TRINITY XIX, Year A, HARVEST THANKSGIVING: September 28 2008

Preacher: Fr Andrew Greany

When I feel that the Holy Spirit is not coming to the aid of my weakness as I try to write a sermon, I often have a look at the sermons of Austin Farrer, philosopher and theologian, and sometime Warden of Keble College Oxford. There's one which was preached at Bletchingdon Harvest Festival in 1962 — and then there's a footnote at the end which says "also preached at St Mary's Primrose Hill in 1963". I find it comforting that such a renowned and creative preacher used a sermon more than once, confident, I suppose, that no one from Bletchingdon, in the countryside near Oxford, would find their way to North London and Primrose Hill a year later. I remember hearing the same Confirmation sermon from a certain Bishop of Jarrow with a gap of ten years between the two occasions. But I also find it interesting that Farrer preached the same Harvest sermon in two such contrasting communities. It's often said that it's rather silly celebrating Harvest in urban contexts; what awareness have we city-dwellers of the rhythms of nature? "There is more religion in the country", Farrer says in that sermon, "than in the town, for the cultivator experiences nature at first hand". I'm not sure that the clergy in rural parishes would agree, with their Sunday congregations of barely double figures in, say, five different medieval churches — except of course when it's Harvest Thanksgiving (which may prove the point about the cultivator and religion after all), and all five churches get big congregations — and possibly the same sermon! But Farrer's argument, I think, is that what should be at the heart of an occasion such as Harvest Thanksgiving is a rekindling of our sense of God who is infinitely creative, and infinitely faithful — not just through the provision of seeds which will produce prize marrows, but through the overwhelming wonder and complexity of the universe and all that has its being within it. "At a harvest festival", says Farrer, "we remember our manners for once, and come to thank God for His faithful kindness all the year"; but we thank Him, we might go on, as does the General Thanksgiving in the Book of Common Prayer, above all for His inestimable love in the redemption of the world by Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace and for the hope of glory. (And I do give thanks that my mother encouraged me to learn that magnificent prayer by heart). In brief, we thank God that He gives us Himself, and, in giving us Himself, that He offers us that mind which was in Christ Jesus, who, as we heard in the Epistle today, took the form of a servant; yes, and in Jesus we are to be servants of one another, of the world with which we have been entrusted — and that is why it entirely appropriate that at a Harvest Thanksgiving we should be moved with the generosity of Jesus — by our contributions to the Cambridge Foodbank, by coming to tomorrow evening's supper and so contributing to the work in the challenging parish of St Cyprian's Sharpeville in South Africa. The Thanksgiving of this weekend is not a self-congratulatory thanksgiving, filled with the thought that our decorations or our offerings are superior to someone else's, but a thanksgiving which re-presents the mind and the way of Jesus Christ.

The gift of Jesus Christ, the sacrament week by week, and all that God longs to offer us of Himself in daily living if we open our hearts and our minds to Him, if we do not 'harden our hearts today' (or tomorrow), this is where above all God shows Himself faithful, and this above all is that for what we give thanks, as it is meet and right to do, at all times and in all places. Some here today may be about to embark on training for ordained ministry, some returning for the next stage in that training; some may be setting themselves for a year of committed study (or more committed than last year) — or a year of fun (or more fun than last year); some may be struggling with a bereavement, with medical problems, with a sense of depression, a tough decision to be made; some rejoicing at good news in the family, or with a deep sense of satisfaction in work or home life. Some may be thinking wistfully of the countryside and the valleys standing thick with corn, some slightly ill-at-ease with singing about the ploughing of fields when they spend most of their lives in front of a computer. Yes, it's all too obvious that we come here in our variety. But we come here also as the Body of Christ, to be re-formed, today, and next Sunday, throughout our years in Cambridge or wherever it may be — to be re-formed as those who, in that remarkable passage of St Paul's, again from today's Epistle, are called to work out our salvation with fear and trembling — for the life of faith is an awesome business, this falling into the hands of the living God, this having the mind of Jesus formed in us: but called to work out our salvation — and here's the punch line — because it is God who is working in us. Yes indeed, the faithful God — who knows that we shall so often be like the son who said, "Yes, I'll go", and then didn't, but who is merciful and restoring and enabling.