Patrick Comerford
Many parishes, clergy and readers are preparing to mark Harvest this year, even if the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions mean any plans for Harvest Thanksgiving Services are in doubt and uncertain.
One option for parishes may be to celebrate Harvest in one of the ordinary, weekly Sunday services.
These resources are designed to help plan Harvest celebrations, either as a special Harvest Thanksgiving Service, or as a Sunday service with a Harvest theme. There are links to and commentaries on the readings, links to prayer resources, the Harvest propers, including the Collect and the Post-Communion prayer, suggested hymns, and suitable photographs to download and use on service sheets, parish notices or power point presentations. By clicking on an image, you can get a full-screen image to download.
Introducing the Readings:
The Harvest readings in the Revised Common Lectionary for Year A are: Deuteronomy 8: 7-18; Psalm 65; II Corinthians 9: 6-15; Luke 17: 11-19.
There is a link to the readings HERE
Deuteronomy 8: 7-18:
The people of Israel are exhorted that when they prosper materially they are not forget the Lord their God.
While they are wandering in the wilderness, the people who are escaping from slavery in Egypt suffer continually but are reminded that when they reach the Promised Land and find prosperity, they may well forget about obeying God.
They are reminded that when we eat and are satisfied, we are to thank and bless God for what he has given us. There is a real danger that when we have eaten our hearts become haughty. In times of plenty, we are to remember that it is God who brought us out of slavery, led us and fed them, and who gives us any prosperity we enjoy.
It is not by their own power and might that we may become wealthy, but this is due to God’s gifts, which follow the promises he made in the past with our ancestors.
Psalm 65:
All creation gives praise to God, who is the hope of all the ends of the earth and who crowns the year with goodness.
In Psalm 65, all flesh, all people, praise God for the harvest. He answers prayers and forgives. Those whom he chooses he brings to worship in his courts, in the Temple. His goodness is shown in his presence and his gifts, especially the rain. All people everywhere should hope in him and praise him.
In this psalm, God is praised for his work in creation. He overcomes chaos and the tumult, and so makes farming possible. He makes the land fertile by providing sunshine and water in the rivers and the rains, he provides the earth with grain and enriches the pastures. Grapes grow on the hillsides, and the wine from them causes joy.
All people are blessed by God’s bounty, and all things in nature ‘sing together for joy.’
II Corinthians 9: 6-15:
In the epistle reading, Saint Paul reminds us that when God sows and reaps, he provides abundantly. ‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever’ (II Corinthians 9: 9).
In this letter, Saint Paul suggests to the Christians in Corinth that their generosity is proof of their love, and tells them that if we give generously, God gives to us generously.
This giving must be done freely, and not reluctantly. God provides us with blessings that we should share. Saint Paul quotes Psalm 112: 9: to give is to have lasting moral uprightness.
It is God who supplies seed for us. He multiplies our giving, for our benefit, in spiritual riches.
Saint Paul then describes Corinthian generosity not just as a ministry, as the NRSVA translates it: the word he uses here is λειτουργία (leitourgia), liturgy, the public service of religious worship. Helping others in their material needs is a liturgical action with spiritual benefits, for the recipients give thanks to God.
In acts of sharing and generosity, we put the Gospel into practice and glorify God. Those the Corinthian Christians share with, return that generosity with love, which is a gift from God. This gift transcends earthly expectations, and involves Christ and the Holy Spirit, God’s supreme gifts.
‘Thanks go to God for his incredible gift’ (II Corinthians 9: 15).
Luke 17: 11-19:
This Gospel reading is not one we readily associate with Harvest time. Unlike the beautiful, rich harvest images in the first reading, unlike the images in the Epistle reading of sowing and reaping bountifully, and a harvest so blessedly abundant that it overflows into justice, righteousness, and the end of poverty for generations to come, this Gospel reading is not a pretty image.
It is a story of sickness, both personal sickness and the deeper malaise to be found in society; it is a story of marginalisation and discrimination; and a story of the use and the abuse of religious authority and power.
But then harvest is not just about bringing in the crops and giving thanks for God’s blessings on the land – however slim they may appear to be this year. Harvest, at a deeper level, is about the restorative justice that Christ seeks as a sign of what the Kingdom of God is like.
Try to imagine the horrific scene that confronted Jesus as he entered that village with no name in that dangerous zone between Samaria and Galilee on the way to Jerusalem … It is an isolated area, the sort of place where a man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho could expect to be mugged, robbed and left for dead, with anyone who saw him scurrying by hastily in fear that they too would be mugged (see Luke 10: 30-37).
