This year, because of the extraordinary weather, the farmers’ harvest was brought in weeks ago. But still many congregations have been holding harvest festivals over these weeks, while over the coming days we also remember Saint Francis, a saint who taught about the way creation helps to show us God's glory.
Francis saw creation as a kind of book, in which those who study to understand can read something of the goodness of its author. The turning year, even a year of strange seasons like this one, points beyond itself.
One of Jesus's most famous parables is about sowing and harvesting. The parable of the sower is a hopeful account of how we can be right spiritually, of what happens when we try to be in right relationship with God.
Jesus starts by describing the actions of the sower. Seed is sown generously all over the land. All of it is intended by the sower to grow and to be fruitful.
But not all of it grows. Some is trampled and eaten by birds. Some falls on rock. Some falls among thorns. In terms of our relationship with God, Jesus means that, when we are struggling, it is not that God has given up on us, or is failing to speak to us. Rather it is that something is going wrong on our side.
The reason that this is hopeful is that the parable does not sort us once and for all into good ground and bad. Rather it helps us see what may be getting in the way of growth.
Perhaps the darker side of human nature is for a time predominating, so that it tramples and eats the seed God is sowing in us. Or for the moment we are only interested in a quick fix, and we cannot put down any spiritual roots. Or something is distracting us and choking off the energy which should be helping us to grow spiritually: whether something good but distracting, like riches we enjoy or pleasures we can find; or fearful things which distract us by making us full of care.
But when the seed grows, the harvest is extraordinary. Seed which falls into good soil yields 100 times what was sown. And that can happen in any of us, Jesus says, if we commit to truthfulness, allow God to do the work of love in our heart, and persevere. The same soil which seemed barren can be cleared and turned, while the sower keeps sowing, generously, everywhere, never judging a patch of our lives as not worth the seed.
In this year of all years the harvest which matters most is not the one already gathered from the fields. That one is subject to the weather.
Another harvest, sown in us and grown by God, is not. And that is the one which lasts.
Rev Dr Philip Krinks
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