HARVEST SUNDAY

“The Fruits of the Spirit”

A sermon for Harvest

and our first Sunday after the Referendum

Revd Andrew Bain

There are all kinds of harvests, and harvest is an image Jesus uses when he wants to concentrate people’s minds on some critical moment, a “now” moment, a moment of choice and decision. The harvest is ready – God’s people are waiting for good news – but the labourers are few. Wheat and tares, let them both grow together until that day when only the Lord of the Harvest can separate bad from good. The parables of Jesus are full of references to seeds and harvests, the very essence of life for people whose lives depended on them.

But what Jesus is saying is: ask yourself, what’s the harvest of your life going to be? Will we be the seed that falls in good soil and produces a hundredfold, or the seed that gets choked by the weeds and the cares of this world? Will we be the seed that dies to itself and so bears much fruit, or the mustard seed that, tiny as it is, grows into a great tree and the birds of the air make their nests in its branches?

There’s even a kind of warning parable with a rather bad-tempered vineyard owner who has a fig tree that yields no figs. Judgement is close. Root it up, he says. Why should it use up the ground? But the vine-dresser, who is Jesus, implores the owner for time – another year in which to nurture the tree, to water its roots and care for it. Just wait, he says: this tree will bear fruit – you’ll see.

And I guess that’s God’s faith in us. On a day when we come to give thanks for the fruits of the earth, he says to us: And these are the fruits I see in you, and expect in you. He knows what we’re capable of which is why he never gives up on us. At the end of the parable of the sower:

And as for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.

In this momentous week, with all its possibilities for divisiveness and rancour, this possibility of fruitfulness for good that we really are capable of is something truly to be thankful for. We can be thankful that the fruits of our history and our way of life made a referendum possible at all. Because it’s the struggles of our ancestors that put such a possibility into our hands. In many ways the Christian contribution to society has been to demand of each generation a better harvest, a better life, and for more than just the few or the rich or the powerful: Think of William Wilberforce and emancipation of slaves; Elizabeth Fry and prison reform; the Christian friendly societies which became the trades unions; more recently the civil rights movement in the USA (Martin Luther King and his “I have a dream!”) and  the struggle against apartheid, and so on and on through the generations.

The Church is called to scatter seeds of hope and justice in order to create a kingdom that looks more like the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

But before that great work can even begin, there is the harvest of your own heart to tend, and Paul knows exactly the fruits that’ll build up the Kingdom and bring us the fullness of life Jesus promises. The fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.

And to the Philippians he proposes a spiritual tending of the soul he guarantees leads to life: whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise. He says: plant your minds with these things and you will have what you long for more than anything else: the harvest of peace. God’s Peace. We’re to fill our minds with these things, and our speaking too, I would say.

At the conclusion of a debate easily capable of rousing thoughts and feelings almost the polar opposites of the virtues I’ve just mentioned, the Christian presence is so needed to nurture and to heal. Taking the larger view, we’re reminded that here we have no abiding city but we seek that city which is above. Christians are resident aliens always. In the midst of the earthly kingdoms we find ourselves in, our calling is to bear fruit, lots of it, all the fruits Paul names. This is what transforms the kingdoms of this world. Christian people are always hopeful for what God still has in store for us (so a referendum really should be a beginning, not an ending), and Christian people are thankful – come, ye thankful people, come – thankful for a bounty of freedoms, and institutions and good people of all faiths or none who are clearly passionate about seeking the best for our country; a bounty of wonderful things about our life together, and far too easily taken for granted.

Yesterday afternoon I climbed to the top of Traprain Law to try and clear my head of all the jangle of stuff from this last week. From the summit there was a 360 degree view of a least three counties, from the place where our ancient forebears kept watch and said their prayers, and trusted in the seasons returning with their fruitfulness and their gift of life. I shared this view of blue sky and blue sea and stunningly beautiful countryside as far as the eye can see with about a dozen wild ponies who stood around me shaking their shaggy manes out of their eyes and no doubt wondering what I was doing there. No thoughts of politics and all the human storm and stress for them, nor for the swallows who darted and danced in the blue sky over my head. And the words of the psalmist came to me as a gift, as I took it all in: The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the round world and they that dwell therein.

All things, and all of us, and all our hopes and dreams, and the fruits of our labours, and the fruits of the earth are held in God who gives not just all things, but his own very self. And as a sign and more than a sign of this he puts nothing less than himself into our hands today. The Bread of Life.  

So come, ye thankful people, come.