Harvest sermon 2011

This was the sermon I preached for Dorney Church Harvest festival on 25th September. The reading was John's account of Jesus feeding the 5,000.

I was commenting to someone the other day that this Sunday was harvest here at Dorney;.

And the response was quite interesting – he said: you celebrate harvest but there isn’t much farming around here.

My response was such that actually there is a fair bit as we look around at the various things that are grown locally.

But in reflection I thought about the importance of us celebrating harvest generally.

I have never lived truly in the heart of a farming community – I was on the edge in the village we lived in when I was a curate –but I remember throughout my life that the celebration of harvest was important no matter whether we lived in the town or the country.

So why do we year after year celebrate.

And actually I think there are three clear reasons why which I want to point to this morning – firstly we celebrate because it shows our dependence upon God, and secondly we celebrate because it reminds us of our own harvest in life, and lastly we can use this time as a time of remembering our own part in God’s plan to meet the needs of others.

So firstly we celebrate because it reminds us of our dependence upon God.

When I was growing up one of my favourite television programmes was the good life.

If you remember it we saw the antics of a couple – tom and Barabara who gave up work to try to live the rural idyl, the only problem was that they were in suburbia

And they had to contend with their snooty neighbours.

For many as they watched this the idea of self-sufficiency seemed quite attractive.

Self- sufficiency – living off your own produce, and to an extent many of us do this today – we have wonderful examples in this church of home grown produce.

But self-sufficiency as an attitude rather than a lifestyle is something which has pervaded our culture and society.

Self- sufficiency – we live in our own homes, we work hard so that we can have the comforts that we enjoy.

We have the use of amazing technology invented by man which helps us to enjoy these things.

And in the midst of this we create an attitude that actually it is our right to enjoy these things because we have earned them.

A self-sufficiency that man is sufficient.

And in the middle of this self-sufficiency we forget to see anything about the person who has enabled us to reap these benefits, who has enables us to have all the blessings that we have.

We forget to see the God who has given us the intelligence to create technology, who has given us the created world to enjoy.

The God who enables the harvest of not only the land and sea, but also the harvests of mine, of factory, of the creative art of research.

So Harvest bring us back to that God – it brings us away from our self – sufficiency to once more see our dependence upon God

Our reading from John -= the feeding of the five thousand is a wonderful story in so many ways.

And in this story we see Jesus’s concern not only for the spiritual needs of the 5,000 but also his desire for them to be filled in the physical way as well.

So he takes what is offered and in response is able to meet the physical needs.

God cares for the whole person and he is the one who provides for all our needs, phyiscially, emotionally and spiritually.

And then secondly as we celebrate harvest we can be reminded of our harvests – what we produce ourselves,

What was your harvest like this year?

Ours was pretty lacking – we tried to grow things in the vegetable patch but because of lack of time and attention the only things we managed to grow were sunflowers and they were self seeded from the seeds we put out for the birds.

Our harvest was appaling.

Or was it?

When we think of our harvest we can think beyond just producing crops and fruit.,

The little boy offered what he had and Jesus used it amazingly.

We may not produce a harvest of fruit and vegetables but we do produce a harvest in what we do in our lives.

We can not separate our lives into the spiritual and the not so spiritual.

The Christian life is all about integration – we don’t just do our Spiritual bit on a Sunday when we come to Church or even occasionally mid week if we come to a prayer meeting or bible study,

Our Christian life impacts on all our lives.

So for each situation we face, each reaction we have to make, each conversation we are caught up in, we are aware of how our faith may impact and influence and determine how we react, what we say or do.

And if we see life in this way then at harvest we can offer too what we do to God to be used for his service.

We may not have very spiritual or vocational occupations, we may be retired but never the less we have a harvest in our daily life.

In some working lives it is easy to see what your harvest may be, if you work in schools your harvest could be seen as the development of those in your care.

For others it may be more difficult to see a harvest in this way, but if we think of the integration of our lives then how we react at work or with others then will be our harvest.

We can sow seeds of good will, we can sow seeds of understanding and of respect for others, seeds of grace as we do something we would rather not do, or we can sow seeds of distrust, seeds of begrudgingness as we do an activity we would rather not do.

