St Augustine, Scaynes Hill Harvest Sunday 4th October 2020

The parables of Jesus thrill with harvest imagery, sowing on the ground, reaping the fields and keeping grain in barns.

As a countryman in the days of his flesh it was natural for Jesus to use the harvest imagery of sowing, reaping and keeping to illustrate the purposes of God. Today in the Gospel Our Lord uses the vineyard story to explain his rejection and vindication.

As Jesus’ disciples we serve a threefold process of sowing, reaping and keeping. The kingdom of God, Jesus says in Mark 4v26 is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground...the seed would sprout and grow...but when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come. 

We interpret such parables as encouragements to sow God's love and harvest a response in God's good time which bears fruit in a body kept faithful in God's praise and service. 

We can use Jesus's parables of sowing, reaping and keeping as a form of self examination for ourselves and our Christian community. 

How much of our energies are put into serving others for their own sake - which is sowing? 

When we find people ready to commit themselves in love to God, have we the courage and means to reap for him by inviting and sealing that commitment? 

Are the spiritual disciplines of worship, prayer, study, service and reflection so active in me and my church that newcomers naturally come close to God with and through us?

These soul searching questions trace back to the words and deeds of Jesus who sowed himself upon the Cross like a grain of wheat to reap and keep a harvest of love for God through the Church's praise and service.

Let's follow then such soul searching as we look for a few minutes at sowing, reaping and keeping using three pictures that address these headings.

SOWING - How much of our energies are put into serving others for their own sake?

I'm asking you to answer for yourself or for St Augustine’s to which I'm a new comer.

Today’s harvest gifts have a destination - where? These are evidence our service, as does the Anchor coffee shop when it can function. 

As we serve we at times sow ideas. Helping people into Christian Faith requires countering a lot of misinformation, notably affirming 'God is good' and 'the Church is OK' (ecumenical brief - the abuse crisis hits us all). Sowing ideas online - my own ministry. Recent post of testimony of famed geneticist Francis Collins who realised, to quote him, that ‘my atheism was dangerously thin’. Lovely quote: ‘Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative’.

REAPING - When we find people ready to commit themselves in love to God, have we the courage and means to reap for him by inviting and sealing that commitment?

Missed opportunities - value of Alpha Course etc in providing a pathway into commitment and empowerment by the Spirit. Work of Open Book in our school. Horsted Keynes week of prayer, providing different interactive means of prayer and intercession, WCCM 

KEEPING - Are the spiritual disciplines of worship, prayer, study, service and reflection so active in me and my church that newcomers naturally come close to God with and through us?

The church's mission is weak because its prayer is weak.

I want to end by reading a passage from a book I wrote published by Bible Reading Fellowship entitled Experiencing Christ’s Love which a fivefold template for a Christian rule of life:

• Sunday church attendance

• day by day formal and free prayer times

• ongoing study of the bible and the church’s faith 

• occasions spending time serving others

• regular self-examination and occasions for confession/guidance

The Christian discipline of reflection is a reminder of love, being loved and loving, and of our failure to love in which attitudes are key. This book has at its heart a reminder to stick at loving God through five attitudes commended by Jesus Christ knowing ‘we love because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19). The Lord Jesus gives us this overarching rule: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.. and your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22:37, 39b). Loving God with your heart and soul can be seen as what worship and prayer are primarily about, linked to loving him with your mind in study, your neighbour in service and yourself through reflection. To experience Christ’s love we’re therefore invited to follow five disciplines interrelated, like the thumb and fingers of the human hand, set to grasp the hand of God that reaches down to us in Jesus Christ.  Worship and prayer are heart and soul of our love for God but without engaging our minds with his teaching our love will be ill formed, Jesus implies, and without service, love of neighbour, and reflection, loving care of self, our loving God will be a delusion.

