Sermon by the Rev. Bryan Owen

The days are getting shorter, the nights are drawing in. Green leaves on the trees are changing their colours to russet and gold and brown. There’s a tiredness in the air as if nature is saying I’ve been busy all spring and summer – now I need to put my feet up, my roots down and have a rest.

It’s that time of the year when poets get bucolic and describe tranquil countryside and farms and village life. John Keats writes in his ‘Ode to Autumn’:

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run…"

Another poet, Thomas Wolfe, says that October brings with it "a feel of unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure."

And in her poem ‘Shades of Autumn’ the American poet Judith Lindberg describes autumn as:

"A tangerine and russet cascade

Of kaleidoscopic leaves

Creates a tapestry of autumn magic

Upon the emerald carpet of fading summer."

Katy and I have experienced that first hand this week as we’ve spent time walking in Glen Affric in the Highlands. In this week’s sunshine and warm weather the glens were alive with bright colours and twinkling streams.

And we reflect that rustic, country feel in our churches when we decorate the altar and the window sills with bread and wheat and apples and pears – the traditional signs of harvest.

For those of us who don’t live in the countryside, and that’s most of us now of course, it’s a Warburton’s mass-produced loaf, packets of Mr Kipling’s cakes, tins of tomatoes and peas and stewed fruit in syrup. The connection between a cow and a burger is tenuous, the link between a chicken and KFC is even more so. Our packets of bacon – pumped up with up to 13% of added water - have less and less to do with the pig rooting around in the sty.

But there’s something deep within us, especially in the churches in these secular times, that says stop for a moment, reflect and be thankful.

A universal need

In Britain, thanks have been given for successful harvests since pagan times. In Celtic times the festival was called Lunasdal which was observed with an abundance of corn, fruit, milk, and fish. The Celts kept the last sheaf as representing the corn-spirit, giving some of it to the cattle to strengthen them for the coming winter.

Indeed, ever since humans settled down to a farming way of life anywhere in the world they have prayed to the gods or spirits for a good harvest and they have celebrated the harvest with feasting and thanksgiving.

Human beings, whatever their race or colour or creed, have an innate need to be thankful, and to say thank you, and to share their relief at a good harvest with others in their community. That’s what we are doing this morning – we are being thankful that we have enough food to eat and wine to drink – or more prosaically tea and coffee and cocoa at bedtime…

Like the Jews long ago in the time of the prophet Joel ‘we rejoice and are glad, for the Lord has done great things! The tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice… You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied…’

But harvests are variable

This year the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs predicts a bumper harvest of apples, pears, rhubarb and cherries from the orchards in the south of England. The wheat harvest is up as well but because of the cold weather this year much of it is only suitable for animal feed. That means we may have to import wheat next year but we won’t go hungry.

What about the years when the harvest isn’t so good? What about the years when there is not much to celebrate? I heard a comment on TV this week about milk farmers being paid 5p less per litre by the supermarkets than it costs to produce. How sustainable is that? The profit a farmer makes from a pig this year is just £2.50 per animal. Who can live on that?

The journey from farm to fork is controlled by a few major supermarkets. They are driving prices down so that you and I will go to their supermarket rather than to a rival. But there is a consequence. Farmers are suffering financial loss and serious health issues because they can’t get a fair price for what they produce.

In the UK one farmer a week commits suicide. In France, a farmer dies by suicide every two days. In Australia it’s one every four days. In India it’s 48 suicides every single day of the year. Farming takes its toll of human lives – partly because of the vagaries of the weather, partly because of human intervention.

The quality of each harvest – whether here or abroad - is always dependent on weather, on changing climate patterns, on local politics, on violent corruption and so on. We buy our tea from South Asia, our chocolate from West Africa, our coffee from the Americas and our sugar from the West Indies. What goes on abroad has a direct impact on our food supplies here at home. We are a global village.

Whether our harvests here at home are good or bad none of us UK is dying of hunger. Elsewhere in the world a bad harvest has more serious consequences and people do go hungry, and some do starve. We know that and for years we have all been supporting Christian Aid, Traidcraft, Tearfund and other NGOs as they try and develop farming skills in Africa and elsewhere.

Over the past four years or so I have been working in a college of nursing in Bangladesh, going out for six weeks or so at a time to help with the administration in what is a new joint adventure initiated by Glasgow Caledonian University. Bangladesh is a green country with plenty of water. It’s a country that can feed itself and it has rice and tea to export.

But each year’s intake of female students at the college has found 60% of them to be underweight and malnourished. The first six weeks of the term was spent getting them fit and healthy. For them the problem was not a shortage of food but being female. In their families the father ate the most, followed by the sons. What was left over went to the girls. The men are strong and fit, therefore, but the girls are underweight because they are regarded of such little consequence.

In this country it’s the other way round. Official figures show around 24% of females to be substantially overweight. The Bangladeshi students who came here to complete their degrees were astonished. We do take food and its oversupply for granted.

The bread of life

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus is asking us to get our priorities right. He talks about the bread that feeds our bodies. By that he means all food – the meat and fish and vegetables and fruit that keep our bodies alive.

But he then speaks of Moses and the true bread that comes from heaven, the true bread that gives life to the world. He is speaking of the spiritual life, he is speaking about values, he is speaking about relationships, he is speaking about God.

As ever, Jesus takes a very normal and human situation – the need we have for our daily bread, our daily food – and transforms it into our need for meaning in our lives, for purpose and for vision to lift our spirits beyond ourselves.

‘Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die’ is perhaps the cynical approach to life. Do what you like because you’re a long time dead. Part of the quote is found in the Book of Ecclesiastes but I also discovered it’s attributed to one of the Egyptian Pharaohs as well. It’s an old line and has lasted a long time.

But Jesus of Nazareth, in his ministry, speaks to those who want to live lives that are more fulfilled, lives that have deeper meaning, lives that are going somewhere because they are lives that are unselfish.

And in today’s Gospel he says: ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’.

In other words, take Jesus seriously. Take God seriously. Take life seriously and live it to its fullest.

Conclusion

So, amidst our ‘A tangerine and russet cascade / Of kaleidoscopic leaves’, and in this ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ let us be thankful for all that the good earth has given us. Let’s remember the farmers out on the land in all weathers and those that go fishing in deep waters. Let us support those on the margins overseas who produce our tea and coffee, our chocolate and sugar, our bananas and spices.

But let us also take seriously that moment of divine feeding when we take a piece of bread and eat it, and a sip of wine and drink it. Our lives do have meaning. There is so much good we can do, so much good we can still do, and there is no one better to follow than the Carpenter from Nazareth who said, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me’.

And having been fed spiritually, having been renewed and refreshed, forgiven and restored, let’s go and enjoy our Harvest Festival lunch with joy and with laughter and with deep thankfulness. And then, as St Paul says in our Epistle today, the peace of God, which passes all our understanding, will be with us wherever we go. Amen.