Harvest Thanksgiving at St Michael and All Angels Waterville

Our God, who we call ‘Father’, cares for his creation. For us. We remember especially, but not only, on Harvest Thanksgiving, that we receive everything from his hand, that we are entirely depending on his creation. Somehow we tend to see his creation as something we are separate from. Yes, we depend, and we are asked to be stuarts of his creation. As if we were superior and to some degree in control of it. But despite our ability to greatly use and shape God’s creation, the environment around us, we are also part of it. We are subject to the creative powers and we are an expression of it.

We use and more so abuse creation to a degree, that we are destroying it and with this destruction, we are destroying what we are part of and depend on.

Oh how we would love to be able to say with confidence, what Joel said in the first verse of the reading.

‘Do not fear, O soil.’ Gods promise of great things to come…but we are doing much to kill off the soil, to poison it by industrial activities, modern farming and creation of polluting waste, to let it be taken by erosion and to seriously harm it in war related activities.

‘Do not fear, O soil,’ God was letting his people know through the prophet. And humanity turns this in ‘Do fear, O soil’.

One could lose hope and faith. Or one can make compost. Compost, to heal the soil and to help God’s wish for his creation, not to fear.

Our fellow creatures are mentioned by Joel. ‘Do not fear, O animals…’ God’s care for his creatures is clear. And yet, how do humans treat animals in general?

God must be in tears looking at us, and how we are abusing, neglecting and torturing animals. In most cases.

Yet we are promised fruit, food, rich harvests, as God chose us and cares for us.

We are grateful on Harvest Thanksgiving. But in general, do we appreciate God’s care and our dependency, but even more so our calling to mind and care for his creation? So that it doesn’t have to fear? Are we truly understanding and embracing our creative, loving, caring and giving God?

Jesus teaches us about our understanding of God, about our relationship to him in our Gospel reading.

We are invited to a wedding feast table. Whether this is the heavenly feast to come, when we will sit at the Lords table, or the Eucharist, or even the celebration of being in union with God already here on earth, Christ’s wedding with our soul: we hear about three different types of people who rejected the invitation.

 
The first type refers to his field. For him his possessions are more important than the meal.

If we put our possessions first, it is difficult or for God, to get access to our hearts.

 
The second type puts business and financial success before being united with Christ.

The third group of people in the story kills the King’s messengers. This is the Ego, that out of fear or out of unwillingness to give up control blanks out Gods voice calling us. Our ego doesn’t want to permit, that the meaning of life is, to find Christ.

Material possessions, greed and ego are obstacles and do not make us find God, In the story those three are killed by God.

And then, God invites all people, all of us, good and bad, to the wedding feast. And in accepting the invitation, good and bad, all souls want to come close to Christ, and Christ longes to feast in abundance with all of us.

Yet, to enter in this invitation and wedding with Christ the old clothes of our old selves need to be changed – we are offered the garment of God’s grace to become our new selves, and we need God’s grace to enter into this intimate and loving union.

Christ graciously invites us to feast with him, to get into a close relationship with him, and we all have the longing to draw close to him, to ‘marry Christ’.
 

‘Do not fear, O human, I invite you to be with me, and I want to be with you. And great things will happen, great fruit will grow, your lives will flourish,’ one could say, echoing Joel’s words on God’s creative provision.

In celebrating God’s creation and understanding , that we are part of his wonderful world, we understand that Christ, the Pantocrator, the Ruler of All, wants to marry his creation in us. In giving our materialism, greed and ego priority, we will not only ruin his creation but also reject Christs invitation. And therefore, celebrating Harvest Thanksgiving and truly embracing the creation and caring for it, is a foundation of joining Christ at his wedding feast with us.