Despite the best endeavours of humanity, famine, disease and various disasters afflict a significant proportion of the worlds’ population. At the beginning of the twentieth century we pride ourselves on our sophistication in so many aspects of life. Yet by any estimation all is not well in the world. And here we are again saying ‘thank you’ to God for a harvest which seems so arbitrary. Some of us enjoy the good things of the earth all year round while others hardly at all.

There are so many ‘whats?’ and ‘whys?’ associated with our understanding of Harvest Thanksgiving but these questions can bring us right to the heart of the Christian view of creation. This says at least four things very clearly:

1.         God’s will is behind creation. Psalm 24v1 “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that therein is: the compass of the world, and they that dwell therein.” (AV). It is all by his grace. He lets it be. It is wonderful and beautiful and sometimes awesome and terrible, bearable only when we realise God, in Jesus, has entered into his creation and shares its burdens. It is through Jesus that we can call God ‘Father, so that we can say ‘This is our Father’s world’.

2.         Humanity is made in God’s image. We are creatures entirely dependent on God as is the rest of the universe, but humanity – and here we are different (as far as we know) from the most intelligent animals – has been given a share in the freedom of God, of being addressed by God and able to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to him.

3.         Humanity is God’s co-worker. In Genesis Adam is depicted as the gardener.

We are hand in glove with God.

4.         Humanity is responsible as a steward of God’s creation – steward, not exploiter!

So why is there so much imbalance and injustice in the way the good things of God’s earth are shared?

Unless and until all humanity comes to know deep in its heart that all life is in trust from God, there is absolutely no reason why we should have a duty either to our contemporary brothers and sisters or to posterity. Once we are committed to the belief that we hold our dominion over all creation as stewards and trustees for God then we are faced with an undeniable duty of care towards the total environment, not just humanity, but all created life.

Because we have privileges we also have responsibilities.

Considering the plight of so many people in the world today, victims of hunger, poverty, Aids, war and so on, it is very easy to despair. Considering the scale of the problem, the aid that is expended on it is pathetically small.

Jesus’ parable of the sower gives room for hope.

When it looked as though his ministry was failing, Jesus told the parable of the sower. He had been telling the good news of God but his home town rejected him. His family thought he’d gone mad and the Pharisees covered their ears. Watching a farmer sow his seed, scattering it randomly around, Jesus pointed to the seed on the path pecked up the birds, and then seed in thin soil withering in the sun. His disciples had been saying ‘What’s the use? No one is listening.’

Jesus was making one point in this parable: “Look, despite the rocks and the birds and the thorns and the heat, there will be a bumper crop.” Jesus is saying that, despite all the failures, God’s kingdom has come.

Harvest Thanksgiving year by year is a thanksgiving for the signs of that Kingdom all around us which has come and is among us. We preach a gospel in a world which is our Father’s world, where our vocation as co-workers with God and stewards of his creation is as important now as it ever was.