Like the Hamsa hand symbol of hope and peace the five loves invited by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39 are a call to and a reminder of balanced and effective discipleship.  What’s distinctive about Christian as opposed to other spiritual disciplines is the ‘hand up’ of grace they engage with. If Christian disciplines attain salvation they do so by grasping the hand of the Saviour. Experiencing Christ’s love in the five disciplines of worship, prayer, study, service and reflection is a taking of God’s hand in ours, the welcoming of his loving provision of forgiveness and healing that’s a hand up into his possibilities. 

Experiencing Christ's Love book p83-84 

On Harvest Sunday, as we offer this thanksgiving eucharist, the Lord bless our work of sowing, reaping and keeping - of sowing gospel seeds, reaping Christian commitment and keeping ourselves individually and as a Christian community close to the Lord who is to come close to us in this great sign of love, the Holy Communion. [Picture: Anne Twisleton]

Trinity 17 (28C) St Richard, Haywards Heath 

I live by God and my phone. One of those who never uses cash, flicks their phone over the till and goes off paperless. Anne and I were driven mad by chasing till receipts and comparing them with bank statements at three monthly intervals. Now it's a monthly perusal of a rather longer bank statement in which we recall our till transactions with five A4 sheets rather than 200 unreadable till receipts.

All very good, but what do you do faced with a street person seeking assistance if you don’t carry cash? At least talk to them, listen to them, affirm them, rather than passing by on the other side. Homelessness is a growing scourge. In Bentswood some of my neighbours recently found a man camping in the woods, took him in and fed him. That’s why I’m pleased St Richard’s is taking note of World Homeless Week with harvest collections and goods today being given to a local homeless charity.

I’m pleased to ‘speak into’ a eucharist geared to advancing God’s kingdom in this realm having two years ago left a village divided over building more homes. Horsted Keynes has yet to finalise it’s village plan over where houses should go as quite a few don’t want them in their backyard. A very human response, but Sussex has a housing crisis on that account.

Today’s Gospel from Luke 17:11-19 fits our harvest theme of thankfulness which might prompt us to be more grateful for a roof over our heads. As I engage with people living on the streets, my first thought is, what it must be like to live outside through a blustery night let alone the deep chill of winter that’s approaching? My hedge is covered with berries, said to be a pointer to a hard winter ahead.

To the Gospel! It’s linked to the Old Testament story of Syrian army commander Naaman healed by bathing in the Jordan which is parallel to the story of the ten lepers healed more simply just by meeting Jesus. In the second part of the Gospel one leper is praised for showing gratitude. ‘We’e not all ten made clean?’ Our Lord asks. ‘The other nine, where are they? It seems that no one has come back to give praise to God, except this foreigner.’ And he said to the man, ‘Stand up and go on your way. Your faith has saved you.’ 

Notice the nine were spoken of by Our Lord as being ‘made clean’ but the thankful leper was said by Jesus to be saved. In other words thankfulness is a quality that demonstrates the fullness of life we Christians call salvation. It’s a sign we’re living life to the full, life as God wills it. Archbishop Michael Ramsey described thankfulness as ‘a soil in which pride finds it hard to take root’. If we see our whole life as given by God that recognition protects us from obsessive self interest. 

To walk through life in God’s company makes us less out for ourselves and more out for those on the heart of God - and can we imagine Our Lord’s heart other than warmly extended to those living on the coldness of the streets? 

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest’ he says in Matthew 11:28. As Christians we are bearers of that invitation through practical action, such as we’re about at harvest festival, but also by our presence alongside the homeless. Of course there’s politics here, issues of lifestyle, family breakdown and the like. The beauty of thankful living is that you go blind to all of that and, seeing all you have as a gift, those you meet, even on the streets, can be welcomed as part of that gift.

On a recent visit to Crawley Down Monastery being a Feast Day there was a talking meal. I sat beside a man who explained to me how the monks took him in regularly as he had no home. I learned quite a bit about what it was like to live on the street, the way drunken youths harass street people, and so on. I asked him what was most important to him about the way people react to the homeless. ‘Speak to us’ he said, ‘recognise our humanity. That’s much more important than any coin you can give us’. 

