Harvest Festival 12th October 2014

For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.  

1 Chronicles 29.14                            

In those words King David captures the invitation we welcome annually at Harvest Festival.

Our Lord speaks in Matthew 6.33  of how the earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head…. when the grain is ripe… the harvest has come.

In my first parish of St Wilfrith, Moorends in Doncaster we took coal to the altar and its remarkable for me today, Yorkshireman come south, to be welcoming grapes later this morning from our own Bluebell Vineyard.

Whether coal or grapes, or just, as we’ll be singing, our life, our health, our food this morning we’re talking and thinking about the sentiment of gratitude.

We come together after our Prayer Novena, nine days of prayer during which we’ve given thanks and prayed for Horsted Keynes and St Giles. I’m pleased to announce also that we’ve given as well to the mission of God’s Church a total of £890.  

The Christian faith calls for inner eyes of faith that remain open in gratitude.

We come from God. We belong to God. We go to God.  This means, as creatures made and loved by God, we live in gratitude towards the one who made us and provides for us.

What a wonderful privilege it is for us to live in mid Sussex in a place as beautiful as Horsted Keynes!

I was reminded of this when two weeks ago a dozen or so of us went up to the Vineyard which extends just into Horsted Keynes parish. We were invited by the proprietors Barry and Joyce Tay who’re no strangers to us here at St Giles. They share a deep sense of gratitude to God for his guidance and sense of being his stewards and instruments as people of faith.

The wine they offer this morning is sparkling wine, an image of joy that’s flowed from the soil of Horsted Keynes and its surrounds.

We give thanks today, as we do at every eucharist, for God’s gift of wine ‘fruit of the vine and work of human hands’.

This weekend sees that very work as the grape harvest  commences leading on to pressing and storing. Though we have a gift of wine it isn’t appropriate for the eucharist as it’ sparkling wine, even if it is a powerful symbol of harvest joy.

All things come from you, and of your own have we given you.

This is the sense of the prayers I’m going to offer for you now. First we take bread and say a thank you prayer. Then we take wine, mix in a little water and offer it to God.

Thanksgiving, joy, gladness are the Christian distinctive and they centre on what the Psalm writer calls the altar of our God of joy and gladness.

The gifts of bread and wine are offered as a glad expression of our submission of our lives to God this morning. Their transformation to Christ’s body and blood and our receiving of these is the instrument of our own ongoing transformation into thankful living.

Such living is a counting of blessings. As the old chorus puts it so simply and beautifully: count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

For all things come from him, and of his own shall we give him.