Sunday
- Harvest festival
Deuteronomy
26: 1-11. The true
spirit of Harvest is one of Thanksgivng, and Moses commands offerings of
Thanksgiving to God for being delivered from slavery in Egypt into the land
flowing with Milk and Honey
Philippians
4: 4-9. Paul directs
us to offer prayer, supplication (asking earnestly) and thanksgiving to God and
in so doing we receive “the peace of God which passes all understanding”. That divine
peace being a wholeness and contentment that the Hebrew people call shalom
(Salam in Arabic)
John 6:
25-35. The sentence “I
am the bread of life”, that which nourishes and sustains and causes all growth,
is at once the property of God (Yahweh translates as “I am”) and is placed in
the mouth of Jesus as the “image of the invisible God”(Colossians 1:15). The
words of Jesus nourish us because they are the words of God.
Last year I
gave you the whole story of the Bible in 3 gardens. This year I miss out the
garden of Eden and the garden of gethsemane and start straight at the vineyard full
of ripe juicy grapes which represents Jesus’ saying;
“I am the
true vine” with us being the fruit being fed by his spirit.
Jesus
presents us with another “I am” saying this morning;
“I am the
bread of life”.
Feed on God;
His wisdom and words, and the result will be Peace of mind.
Thankfulness
for the nourishing nurturing fruitfulness of God is the primary sentiment that
underpin Harvest festival.
Now, In the
modern world whenever the planet is being discussed you are most likely to hear
horror stories about the environment and climate change than anything else.
And that is
important because if those things can threaten the extraordinary fruitfulness
of the world, we should obviously seek to limit any damage, but today we
concentrate on the extraordinary fruitfulness of this planet.
The current
population of the world is 7.7 Billion people.
That means
that the world has to produce enough food to feed 7.7 Billion people every day
of the year.
If people
are lucky enough to eat three meals a day, that means 7.7 billion breakfasts,
7.7 billion lunches and 7.7 billion dinners every single day.
53.9 billion
breakfasts a week, about 2800 billion breakfasts lunches and dinners every
year.
These are
extraordinary amounts, but the most amazing thing is that the world can
do that because it is so bountiful and fruitful.
Of course there
are parts of the world where people don’t have enough to eat, and closer to
home we have people who struggle to afford adequate food but the problem there
is not that the food doesn’t exist – that is a problem of unequal distribution
and economics and are different problems.
The world
produces more than enough food to feed everyone. In fact, apparently a full
third of all food produced in the world is wasted every year that is 1.3
billion tonnes of food. And all developed countries have the same problem
Our planet
is a marvellous place. The scale and variety of food (and flora and fauna)
produced is mind boggling.
Harvest
festival is a time to remember just how wonderful it is, and what we need to
protect. The world is special. Not barren rock, or huge balls of gas like all the
other planets in our solar system. We are very lucky people. Another way of
saying we are lucky is that we are blessed. And as a way of acknowledging that we
are blessed is to give thanks. We say “Thank
you” But thank you to whom or what? As Christians we give thanks to the creator
of this marvellous, fruitful bountiful planet. We thank God.
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