The biblical principle of we reap what we sow is clear here.

We have choices about what we sow- just like the farmer can choose what plant to sow in his field, or we choose which vegetable to grow in our vegetable plot.

And thirdly harvest reminds us of our responsibility to share what we have and meet others needs.

Perhaps we think this is a token venture as we bring a few tins, and other bits.

But we forget how God can use what we have given to support and help others.

And in the same vein too this story of the feeding of the five thousand challenges us to think of how we can be used to meet the needs of those around us.
 a little detail that often gets overlooked in this story is this Jesus needs the little boy and the five loaves and the two fish.
How often do we pray for something – God do this, make this to happen, stop this happening. We pray for wars to cease, we pray for the hungry to be fed, and we pray for the sick to get better. 
But in this story Jesus doesn’t just magic up food out of thin air – he needs something from the 5000 – he needs something from us to work on. 
We pray for wars to cease – God will do great things in answer to our prayers – but we need to offer a loaf and a fish – what are we doing to make wars ceasing. Have we written a letter, supported a peace project, have we even found out what is really going on?
We pray for the hungry to be fed, and God will do great things in answer to our prayers – but we need to offer something ourselves. Have we given something away, have we supported one of the hundreds of charities which feed the starving, have we even found out where the starving are?
We pray for the sick to be healed, and God will do great things in answer to our prayers – but what do we do in support, care, understanding the medical profession, backing research. 
“Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat” Jesus says to Philip – or whenever we’ve prayed for this or that “And what are we going to do about it” Jesus says to us! Five loaves and two fish was not very much, but it was just enough for Jesus to work on! 

So this harvest we give thanks once again to God for his love for us and his provision of all our needs, we also offer ourselves to be used thinking of our own harvest and of how we can help to meet the needs of others too.

Amen

9/11 sermon The Prophet Jeremiah

This was the sermon i preached yesterday on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. When i was planning the sermon series for the autumn i had not clicked that this sermon would fall on this day, but in preparation i couldn't believe how appropriate it was. Lucy 

Jeremiah – the weeping prophet.

Today we are starting a short series on the prophets – following our E100 series earlier in the year.

The prophets I think are quite difficult for us to relate to – because in many ways they are quite strange figures of jewish history, often displaying different behaviour to make a point and more often than not having to speak out strongly about what was going on in their day.

However, when we read the prophets we see so much of what they spoke of then having relevance for us today, and also so much of the prophecy that was for the people then not only still being applicable to us today – but in some ways we are still waiting for some of it to be fulfilled fully even today.

And Jeremiah is a good illustration of this point which we will be looking at this morning.

So who was the prophet Jeremiah

• Jeremiah was a prophet of God for almost 50 years
• Time period: 627 bc - 580 bc (48 yrs)

• Prior to this time period, the divided kingdom period existed; The Northern kingdom, known as Israel, consisted of 10 tribes; The Southern kingdom, known as Judah, consisted of 2 tribes. ( the two kingdoms had been united under David)
• In 722 bc (100 yrs before Jeremiah), the Northern kingdom was destroyed and carried off to Assyria. (Throughout the book of Jeremiah, he proclaims did you not remember what the Lord did to your brothers in Israel?)
• In 612 bc, Nineveh, the capital of Assyria was captured by the Babylonians.
• Therefore, Jeremiah was a prophet to the remaining kingdom, the Southern kingdom (Judah). Interestingly, Jeremiah prophesied during their last years and was present for their destruction and captivity by Babylon in 586 bc

• God clearly stated that Jeremiah's ministry would be very difficult and full of suffering:
• "Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them... They will fight against you but but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you" declares the Lord. ( Jer 1:17-18)

• For almost 50 years, Jeremiah preached a very unpopular message of repentance to the people of Judah. For this same time period, there was no measurable change in their lives. (Can you imagine dedicating your whole life to a cause and having it fall on deaf ears ?)
• In addition, he was shunned, rejected, imprisoned beaten and persecuted - FOR 50 YEARS !!!!. He had few, if any, friends, no sympathizers to his cause, never married or have children because God instructed him not to (Jer 16:2) and lived a life marked by constant sadness. Consider 9:1 - "Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people."

