Readings may be found by using the search function on the Oremus website:
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
Psalm 65
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
Luke 17:11-19
Recently I made a video for St. Nicholas School. In these strange times, I can’t go to the assembly each week on Thursday mornings, as I have done in previous years. So instead I took a video on my phone and sent it in to be shown to each of the classrooms. Just like one I sent last spring, I took this video out in the Rectory’s garden. Last spring, I wanted to show some things that Kirk and I had just planted. This time, I wanted to show a few things we were harvesting. We have autumn raspberries, which have turned out even better than the ones we got in spring. But mainly I wanted to show a big pumpkin.
Last spring, someone gave us a pumpkin plant. I accidentally mixed it in with some plants for courgettes and yellow squash, so we just planted them all in one patch at the end of the garden. The courgettes and yellow squash did great, but the pumpkin plant just took off. It reached out into the grass, and it went back to the wall — basically, it just spread out all over the place. It had lots of flowers on it, and at first we could see a few small pumpkins developing. But it seemed like most of the energy of this big plant went into one pumpkin. It’s so big I can sit at my desk upstairs in the Rectory and watch the pumpkin grow and watch it turn orange. It’s not quite ready to pick yet.
I think of this pumpkin plant and this ginormous pumpkin when I read the lessons for Harvest for this year. They talk about the abundance of God. The reading from Deuteronomy talks about the abundant land into which God is leading the people. These are the same people we have been hearing about for weeks — or a generation later: escaped slaves from Egypt being led back to the homeland or their ancestors. They have been living on quail and a strange breadlike substance called manna. And today we hear Moses tell them of the land God is bringing them into: a beautiful land, full of the abundance of God, where the people can eat their fill, and build fine houses, and have large flocks and herds of livestock, and be rich. God’s generosity and wealth will overflow before them.
The Gospel reading shows a different type of God’s abundance. It is the abundance of God’s goodness and mercy. Ten lepers come to Jesus and plead with him for mercy, to heal them all of their leprosy. Leprosy is a horrible disease, and also lepers were cast out of society. But Jesus heals them, showing them the abundance of God’s mercy.
In general, harvest time shows God’s abundance: bucket loads of apples, and courgettes one after the other, and fields of grain — you name it. It’s been a strange year for us in the garden: we had no plums and no almonds (yes, we have an almond tree, which has produced plentifully in other years), and the birds got all the pears. Harvests are always subject to the whims of Nature, and a late freeze in the spring affected lots of our plants. But still, we look around at what has come in, and we give thanks to God for the abundance of the harvest. And we have an abundant pumpkin.
The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, “The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” And he continues, “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”
It is so tempting to sow sparingly, especially during difficult times: to hunker down and to hoard. Yes, in difficult times we have to be careful with our money, but I’m not talking just about material things. Hunkering down and hoarding is a spiritual state also. It is to retreat inward, to be wary and suspicious of others. We can sow sparingly or bountifully in how we treat other people, we can sow sparingly or bountifully in the thanks we give to God.
Throughout Covid, there has been a suggestion in our weekly eGleanings about one way to sow bountifully. It is to revive the art of conversation, to reach out to someone who might be staying at home, to check in with people. We sow bountifully by saying thank you, whether to God or to someone else. We sow bountifully by changing our expectations, especially in this time when the world is changing so much. We sow bountifully by looking around at what is, and giving thanks for small blessings, instead of looking at what is not.
For example, the Harvest service is one of the favourite services of the year. When I moved here, I was told there is Christmas, Easter, and Harvest. But this year our Harvest services are different than usual — smaller, quieter. But that does not matter. We are celebrating, we are giving thanks, we are surrounded by gifts from God’s Creation.
God sows bountifully. We see it in Nature. We also can see the abundance of God’s grace and mercy if we look around in our own lives, at the little blessings that come to us. God sowed bountifully in coming to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, to show us the way to God and to give us new life. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” [John 10:10].
So I ask you to think of two things: What are you thankful for? Imagine being like the leper in the reading from Luke’s Gospel who turns back to give thanks to Jesus. What makes you stop and want to say thank you?
Second thing is, think of some way in the coming week that you can sow bountifully: something you can do for another person, something you can say to another person, something you can say to God, something you can do for the world around you. God gives bountifully to you. How will you give back, abundantly?