It’s easier said than done. I’m more on the case than I’ve been in the past, fuelled by a lack of 50p pieces, determined though to provide something as from the Lord.

This morning in Rome Pope Francis is canonising former Anglican priest John Henry Newman. Some of you know I’ve been invited by Fr Trevor to preach at 6.15pm Vespers up the road at St Paul’s. Newman’s motto ‘Cor ad cor loquitur’, let heart speak to heart, captures what it is to live thankfully with compassion towards others. I want to end with his famous fragrance prayer, his prayer for grace to radiate Christ to a needy world.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go.
 Flood my soul with your spirit and life.
 Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, 
that my life may only be a radiance of yours.

 Shine through me, and be so in me 
that every soul I come in contact with
 may feel your presence in my soul.
 Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

 Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine,
 so to shine as to be a light to others; 
the light, O Jesus, will be all from you; none of it will be mine;
 it will be you, shining on others through me.

 Let me thus praise you the way you love best, by shining on those around me.
 Let me preach you without preaching, not by words but by my example,
 by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, 
the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you. Amen.  

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! 

Harvest Festival 8am 11th October 2015

This Sunday our theme is one of thanks for the fruits of the earth – our harvest festival.

We’re showing our gratitude to God by giving to others. As we gather round the Lord’s table this morning we do so with produce that will support families in need across Sussex and address, by financial gifts in the orange envelopes, the food shortages in East and West Africa.

Do not worry about your life says the harvest gospel reading from Matthew 6.25.

This morning on Harvest Festival the Church reminds us that our whole life, past, present and future is in God's hands. To be truly grateful is to believe that God is in control of our lives and the life of the world.

A Christian is someone who at the best of times is able to see the hand of God behind everything. We have faith to see that we come from God, belong to God, go to God.

25 years ago I served as Theological College Principal training up Amerindian priests. In the indigenous communities of Guyana parishioners live ‘around the cooking pot’.  Money is in use, but much of the economy relies on age-old barter from hunting, fishing and handicraft. Harvest festival was the main source of income for the church.

Anne and I well remember the harvest festivals in the church at Yupukari where we were married in and in which we first worshipped together. I recall one where a sheep was tethered to the altar and was slaughtered afterwards so that the village ate meat afterwards for the first time in weeks.

Do not worry about your life the Lord says.

In the deep rain forest of Guyana the natives may have less possessions but they have few worries. When I was planning a week’s trip up river to a remote mission I could ask my boatman to take me at very short notice. It took him five minutes to pack - a toothbrush, a bar of soap and a spare pair of underpants was all he needed with his hammock. I took far longer to gather my tackle - mosquito net, insect repellent, books to read, torches, toilet paper (they used leaves), tins of food, sun hat, mass kit, vestments, short wave radio for the BBC World Service..the list could go on!

The Indians tell a tale of the Amazon a few hundred miles south of Guyana. There was a shipwreck off the Brazilian Coast and some of the men managed to survive on a life raft. They drifted for two weeks by which time they were pretty well dying of thirst. Eventually they encountered a boat and were hauled aboard. The crew were surprised the men were thirsty. You see they were drifting by then across the mouth of the Amazon River, the largest fresh water source upon the earth.

Sometimes we are literally resting like those sailors upon the answer to our problems.

Do not worry about your life the Lord says.

God’s Spirit is always with us like streams of fresh water welling up within us. When worry dries us up the Holy Spirit is at hand to refresh us and here is the place above all places to welcome the Spirit through God’s word and through the body of Jesus given to us in the sacrament.

Only our unbelief stops us acting as if God were with us, just as the ignorance of those sailors kept them thirsty when they were floating on fresh water.

Let’s keep silence as we prepare at this Eucharist to entrust ourselves, our souls and bodies, as a living sacrifice through Christ to the Father.