In an area like that you could not expect a Good Samaritan to come by.
So this is wilderness country, bandit territory. And it is an area marked by discrimination and prejudice, deeply divided by sectarianism, racism and prejudice. Jews and Samaritans lived separate lives: they could not share the same food, the same shops, the same streets, even the same villages. Although they shared a similar religious heritage and stories, they despised each other.
And this is an area where those who are disabled or scarred by their physical ailments are cast aside, left on their own, without help or assistance from the community at any level – political, social, economic or religious.
Can you imagine the scene in this dangerous territory? After a long journey, Jesus appears to have reached the safety of a village. But just as he gets to the gates, out from the rocks appear a rough-looking gang of dishevelled, disfigured, bedraggled, unkempt and filthy men, shouting out loudly. How dangerous are they? Will they mug and rob him? If they come too close, will he be contaminated too?
But these men are so desperate, so isolated, instead of mugging or begging, they keep their distance and all they ask for is – mercy. Mercy is all they want. How much they must have despaired in their search for compassion and companionship that all they ask for now is – mercy.
And what Christ offers them is not mercy of the tea-and-sympathy sort. What he offers them, what he invites them to, is to be restored to, to accept again, their full place in society.
We do not know when they were healed. When they called out for mercy? When Jesus spoke to them? When they obeyed his command? Yet the healing is less important than the collective action they are asked to take. They are asked to go together and show themselves to the priests. To show themselves to the priests allowed them to get a clean bill of health so they could be restored to their place in normal family, village, community, social, political, economic and religious life.
The Kingdom of God is a place where all can take part in life, and life in all its fullness. And what these 10 people are offered is a place back in society that will be an example of what the Kingdom of God is like.
The Samaritan is the only one to come back and say thank you. But I often wonder why this Samaritan even bothers in the first place to think of going to show himself to the priests. The priests could offer or refuse a clean bill of health to the other nine. But they would never give a Samaritan a clean bill of health. He is an outsider. Healed or not, he remains contaminated, unclean, impure, despised, rejected and isolated. He is ‘one of them.’ He has no place with us.
But Christ is saying he has. Christ is counting him in. Jesus wants him to benefit from the great harvest and to sit down at the heavenly banquet.
The action of Christ in healing the Samaritan alongside the other nine, in sending him too to the priests to stake his claim to a full, restored place in society, tells us the Kingdom of God is there for all. All are invited into it. And when we start excluding others we too become weak, we too fail to reap the rich harvest that God offers us.
The Kingdom of God is offered too to the Samaritans in our midst, to those afflicted with anything that places them outside normal, acceptable life: the immigrant who is isolated because of the collapse of our economy or the rise in vulgar racism; the single mother; the farmer whose harvest hopes are not being realised; the child who cannot get a special needs assistant at school; the distraught couple minding demanding and aging grandparents; the once-successful businessman whose enterprise has gone to the wall; and the employees who have lost trust in him and hope in the future when they lost their jobs.
Too often in the past, our traditional Harvest Readings have been read both in a cosy, comfortable way, and in a way that separates the harvest from the full riches of creation. Yet those beautiful promises in the Old Testament reading of a rich, rich harvest were not made in a time of plenty. They were promises made to the people while they were still in the wilderness, when they were isolated in the desert, when they had been wandering for far too many years.
Even when there is little hope at harvest time, even at times when we feel most isolated, marginalised and unloved, God promises us a rich harvest that goes beyond this year’s yields, a harvest that will be so rich that we can also build up hopes for righteousness, for justice and for love.
And when the harvest is difficult, when we are not bringing in the returns we hoped for at the time of sowing, when economic gloom and doom appear to be imminent and the pandemic restrictions seem to turn everything sour, we should remember that God’s creation is more splendid and more beautiful than anything we can imagine.
We are going through trying, tough times at the moment when it comes to farming, the economy, the restrictions imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the changes that turn received values on their heads. But through all this we should remember that God is faithful to God’s promises, that when it comes to the real harvest that matters, there will be a place for everyone, especially those who have been marginalised, isolated and left to feel unloved.
In a world where the greedy take priority over the needy so that 30,000 people die each day because of poverty, God’s promise remains for a harvest that not only provides us with enough food and shelter but an abundance that allows us to measure out and ensure righteousness and justice for all.
