the awesome power that nature can appear to have, and the simple truth that it does not, and never can, belong to anyone indefinitely, this combination simply humbles me.
Without this earth we are nothing.
Yet we are a part of it all.
Without us, individually and collectively, the earth is not the same place.
As part of this astonishing planet, we are a part of something special. And in gratitude might we think of the good we can bring to the world. Of the thanks we might give for this wonderful gift.
At this Harvest time we are reminded that the earth and its bounty are truly the greatest treasure we could ever ask for. And it is awesome too. It is none other than the house of God.
Treasure it, and keep it well for the generations to come.
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