Harvest Festival 6th October 2013 8am

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say ‘Rejoice’ Philippians 4:4

In those words St Paul captures the invitation we welcome annually at Harvest Festival.

I can’t demonstrate as High Weald Dairy will, later on, something of Horsted Keynes’ harvest, or give you a St Giles’ cheese tasting afterwards, but I can pick up less graphically on the sentiment of gratitude.

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 by the feedback on last Saturday’s Quiet Day for diocesan trainee readers held in the Martindale. The participants were wowed by the Martindale window and view, by their walk to Church, to the spring at Ludwell and the Mill. How privileged we are to live in Horsted Keynes and its surrounds!

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say ‘Rejoice’ Philippians 4:4

You don’t have to live surrounded by beauty to live in gratitude. Our welcoming of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament Sunday by Sunday should focus a grateful welcoming of the Lord in every circumstance that comes our way. God who so generously comes to us in this eucharist, literally ‘thanksgiving service’ is as ready to meet us in the circumstances of our life as he is to meet us in the Sacrament of Bread and Wine.

I will go unto the altar of God, even unto the God of my joy and gladness we read in Psalm 43v4

To be glad at heart is more than a passing sentiment linked to harvest as a passing church season. It is a matter of deep ongoing submission.

This morning we might ask ourselves ‘Are we really glad, deep down in our heart, in our situation?’

What would be your answer? What business might you have to transact this morning at the altar of God?

If we aren't glad at heart we’re very likely lacking in submission of our circumstances to God. We only fear those things we have not submitted to God.

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say ‘Rejoice’ Philippians 4:4

As we read in another Psalm, 112 verses 6,7: The righteous...will not be overthrown by evil circumstances...they do not fear bad news, nor live in dread of what may happen. For they are settled in their mind that the Lord will take care of them.

To pray the harvest prayers – and we all struggle with them - is both an expression of and a seeking after deeper gladness of heart. This is in our interest, and in the interest of those who live close to us, since if we’re not resigned in a positive way to the will of God revealed to us in the circumstances of our daily living we will be people being worn away by anxiety, people seeing their pride humiliated through that refusal to say, deep down, ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done, give us this day our daily bread’

In contrast St. Paul calls us in our harvest reading to put our focus not on self but on God:

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say ‘Rejoice’.  He repeats this advice in his first letter to the Thessalonians: give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you" 1 Thessalonians 5v16‑18.

Thanksgiving, joy, gladness are the Christian distinctive in all circumstances and they centre on the altar of our God of joy and gladness - for the gifts of bread and wine are offered as a glad expression of our submission 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. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say ‘Rejoice’

Harvest Festival 10.10.10

I remember on my holidays attending a weekday eucharist in a parish church up in North Yorkshire.

The old priest was struggling to celebrate.

The twenty five minutes of the celebration were full of devotion.

They were also a battle against infirmity as Fr Tony fought his infirmity to take, bless, break and share with the dozen of us gathered in church for the daily offering.

I had a cup of coffee with him after and he gave me this poem that challenges people who whine about life that I have always valued:

Today upon a bus I saw a lovely girl with golden hair.
When suddenly she rose to leave I saw her hobble down the aisle.
She had one foot and wore a crutch but as she passed she smiled.
O God forgive me when I whine, I have two feet … the world is mine.

It meant a lot to me, and it will mean even more as physical infirmities grow with old age.

There will come a day when the gestures of the eucharist will be painful to my own body as it grows feeble.

The elderly priest and his poem reminded me once more of all I take for granted especially health and strength.

I recalled the very name of the service: Eucharist which means thanksgiving.

When Jesus took bread and wine he gave God thanks and so should we.

Thank you Fr Tony for reminding me of this.

Today our thanksgiving is writ large on harvest festival.

Archbishop Michael Ramsey once said that thanksgiving is a soil in which the weed of pride will not easily grow.

