Collect
Eternal God, you crown the year with your goodness and you give us the fruits of the earth in their season; grant that we may use them to your glory, for the relief of those in need and for our own well-being, through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever.
Readings
Old Testament – Joel 2:21–27
Do not fear, O soil;
be glad and rejoice,
for the Lord has done great things!
Do not fear, you animals of the field,
for the pastures of the wilderness are green;
the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.
O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God;
for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before.
The threshing-floors shall be full of grain,
the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
my great army, which I sent against you.
You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
and praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.
You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.
Psalm 126
A Song of Ascents.
1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, ♦
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, ♦
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
‘The Lord has done great things for them.’
3 The Lord has done great things for us, ♦
and we rejoiced.
4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord, ♦
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
5 May those who sow in tears ♦
reap with shouts of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, ♦
shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.
Epistle – I Timothy 2:1–7 (or 6:6–10)
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, 4who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. for there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human,
who gave himself a ransom for all
– this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth,a I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes,
(Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. )
Gospel – Matthew 6:25–33
Jesus said, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Sermon on Harvest Sunday
There are some ironic words from one of today’s readings –
for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before.
There has been a lot of rain throughout the world lately. No one wants any more, do they? In North Carolina they had three months worth of rain in three days with the passing by of that storm which was once called Hurricane Helene.
Rain and storms are the opposite of what we think of as harvest time – doesn’t the poem speak of mists and mellow fruitfulness? Gentle days. The fullness of the harvest does not call to mind storms, but rather we walk out into our gardens in the bright light of early autumn to harvest all the fruit and veg ripened on the plot we have tended all the other parts of the year. That gathering-in is to get us through the winter. We think of sunny days during which we gather the produce of the land. The early and the later rain has fallen during planting and through the growing season. Now the harvest can be gathered in. All the hymns and songs tell us about thankfulness for the abundance around us, and we share that in our collections and the redistribution of our good fortune.
Every year we gather together to think about the whole of food production, from the farmer to our tables – all the intricacies of the supply chain are highlighted in sermons up and down the country. But today I am not going to talk of those mundane concerns.
Rather, I would like to wonder about the phrase, “All is safely gathered in”. We sing in the hymn, but do we really think about everything when we repeat these words? When we gather everything in, doesn’t that mean we have garnered the good and bad together. We have brought into our storehouses everything that has been produced. But is that all that happens in our harvest? Are there other tasks required when we collect these treasures of the earth?
When we gather the apples from the tree, do we put every single apple into storage? – No, we don’t. On television’s Gardener’s World Monty Don tells us that a triage is required. We have to examine everything we have assembled together. We must assess each item. We take the damaged fruit and put it to one side. Then we take the perfect fruit, wrap it up, and carefully place it in our boxes, and stack the cases up for use in the future.
What do we do with the misshapen which the supermarkets are now trying to sell? If it is sound, without blemish, we can keep it, for there is nothing wrong, nothing to spoil it fundamentally. It is just an odd shape.
What do we do with the damaged fruit, the ones with scabs, or the apple that has fallen off the tree and has a bruise (visible or not)? We deal with them immediately before they go completely bad. Sometimes the damage is superficial like scab or the windfall has not developed a real bruise, but there is an opening for damage to enter and so rot the fruit. What do we do? We cut out the bad and then we use the rest of those fruits immediately. After cutting out the slight damage, we make our jams and sauces and bottle them up. We make use of all except the damaged. We cut out the affected parts so that it does not ruin the rest of the fruit and the resulting processed food.
So, like preachers the world over, I want to consider “the rotten apple” from my example. This very bad fruit has been neglected from the beginning, hasn’t it? These apples reveal themselves on the ground and we have just left them there. As they lie there, the natural process of decay has begun, with the small bruise as the start of its self destruction.
We may not see it, but the damage has been done when the apple falls to the ground, perhaps invisibly, but it has begun. Eventually, the whole fruit becomes unusable, either hard and mummified or a soft, congealed mess on the ground. It is no good for anything except the compost heap, where we hope it will be transformed and be of benefit some time in the future. It will be spread on the garden eventually but it will never become part of our supplies in the cupboard.
Like so many commonly used phrases, “rotten apple” can be seen to be true of people as well. I wonder, have you ever used the phrase, “rotten apple” to describe someone? Our parents may have used it. I think we all know what that phrase means. It is a judgement on the state of another person. We have decided that they are no good when we describe them that way. We are saying that a rotten apple is without character and value.
Is this really the case? When did that person become a rotting corpse in plain sight? When did that person become worthless – so damaged that there is no redeeming value?
A rotten apple is deceptively dangerous in many respects. It may appear perfectly sound, but somehow there is damage, and when the fault shows itself the apples around it could also be affected. All the apples in the barrel could begin to rot away. So not only does it become inedible, but so many others can become rotten as well. We have seen rotten apples in our own lives, haven’t we? We may have had friends whom our parents judged to be a “bad ‘un”. Our friend who appeared so innocent finally exhibits the true depth of depravity and has enmeshed others in that corruption. We realise that we only just escaped the same fate.
So what happened when we parted company with that suspect friend? Didn’t we examine ourselves and them in the course of our lives and realised they were damaged in some way? We began to distance ourselves from them and so we saved ourselves from their bad influence.
Perhaps a superficial glance when we were young, over that perfectly good-looking fruit at that point sufficed – however, I say repeated, thorough examinations help us to evaluate ultimate goodness in apples and friends. We have to examine our friends in the same way we look at our selves to see where we could have done better.
Questions arise about apples, when did the apple go bad? Was it when it dropped from the tree? Or when the scab fixed itself on the skin? We wonder about that fruit when it goes bad in the store and ask why? Was it bad from the very beginning?
I have to admit talking about apples and friends in the same terms is helpful but not the final word on the matter. We have to admit that apples need harvesting and careful handling. However, it is even more important for our friends, friends who are selected and kept forever with the love of Christ in spite of their blemishes. This is true harvest.
Amen