Gathered in to God's Harvest in Heaven
Harvest Festival 11:00am Eucharist - including the baptism of baby George.
Deuteronomy 26.1-11; Philippians 4.4-9; John 6.25-35
It is always good to welcome children into the Church through baptism – and to have baptism when we are all gathered for the Eucharist. Today with this Harvest thanksgiving, it seems even more appropriate to celebrate George’s baptism, because one of the original elements of Harvest was about offering to God the firstfruits of the produce that God has given so generously: a giving back, with thanksgiving, for all that God has given to us.
So George’s family have come here to give thanks to God for George, and for all God’s goodness. This is a homecoming in a way, as I’ve said, because this Cathedral has been a special place for the family over many years. Coming back here today is a recognition of the ways God has led and guided them over recent years – and how God has blessed them. In the book of Deuteronomy, when the Israelites were about to cross over into the Promised, they were told to keep in mind how God had led and guided them through difficult times in the past, how God has promised future blessing and fulfilment.
And once in the Promised land, they were to remember and rehearse each year their story, their history in this way: not taking the goodness of the land for granted, but recognising God’s hand at work, and offering back the firstfruits of the harvest in thanksgiving.
An early form of Harvest celebration in this country was about offering to God the first of the wheat harvest in early August. The first wheat was used to make the Communion bread at Lammastide as a pledge and thanksgiving for the harvest to come. We may be more familiar with the idea of Harvest home, at the end of the time for reaping and gathering the crops: when farmers and rural communities would give thanks after all the hard work that everything had been safely stored to see people through the winter.
This second form of Harvest festival only goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, with one particular vicar in Cornwall credited for starting a Harvest tradition of coming to church on a Sunday in the autumn to give thanks to God for the crops and produce.
Robert Hawker of Morwenstow was an extraordinary character: he also was committed to try to prevent loss of life through shipwreck, keeping a lookout as often as he could for ships in danger along the coast. The ‘Coastguard in a Cassock’ he was popularly known. And he devoted himself to giving a fitting burial to those lost at sea whose, bodies were later recovered: ‘Unknown, but known to God’ was the beautiful inscription he put on each grave.
Interestingly even though at that time in the 1840s, when Hawker began celebrating Harvest, the industrial age had taken people away from the land, instinct still led people at the time to recognise more of our dependence on the land. Similarly today, I think, when fewer of us are able to grow or harvest anything of our own produce, Harvest Festival has seen something of a revival in recent years. We rehearse each year the story of God’s goodness, and our dependence on all who produce our food: not taking the availability of food for granted but offering something of the blessing we have received as a thanksgiving to help others.
But with George’s baptism as an integral part of our thanksgiving today, the image in my mind is of the Harvest to come when, beyond this life, we will be gathered in by God to an eternal harvest. Heaven in this way can be pictured as the ultimate Harvest Home, when after the effort and struggle of this life, we are brought home at the last to be held safe for ever from the chill of sorrow and sickness.
Baptism is the pledge of that future promise: when instead of just having our ordinary biological life, God opens up to us a new dimension of life, a new quality of life that will become the eternal life that awaits us in heaven. In his baptism in just a moment, George will be welcomed into God’s life just as God’s love is poured out upon him.
All who are baptised will be gathered into God’s harvest.
This is not to say that those who are not baptised are not loved by God – of course they are, but it is to say that in baptism an indelible Christian character is being given to George. It is up to his Godparents and to all of us to help nourish that Christian identity and bring it to maturity, so he can claim God’s promises for himself as he grows up.
Jesus called himself the bread of life, and promised to those who heard his words, his teaching, that he could give food for eternal life. So to George’s Godparents especially, we ask you to guide George so he can discover for himself God’s love and God’s abundant life in the years that lie ahead for him.
We all have a role to help George and the young people in our care to find lasting meaning and purpose through faith in Christ, to find their spiritual hunger satisfied.
George will be able to rehearse his story, his faith journey, starting from today – his baptism birthday – starting from this place where God’s promises will be given him, to guide him towards the Promised land.
As we offer our own thanksgiving to God for where we are, each of us, on the journey of faith, let us also look ahead to the end of that journey: to the eternal harvest that awaits us, to the time when we will be gathered safely in, when we will reach the Promised land and find ourselves welcomed into the abundant joy of heaven.