God’s creation is filled with beauty from the very beginning. And if we believe this, if we gather hope from this year’s Harvest readings, then we must work too to see that the Church and our society, by our priorities and by our lifestyles, in our actions and in our prayers, in the ways we preach and live the Gospel, are signs, icons, symbols and sacraments of this hope for creation and the Kingdom of God..
Luke 17: 11-19 (NRSVA):
11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ 14 When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’[c] feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ 19 Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’
Liturgical resources:
Liturgical colour: Green (Ordinary Time, Year A).
The Collect:
Eternal God,
you crown the year with your goodness
and give us the fruits of the earth in their season:
Grant that we may use them to your glory,
for the relief of those in need
and for our own well-being;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
The Collect of the Word:
No Collect of the Word is provided for Harvest.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Lord of the harvest,
with joy we have offered thanksgiving for your love in creation
and have shared in the bread and wine of the kingdom.
By your grace plant within us such reverence
for all that you give us
that will make us wise stewards the of the good things we enjoy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hymns:
In the Church Hymnal, Hymns 37-47 are identified specifically as being suitable for Harvest:
37: Come, ye thankful people, come.
38: Father, blessing every seed-time
39: For the fruits of his creation
40: Father of mercies, God of love
41: God, whose farm is all creation
42: Good is the Lord, our heavenly king
43: Holy is the seed-time, when the buried grain
44: Praise and thanksgiving
45: Praise, O praise our God and king
46: Tá an fómhar seo go haerach, céad buíochas le hÍosa
47: We plough the fields and scatter
In addition, the hymns in the following section, Care for the Created Order (48-50), and the preceding section, God’s World (23-36), may be helpful in planning.
Bishop Edward Darling’s book, Sing to the Word (Oxford: OUP, 2000), recommends the following hymns in association with the readings for Year A:
Deuteronomy 8: 7-18:
42: Good is the Lord, our heavenly king
647: Guide me, O thou great Jehovah
539: Rejoice, O land, in God thy might
557: Rock of ages, cleft for me
Psalm 65:
612: Eternal Father, strong to save.
645: Father, hear the prayer we offer
42: Good is the Lord, our heavenly king
581: I, the Lord of sea and sky.
709: Praise the Lord! You heavens, adore him
II Corinthians 9: 6-15
10: All my hope on God is founded
38: Father, blessing every seed-time
40: Father of mercies, God of love
363: O Lord of heaven and earth and sea
47: We plough the fields and scatter
Luke 17: 11-19
92: How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
211: Immortal love for ever full
361: Now thank we all our God
104: O for a thousand tongues to sing
366: Praise, my soul, the King of heaven
373: To God be the glory! Great things he has done!
Other Harvest resources:
The Church of Ireland Bishops’ Appeal Fund is offering Harvest resources this year on Creation Time, including a Harvest Reflection about a Creator God who brings new life in a dry and barren land. These resources from the Bishops’ Appeal are available HERE.
Resources on Climate Change that are also relevant to Harvest themes are available from the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) HERE.
When other resources become available this year, links will be added on this page.
Please check back for updates as they become available.
Intercessions and prayers:
Let us pray for our world and all the people in it.
We pray for ourselves as we celebrate the harvest.
We are thankful for the good things that have come to us.
We may not till the fields, but we have been busy all year,
whether in workshops or at workstations,
in the office, the shop, the kitchen,
the community or the classroom.
Our achievements have been both great and small,
but all are of value and we thank God for them.
Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
We pray for those for whom there is no harvest;
those who have no work
or who are dispossessed by acts of war or natural disaster.
We pray for all those for whom life
is a struggle against starvation, disease, terror or oppression.
We pray for the wisdom to husband the earth’s resources wisely
and to hand them on to the next generation in good order.
Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
We pray for our Church, its clergy and its leaders,
that the will of the Lord may be done.
We pray for all people of faith throughout the world
that they may live in mutual respect and harmony.
May we be recognised as Christians by our love
and not be ashamed to confess our faith.
Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
We pray for the sick in body and mind
and for those who care for them;
may they be comforted and strengthened in their troubles.
We pray especially for any known to us
who are in special need of our prayers at this time.
We remember them now and lift them to the Lord in a moment of silence …
Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
Jesus Christ is the light of the world,
a light which no darkness can quench.
We remember before God those who have died
and light a candle to symbolise the light of Christ,
which eternally shines and brings hope.
We remember …
You turn our darkness into light: in your light shall we see light.
Merciful Father,
accept these prayers
for the sake of your Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.
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