This is probably why Jeremiah is sometimes known as the weeping prophet.

SO what can we learn from him:

I want to start with looking at a bit of theology which we see clearly in the prophets but quite clearly in Jeremiah – which will then help us to look to how we can apply this to our lives today.

We went to the cinema the other day and as we waited for the film to begin we were tempted with previews of other films coming up.

The most dramatic moments or the most romantic moments of the film used by the filmmakers to try to tempt us to come back and watch the complete film at a later date.

IT gave us a foretaste of what it was about – but we didn’t realise the whole story – and wouldn’t until we paid the extra money and came back at a later date.

We get foretaste of a lot of things – from tasting wine before it is served to bits of nibbles in a supermarket.

Foretaste helps us to see what the real thing is going to be about.

And in the Christian life a similar thing happens too.

Throughout the Christian life we get a foretaste of the Kingdom of God – but we won’t really experience it entirely until we share it with God in eternity.

This is the now and not yet theology that we work with all the time.

Yes we can know God now, but we will experience it even more fully in the future – the not yet.

The now and not yet of the Kingdom of God.

This theology of the Kingdom of God is something which is quite hard to understand.

The prophets encapsulate this as what they were saying was so much now and not yet.

NOW – because what they were saying was so much for the then and now.

So with Jeremiah we see him strongly prophecying to the people of Judah about what would happen to them unless they came back to God.
We then see then in exile and yet again Jeremiah’s prophecies were for them about restoration,  not only nationally but also of their relationship with God.

The passage from Jeremiah 31 that we had read is just one of such passages – we see this in the context of the people of Israel being in exile in Babylon

But underlying all the prophets is the theme of not yet as well.

Because so much of the prophecy that we see within the old testament is not only pertaining to the people of that day – but is also pertaining for the future.

That’s why it is there for us to see – it is not merely like reading history when we read the prophets but it is reading things that apply to us, hope that is there for us as well as for the people of Israel.

And this passage from Jeremiah today is just that. – the promise of restoration for the people then – the now as it where and the not yet – the time is coming says the lord when I will make a new covenant – and this is a message for us all, the promise of the relationship with God – a new covenant, which of course we see through Jesus Christ.

So I want us to dwell for a few moments on this new covenant – and then move on from that a bit to see how this idea of now and not yet can be seen for us and one particular application for our lives.

The promise of the new covenant is one which would have been radical for the original people to have heard this message.

Principles of the Old covenant-

            Law – the 10 commandments and the levitical law

            Sacrifice – to be made for atonement for their sins

            Meeting with |God – only through the levitical priest who could enter the inner temple

Principles of the new covenant

            Law- I will write it upon their hearts – no longer an external thing but something internal  -

Meeting with God – no longer restricted - the presence of the Holy Spirit will be upon all people

From other prophecies we also get a hint that this is wider than just Judah and Israel – the people of Israel, but here we get a sense of the two being united once more – of being restored once more.

So the prophecy in Jeremiah was talking about restoration of the people of Israel from captivity in Babylon, but also pointing clearly to a new way of God.

A new covenant – a new relationship that was going to be not only for Israel but also for the rest of the world.

When we look at this with the wisdom of knowing the new testament we can only see this in the light of Jesus Christ and what he achieved on the cross.

So in the prophecy of Jeremiah we see the promised restoration of Israel and the promised restoration of God and all mankind

But as I was thinking about what to say today and the implication of the promise of restoration I was also led to think about it in terms of the now and not yet of this all, - we know God now we will know him more fully, we experience God now but we will experience him more fully.

And as I dwelt on this I thought it had huge implications with how we today handle what we are going through and that actually the weeping prophet Jeremiah can teach us a lot about living with this tension in how he handled the suffering he had to experience in his life;

Today is the 10^th anniversary of 9/11.

I should imagine that all of us can remember quite clearly what we were doing on that day – where we were when we heard the news of the dreadful atrocities that happened at the world trade centre and other places around the United States.