‘All things come of you’ we pray ‘and of your own do we give you’

For the beauty of the earth, for the joy of human love, for health and strength and for grace to overcome our infirmities we thank you, Lord!

We join our thanksgivings to those offered today on a million altars across the world in this great sacrifice of thanks and praise, the holy eucharist. Amen.

Harvest Festival Encouraging the Church in Guyana's Interior 11th October 2009

This Sunday our theme is one of thanks for the fruits of the earth – our harvest festival.

We’re showing our gratitude to God by giving to others. As we gather round the Lord’s table this morning we do so with produce that will support families in need across Sussex. Our harvest lunch raises funds for a needy part of the church overseas, the Diocese of Guyana in South America.

Anne and I worked there as USPG missionaries twenty years ago and the family have been back three times on extended visits. I served as Theological College Principal in Guyana helping train Amerindian priests for the interior of that land near the Brazilian border. They serve some of the toughest parishes in the whole of the Anglican Communion, with Churches accessible often only after weeks of paddling up creeks and hacking one's way through bush and jungle.

Do not worry about your life says the harvest gospel reading from Matthew 6.25.

This morning on Harvest Festival the Church reminds us that our whole life, past, present and future is in God's hands. To be truly grateful is to believe that God is in control of our lives and the life of the world.

A Christian is someone who is able to see the hand of God behind everything. We have faith to see that we come from God, belong to God, go to God.

At harvest we recall this faith, that helps us rise above worry, and we look outwards to the needy. Anne, James and I are delighted that the PCC agreed to make a new overseas mission focus supporting the mission of the Anglican church in our old home in Guyana’s tropical rainforest. Guyana is one of the poorest countries in the world. Because of our personal links there is an opportunity to make a real difference there. We also hope to arrange visits in years to come to the Amerindian communities we have served and keep in touch with.

This is especially timely with the consecration of a new Bishop, Cornell Moss, in December, which opens up a new chapter in the Anglican mission there.

20 years ago I served as Theological College Principal training up Amerindian priests. In the indigenous communities of Guyana parishioners live 'around the cooking pot'. Money is in use, but much of the economy relies on age-old barter from hunting, fishing and handicraft. Harvest festival was the main source of income for the church.

Anne and I well remember the harvest festivals in the church at Yupukari where we were married in and in which we first worshipped together. I recall one where a sheep was tethered to the altar and was slaughtered afterwards so that the village ate meat afterwards for the first time in weeks.

Do not worry about your life the Lord says.

In the deep rain forest of Guyana the natives may have less possessions but they have few worries. When I was planning a week’s trip up river to a remote mission I could ask my boatman to take me at very short notice. It took him five minutes to pack - a toothbrush, a bar of soap and a spare pair of underpants was all he needed with his hammock. I took far longer to gather my tackle - mosquito net, insect repellent, books to read, torches, toilet paper (they used leaves), tins of food, sun hat, mass kit, vestments, short wave radio for the BBC World Service..the list could go on!

The Indians tell a tale of the Amazon a few hundred miles south of Guyana. There was a shipwreck off the Brazilian Coast and some of the men managed to survive on a life raft. They drifted for two weeks by which time they were pretty well dying of thirst. Eventually they encountered a boat and were hauled aboard. The crew were surprised the men were thirsty. You see they were drifting by then across the mouth of the Amazon River, the largest fresh water source upon the earth.

Sometimes we are literally resting like those sailors upon the answer to our problems.

Do not worry about your life the Lord says.

God’s Spirit is always with us like streams of fresh water welling up within us. When worry dries us up the Holy Spirit is at hand to refresh us and here is the place above all places to welcome the Spirit through God’s word and through the body of Jesus given to us in the sacrament.

Only our unbelief stops us acting as if God were with us, just as the ignorance of those sailors kept them thirsty when they were floating on fresh water.

Let’s keep silence as we prepare at this Eucharist to entrust ourselves, our souls and bodies, as a living sacrifice through Christ to the Father.