A ‘wild’ harvest.

Psalm 114,   Matthew 18: 21-35

 

I heard a church leader this week suggest that people in their church were far keener to return to the church building for the Harvest Festival than they were to get back to celebrate what is said to be the pinnacle of the church year - Easter. 

 

Perhaps some of that is about the timing of the two festivals in the course of this pandemic; perhaps some of it is about the place that harvest festival has in our hearts, with all the smells and tastes of autumn produce; but I’d like to think that at least some of it is that harvest puts us back in touch with the natural world. And perhaps our sense of belonging to the natural world has been heightened by our experiences over the last 6 months.

 

Unless you subscribe to some of the especially extreme conspiracy theories, the Covid19 epidemic is a natural phenomenon. Any virus is part of the created order, and so can be studied. We know how small viruses are, we understand how they ‘work’ biochemically, and we can track the way they attack the cells and systems of our bodies. But because we, too, are part of the created order we are subject to being struck down and even killed by this virus. In the end we are created of flesh and blood, we are mortal and as vulnerable as many other things in this world. This harvest of all harvests, we cannot think we live in a world which is tamed and controlled – this is a wild harvest.

 

In giving thanks for the harvest, we should remember our part in the living systems of the planet. More and more scientists reject the term ‘environment’ for the natural world – as if it is the backdrop for our human play. There is one world, one order of inter-dependent living systems, we are just a part of the life of the earth, and called to live in it and alongside other parts with care and with gratitude and appreciation. For too long the human race has sought to subdue and exploit the earth – we need to find ways to remember we are part of the life of the earth.

 

So I want to challenge us this harvest to engage in some “rewilding”. 

Listeners to the Archers will know the term from a farming context, but there are small ways we can all become wilder. I hope that in Lockdown you managed to get out and look at your immediate surroundings much more than in the hurly-burly of life. I have found footpaths in my immediate area I didn’t know existed – and managed to find the best places for blackberries, sloes and damsons. I have enjoyed watching the fields being sown, growing, and now being harvested, I have grown a few vegetables in the garden, and even on the hottest days ventured a swim in the nearest part of the River Tone (since I don’t have the pleasure of living by the sea).

 

I have also dipped into this book by Simon Barnes – “Rewild Yourself”. It contains simple suggestions of ways to become more aware and more appreciative of nature – and I would add, more grateful to the creator God who made it all. Harvest can be a chance to thank God for the beauty of wildness.

In his introduction, Simon Barnes quotes a section from “the Chronicles of Narnia”, where Lucy finds the magic spell which makes the hidden things visible - including the great lion, Aslan. We know of course that CS Lewis wrote the character of Aslan to help us reflect on our relationship with God.

 

We can find God’s work when we look closely at nature – and even find God himself. But as we work to make ourselves wilder to appreciate nature, we also need to allow God to be wild. If harvest makes us think that nature can be neatly lined up like carrots on the window-sill, and God with them, we are not looking carefully enough. Nature can be wild and strange – and our God is bigger and wilder than his creation.

 

So Psalm 114 – as well as giving raise to God for caring for and saving God’s people, is also clear that God is not to be tamed – he is to be treated with awe

“Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob..”

This wild harvest, as we try to re-wild ourselves, we remember the wonder and the wildness of God.

 

So where does the Gospel reading and Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness fit in?

Well, we could certainly reflect on the forgiveness that we should seek for all the ways in which human beings have harmed the wild world.

But I think Jesus is saying something more than pointing out our need for forgiveness – he is also reminding us of the kinds of people we are meant to be in relation to others.

Being wild does not mean we do exactly as we please. We do well to remember that we are creatures who are part of the order of the created world – but that doesn’t mean we are just ‘brute beasts’ who cannot be expected to behave in ways that are loving and just.

 

One of my Methodist colleagues was telling me last week about a church where many new people have come to know God’s love in Christ in recent weeks. It was a great story of growth and hope – but, he said, one woman in particular was starting to realise that being full of the joy of being loved was not enough in her discipleship of Jesus. She was feeling loved, and was understandably joyful about that – but she had not yet learned to love and care for others.. that was her next goal in life. 

I thought of her when I read this part of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus is clear that being forgiven should lead us to being forgiving.

Being wild and relating to a wild God teaches us how to be truly alive.

But being truly alive is not just pleasing ourselves and wildly throwing caution to the wind – we respond to the life that is in us in ways that are full of joy and delight – but are also peaceful and just and caring.

 

May this harvest fill us with life and hope – and produce in us a harvest of love so that God’s Kingdom may grow – wild and free and abundantly for all.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen.