Harvest Festival 9th October 2016

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. John 10.11

We’ve chosen a livestock focus for Harvest Festival because of where we are and who we know. We live in Horsted Keynes and I know Howard of Shepherd Publishing, also a farmer who’s into livestock.

That verse from John 10.1 presses different buttons. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep presses a button about God’s love for each one of if we think of ourselves as wilful lambs. It connects with the 24-7 care of the livestock industry Howard’s part of. It’s also no coincidence we’re promoting Shepherd Publishing’s role in serving that industry. Lastly there’s the sting in the lamb’s tail in saying shepherds die for their sheep since the livestock industry is about sheep dying for their shepherds and indeed for all of us!

A few more thoughts on Harvest Festival, lambs in particular.

They themselves have a season - lambing season - and we’re all aware of that in the village, particularly up at Cinder Hill. Anne and I also see lambs running joyfully in the sledging field below the Rectory.  They’re an uplifting image of freedom that touches a spring inside of me, so it’s (it’ll be) strange seeing them a bit fastened up in Church (later today).  

Their excitement at life is so evident as they go leaping and bounding around. They’re blissfully unaware they’ll so soon have to lay down their lives.  This commercial aspect isn’t evident to them as they engage in that joyful abandonment that refreshes my spirit.

Their seeming carelessness goes though as soon as their mothers lift themselves from the ground and they dart underneath them for milk.

They are driven like all animals, including myself, by the need for food. They themselves, and their parents, wouldn’t have our care without the human need for food and indeed the livestock industry.

As I watch the lambs in the field I’m uplifted and made aware of how unlike a carefree lamb my life is running. I’m regretful of past faults, mindful of a load of administration pressing on me and ongoing concerns like filling St Giles on a Sunday (yes we’ve now resorted to serving sausage sandwiches!) Unlike the lambs I’m aware of a weight of care that pulls my spirit down. For them each moment stands alone – no past regrets or future anxieties – indeed no real sense of past or future accomplishment. They prosper without repentance, following the law of nature, incapable of the disobedience that is mine.

The lambs’ capacity to skip down the field shows a mastery over gravity that, while warming my heart, challenges my sinful weight of self preoccupation. Yet, as a Christian, I know Jesus The good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. The gravitational pull of divine love draws us up through Jesus countering the gravitational field that drags us down that we call sin. The one gravitational field of the spirit draws us into God’s love and the other field drags us down.

When the astronauts trod on the moon they found themselves able to leap and jump with ease because gravity on the moon is a sixth that on earth. If they’d been able to visit Jupiter they’d have crawled on the surface so strong is the downward gravity. You and I get pulled down all the time. Our bodies, thankfully, get pulled down to stay on earth.

But our spirits – they get pulled down too and can feel very heavy.

Harvest Festival’s a reminder to be thankful for the love that over and around us lies, the love we come from, belong to and will return to. May such thanksgiving to God this morning loosen all heaviness of heart and draw us up towards him. May the thought of the lambs in the field, in joyful abandon, be our inspiration and teacher!