When we look back we all probably still ask the question why – yet when we look back we also can realise that for many people they are still living with the consequences of that day – the suffering continues – whether or not it is the relative of one who lost their life on that day or the British servicemen we recently saw on the expedition with Prince Harry in the arctic – there to prove they could carry on despite dreadful injuries incurred in Afghanistan.

Suffering is something which we all live with to a greater or lesser extent.

It is something which I am sure most people including Christians struggle to understand.

What can we learn from Jeremiah – the prophet who is often called the weeping prophet because of his own experience of suffering.

Restoration will happen – one day – that is the hope that we hang on to as Christians.

God will restore us to a place where we will know complete healing not only of individuals but of the world – i saw a new heaven and a new earth  Revelations 21.

This is promised in Prophecy in both the old and the new testament.

We will be restored – and this is important when we pray for healing or for God to reach into a situation.
Sometimes we are so focused on the now that we forget to think of the not yet- we are so focused on healing this side of heaven that we fail to see restoration/ completeness as knowing God for ourselves in heaven – the not yet

And then what about those unanswerable questions?

God doesn’t cause our suffering – why does he allow it to happen ?

Time and time again in the psalms and in the prophets we see them asking why is this happening to me.

And time and time again we see the response of faith – the realisation that we don’t understand it but we can live with that uncertainty resting in the arms of God.

Jeremiah is a marvellous example of this for us, we know his life was characterised by suffering, pain,  loneliness in human terms, but we know that he was sustained by the undying promise he spoke of restoration and his faith in the God for whom he spoke.

We see clearly when we read Jeremiah that he had undying confidence in God and his promises and that his situation forced him to personally find solace and strength in God alone.

For him the now meant he realised God’s anointing on his life, his sustenance through the suffering but also the promise of the not yet the promise of restoration in the future.

For us  Jeremiah challenges us to see the now in our own situation and also the not yets.

This is the challenge of faith for us as we cope with our own issues and minister to those who are suffering in many different ways, to acknowledge what may be happening with God Now but also what we may have to wait to see in the future  - the not yet., a tension that may test our faith.

So on the anniversary of 9/11 I want to end with a reading written after the atrocities of the world trade centre, acknowledging that even when things were so awful God was there, just like Jeremiah himself experienced.

Meet me in the stair well!

You say you will never forget where you were when you heard the news on September 11, 2001. Neither will I.

I was on the 110th floor in a smoke filled room with a man who called his wife to say "Goodbye." I held his fingers steady as he dialed. I gave him the peace to say, "Honey, I am not going to make it, but it is OK ... I am ready to go." I was with his wife when he called as she fed breakfast to their children. I held her up as she tried to understand his words and as she realized he wasn't coming home that night.
I was in the stairwell of the 23rd floor when a woman cried out to Me for help. "I have been knocking on the door of your heart for 50 years!" I said. "Of course I will show you the way home - only believe on Me now."
I was at the base of the building with the Priest ministering to the injured and devastated souls. I took him home to tend to his Flock in Heaven. He heard my voice and answered.
I was with the Firefighters, the Police Officers, the Emergency Workers. I was there, watching each brave step they took.
I was on all four of those planes, in every seat, with every prayer. I was with the crew as they were overtaken. I was in the very hearts of the believers there, comforting and assuring them that their faith has saved them.
I was in Texas, Kansas, London. I was standing next to you when you heard the terrible news. Did you sense Me?

I want you to know that I saw every face. I knew every name - though not all know Me. Some met Me for the first time on the 86th floor. Some sought Me with their last breath. Some couldn't hear Me calling to them through the smoke and flames; "Come to Me...this way...take My hand." Some chose, for the final time, to ignore Me. But, I was there.

I did not place you in the Tower that day. You may not know why, but I do. However, if you were there in that explosive moment in time, would you have reached for Me?
September 11, 2001 was not the end of the journey for you. But someday your journey will end. And I will be there for you as well.
Seek Me now while I may be found. Then, at any moment, you know you are "ready to go." I will be in the stairwell of your final moments.
~~~ God ~~~

Written by: Stacey Randall