A Harvest of Plenty
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
November 23, 2003
Joel 2:21-27; Matthew 6:25-33
I. INTRODUCTION
One of the great things about Thanksgiving is getting together with family. (That can also be one of the worst things, depending on your point of view). When these family gatherings are held on my mother’s side of the family my great aunt Ellen always says the blessing before the meal. (Well, she used to anyway before one member of the family got it in his head to become a minister and now he always gets asked to say grace). In addition to being the de facto family chaplain, Aunt Ellen is also the family genealogist. She has traced the various family roots back generations. On of my maternal grandfather’s ancestors was a signer of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and was on the drafting committee for the Declaration of Independence. That’s pretty cool.
My maternal grandmother’s family can be traced back to one Thomas Olney, one of the 13 founding families of Rhode Island. That’s really cool. When I think about it, I am descended from those folks, but my life has so very little in common with them.
II. THE PILGRIMS AND PROVIDENCE
The pioneers and pilgrims who first came to these shores and who scratched out a living from the earth, had extremely difficult lives. The author Bill Bryson has said, “It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a life in the wilderness.” He continues: “They packed as if they had misunderstood the purpose of the trip. They found room for sundials and candle snuffers, a drum, a trumpet, and a complete history of Turkey. One William Mullins packed 126 pairs of shoes and thirteen pairs of boots. Yet they failed to bring a single cow or horse, plow or fishing line.” None of them, except perhaps Captain Miles Standish, knew how to hunt. And since “farmer” meant one who owned land rather than worked it, even the “farmers” on the Mayflower were of little help.
Of the 102 pilgrims, 6 died in the first two weeks. Eight in the next month, seventeen more in February, 13 more in March. By April, just 54 out of the 102 were left to begin the colony, half of them children.
For the first couple of months, every time they tried to make contact with the natives, the Indians ran off. Eventually they were visited by Samoset, himself new to the area, and a friend of his named Tisquantum from the local Wampanoag tribe. These two Indians showed the pilgrims how to plant corn and catch wildfowl, and helped them to establish friendly relations with the local chief. Thanks to the teaching of Samoset and Tisquantum, (made possible due to the highly improbable fact that these men already spoke English!) the pilgrims survived their first year, had a plentiful harvest. At the end of the year, they joined with the Wampanoags in a feast to give thanks for the harvest and for God’s providence, that we still commemorate as Thanksgiving.
III. THE TEXT: JOEL
In fact, when we think back on the hardships of those early settlers we can truly understand why they gathered in Thanksgiving. And when we hear the words of the prophet Joel, we understand the relief they must have felt:
Joel 2:21-27 ¶ Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.
O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you.
You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.
We can understand the kind of thanksgiving that one gives as a result of a time of leanness and a harvest of plenty.
IV. US
But what does that have to do with us?
How many of us here grow our own food? How many of us have had to kill the meat we eat? Or plant the grains and vegetables we eat? How many of us till the soil, mind the crops? There are some who still do. Most of us don’t. Most of us are inconvenienced when the supermarket is out of one of the dozens of brands of breakfast cereal.
How many of us had to make their own clothing? Or worry about how we would fare in a climate different than the one we came from? Most of us these days can go online and order clothing and it will be here in a couple of days, that is, if we don’t go to the mall first, and get it from one of the dozens of stores there.
But the ease with which we can get these things shouldn’t make us less thankful than our pilgrim ancestors. It should make us more. It should make us realize how much we depend on others and on God for the things we need. I have heard it said that at any time, civilization is three days away from total collapse. Just imagine three days—world wide—without power. No radio, no television to share information. Imagine the highways and rails interrupted. Food supplies could not be shipped from one part of the country to another. The cities do not grow enough food to live on. The countryside does not have enough industry. Not many of us would be capable of growing our own food. Of building our own shelter. Of making our own clothing. Were something to go horribly wrong, we would discover soon enough how fortunate we had been.
But it shouldn’t have to come to that, and I pray that it doesn’t. For there are plenty of things we should be grateful for even in the midst of material plenty that dulls our senses.
For example, how many of us were instrumental in our own being born? Yeah, none of us. We didn’t do anything to earn the greatest gift we have been given: life itself. It was given to us freely. We sometimes act like our lives are an entitlement and we forget to be thankful for the gift.
We here did not build the system of laws that protects our rights. Nor did we build the system of commerce that puts food on our tables. We do benefit so much from things we did not cause or create, and yet we so often forget to be thankful.
I guess that’s because we like to trick ourselves into thinking that our success and our blessings are something we make. We tend to take great pride in our accomplishments and in our achievements, and don’t think much of our dependence on God. There’s an old joke about the scientist who challenges God saying that human achievement has rendered God unnecessary. The scientist says, our technology has become so advanced that we could even create a human being out of dirt, just like you. God says to the scientist, “Go ahead.” Whereupon the scientist reaches down for a handful of dirt, but God interrupts him saying, “Hey, get your own dirt!”
There’s an interesting irony in all of this, given that we as a society may make much, but as individuals we make very little, but take credit for most of it. Whereas the pilgrims made a lot, but gave all the credit to God.
It’s something that Jesus is reminding us about in his words from the Sermon on the Mount:
Matt. 6:25-33 ¶ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Jesus is not telling us not to work hard or not to prepare. He is telling us not to be anxious and to remember that it is God who provides for our needs. God feeds the birds of the air, God clothes the lilies, and God provides for us, too. It is a comfort against anxiety and a reminder of God’s providence. And yet providence is often far from our minds—unlike the minds of our colonial ancestors, who named one of their towns Providence.
V. A HARVEST OF PLENTY
Maybe it’s just a problem of language.
So much of the language we use at Thanksgiving is language of harvest. We read from Joel and Matthew and they have language of harvest and of reaping and sowing. Listen to the words of the first verse of the Thanksgiving hymn, Come Ye Thankful People Come:
Come ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God, our Maker,doth provide
For our wants to be supplied:
Come to God’s own tempel, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.
Is this language just archaic? Is it just a holdover, the way we still set sail in ships that have no sails, or dial phones that have no dials, or drive cars that have no horses to be driven? Could it be that part of Thanksgiving is just to have this archaic harvest language the way we speak of wassail and yule logs at Christmas?
Should we update the language? Instead of harvesting we can talk about interest earned. Or wages earned. Benefits received. Goods acquired. Grades received. We could speak in terms of market share or ratings or polling data. It is the 21st Century after all and all this Thanksgiving language is so 18th Century.
But maybe there’s something else at work here. Listen to how that hymn continues:
We ourselves are God’s own field,
Fruit unto his praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown
Unto joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade, and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest! grant that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.
We are the harvest of plenty. We are the fruits of God’s grace and providence. We exist as individuals by God’s grace. By God’s grace and through Christ’s spirit we exist as a community called the Church.
Unlike our colonial forebears, we do not have to scratch out a living from the untilled soil. We do not have to labor to build our own shelter. We do not face a wild and hostile continent. Yet there is still a harvest we can reap. We can lead lives of grace and mercy. We can reach out to those in need. We can tend the sick, feed the poor, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted, visit the prisoners, free the oppressed, speak up for the voiceless. We can make our lives into the fruit of the Gospel. By God’s providence, we can be a harvest of plenty for the whole world. And for that, we can give thanks.
