Harvest Sermon by the Rev Bryan Owen

Introduction

When I had my evening meal the other day I tried to identify where all the food came from. The easiest answer to that, of course, is Tesco’s and for many people that’s the beginning and end of the food chain. Meat comes hygienically wrapped, vegetables and fruit are fresh and there are cans and bottles of just about everything you might desire. And, of course, every little helps.

But knowing Harvest Festival was approaching I thought about my meal a bit more. The potatoes and broccoli came from farms somewhere in England; the chicken came from somewhere in Scotland; the bacon came from pigs raised in Denmark; the flour in the sauce may have come from the US or Canada; the olive oil I cooked it in came from Spain; and the spices I used came from many different parts of the world.

Then I thought about the dessert: the rice came from Malawi; the milk and cream from cows near where I live; the sugar came from the West Indies; the raisins came from Turkey and the vanilla came from the island of Madagascar.

Then there was coffee from Peru… or was it Java? And Katy had a cup of tea that came from India.

Now perhaps I am making you feel a wee bit hungry! Maybe there are some tummies that are thinking of rumbling!

Every time I sit down for a meal I take a moment to be thankful. From places far away the food has been harvested by people often earning very little money. (Katy and I saw that for ourselves when we saw women picking tea leaves in a hundred degrees of heat in Bangladesh earlier this year.) Our food has been transported by ship and lorry. It has been processed somewhere in Britain, and put on the shelves by people like you and me working in our local supermarkets. If any of those chains were to be broken by drought or war or strikes or economic collapse then, of course, the food wouldn’t be there on my plate or yours at all.

In fact, we know that there are going to be shortages in the next few months and prices are going to go up significantly. There has been drought in the prairie regions of North America so there is less wheat available on the international markets. Flour, bread, cakes and sauces are all going up in price. Similarly, the terrible summer we’ve had in Europe has ruined most of the olive harvest in Spain so olive oil is set to almost double in price after November. In Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, wheat crops have been badly damaged by prolonged drought this summer.

The World Bank has said key grains such as corn, wheat and soybean have seen the most dramatic increases ever which they describe as "historic".

We may think food prices here in Scotland are going up too much but what about the poorest countries? Maize prices have gone up by 113% in the last three months in Mozambique, while sorghum wheat has risen 220% in South Sudan. These are just two examples of impossible price rises in places where people have the least money to pay.

In many ways buying our food from the supermarkets has made us forget how fickle the weather can be. Truth be told, failed harvests happen somewhere in the world all the time. Remember the blight that wiped out the potato crop in Ireland in 1845. One million Irish people died and another two million emigrated to the United States and elsewhere – and the memory still lingers on.

Give us today our daily bread, we pray, but we pray God to give all people their daily bread, their daily chapattis, their daily dhal, their daily sweet potato, their daily rice and so on…

When we look at the food on our plates this lunchtime remember those who cooked it, but remember too where the food came from – who planted it, who reared it, who harvested it and who brought it to market.

And when we do so we realise how complicated the issue of food production has become. Those plates of food have overcome the vagaries of the weather, the politics of the market and the shortage of fuel oil to find its way on to our tables – and for that we are thankful.

I am reminded of the story of the elderly couple who died. They were received by St Peter through the Pearly Gates into heaven. After a while they found it an absolutely wonderful place. Then the husband said to his wife, ‘If you hadn’t come up with all those healthy foods we could have been here years ago.’

Being thankful

Our theme today is Harvest Festival and we are naturally thinking about being thankful for our daily bread, there are so many other things in our lives we can and should be thankful about.

Last Sunday I celebrated my Silver Jubilee. Twenty-five years ago I knelt in Canterbury Cathedral to be made a priest in the Church of Christ. The year before I had been ordained a deacon by Robert Runcie but on this day it was to be all the bishops of the diocese, a visiting Lutheran bishop, the clergy of the diocese (all dressed in white) and two strange clergy dressed in black - Katy and my brother-in-law from the Church of Scotland - who were to lay hands on me for this new step on my journey of faith.

It was during my curacy at a church in Kent that Catriona was born and we are both so grateful for the love and support that was offered to us there.

From Herne Bay we came here to St Aidan’s and it was in 1991 that Stuart was born. Some of you were at his baptism! You were another church, another Christian family, another source of much love and support and for that Katy and I have always been deeply thankful.

These past few weeks I have reflected a great deal on my 25 years as a priest and, indeed, my 36 years in authorised ministry having been a lay reader before ordination. I thought about the geographical journeys clergy make as they travel from college to curacy to their first and their subsequent charges en route to retirement. But as clergy we are especially called upon to be reflective of the inner journey we make because it’s that inner journey we draw on in our sermons and in our counsel.

As with many of us the older I get the less I realise I know. When I was in my 20s I was black and white about so many things. I was full of enthusiasm and energy and I went about trying to change the world as best I could – sometimes with embarrassing results.

‘Hello,’ I said enthusiastically to a silver haired old lady one morning. ’Are you new here?’

‘No, Bryan,’ she said, ‘I’ve been coming for the last 20 years.’

Now I am more mellow. I am slower than I once was – less energetic. My knees ache and bits are falling off. But I am thankful that I am where I am, thankful for God’s mercies and guidance each day, thankful for my family and my friends. And thankful, too, I am still able to offer my skills such as they are not just to the church but to organisations in the secular world – hence my recent work in Dhaka in Bangladesh.

In the ordination service there is a warning for priests not to rest on our theological laurels. The bishop says:

Pray that the Holy Spirit will each day enlarge and enlighten your understanding of the Scriptures, so that you may grow stronger and more mature in your ministry.

That is also part of our calling but part but it really applies to all of us, not just clergy – to read the Scriptures, to grow in understanding and to become mature in Christ.

Eating together

Did you know, for example, that the feeding of the 5,000 is the only story, apart from the Crucifixion, to be found in all four Gospels? There is something about food, about being fed, about eating with one another, that is deeply spiritual. On this Harvest Festival Sunday we are going to eat together twice: in a few moments we will gather at the Lord’s Table to eat the bread and drink the wine of his new life. He invites us. We are his guests. Jesus will feed us, and renew us, and bless us through that simple act of eating and drinking.

But then, so Nicholas tells me, we are to eat again – this time in the Hall. Sitting there we will celebrate being together, being a community of faith, being a family under God, being friends with one another. Members of the congregation have bought the food and prepared it. They will serve us drinks. Theirs, yours, is an act of love towards each one of us and for that we shall be deeply thankful.

But even as we are being fed, both spiritually and physically, we know there are many others around the world who will go hungry today. That is why at Harvest Festival we offer some of our food, some of our drink, some of our money and some of our time to help feed others.

Conclusion

It was Thomas Jefferson, the scourge of pompous and bombastic religion in the United States, who said:

I hold the precepts of Jesus as delivered by Himself, to be the most pure, benevolent and sublime which have ever been preached to man.

Pure, benevolent and sublime – that is the teaching of Jesus who calls us to love God, and to love our neighbours as ourselves – our neighbours on the streets of Glasgow, our neighbours huddling in a cellar in Syria, our neighbours starving to death in the Horn of Africa. Our own thankfulness for God’s mercies today energises our actions for God’s world tomorrow.

Rowan Williams, the retiring Archbishop of Canterbury, in the final stanza of his poem “Rublev” says these words: ‘But we shall sit and speak around one table, share one food, one earth.’

And as I give thanks for my calling as a priest and as I celebrate twenty-five years of priestly ministry it’s to this pure, benevolent and sublime Jesus I commend you, it’s this Jesus I recommend to you, and it’s this Jesus I invite you to follow every day of your life.

Amen