Sermon – Collecting for God
Exodus 23:14-19a; Matthew 9:35-38
Farmville Presbyterian Church
10/13/24
I know I am a better person when I invest time in reading. Hopefully, you all find occasions to engage in literature of one kind or another for fun. Usually, I am doing the audio book thing and recently finished a book that got me thinking about today’s sermon and the rest of my messages until we get to Advent the first week of December. The book is Death, the End of History, and Beyond (yes, I know it sounds very exciting and the kind of pleasure reading anyone should want), but it was a good book that helped to think more clearly about where we are going in life through the lens of the Bible.
If you have seen the pictures I have been posting lately on the church Facebook page, you have seen at least a few, including yesterday’s that point to the fact that we are in autumn or fall. The northern hemisphere is getting ready for winter. If people were in the farming business this year, they are working on harvesting their crops or have recently done so. I do not really know the exact schedule for that, but it is that time. Harvest is huge for people who depend on food, and that is all of us. We just don’t think about harvest very much as we are removed from the harvesting process. Of course, we are also moving in life and in the world in ways other than in seasonal harvests. There are lots of times of change out there before us, and that is what I am covering in the weeks to come. We always have chapters that close and chapters that open. Today, however, I am dwelling in the world of harvests and a little bit of the Bible’s interest in harvests.
Despite what you might assume, the people of Israel through the biblical times were not crop farmers until late in their time. They were nomads and had animals and flocks. They followed where the grass was good for grazing or where the water was flowing for drink. That is also why good and dependable wells were so important back then. They were all herders until they settled in the land of Israel after the journey out of Egypt. They had never had land before, and I am certain that they found land already prepared for farming when they arrived in Israel. They adapted to a wider change in humanity that moved from herding animals to growing grains. Once they had a land of their own, they became connected to that land in a way they had never been connected before, and that meant that they had to be farmers with harvests.
This meant coming up with new rules about farming and special holidays like the ones I read from Exodus. God had to tell them to make sure they left grain along the edges of their fields for the poor, the gleaners, like Ruth in her book. The harvest and providing food developed a place in the life of the Jews that it never had before. They were tied to growing crops. There was no going back. They became a harvest people.
The high point of the whole year was the harvest. This was the big celebration. Of course, that was when you had the most food to celebrate with. You had the most grapes for wine, and you had the most grain for bread. Food was abundant one and only one time of the year, if you were lucky or blessed, and that was the harvest. This is when those who grew crops were to give to God the first portion of the very best. Some call it first fruits, but the harvest belonged to God first and foremost. The farmer did not make the grain to grow. It was God’s grain. The harvest belonged to the Lord.
This is a beautiful but difficult relationship of dependency. The people learned to depend on God for the success of their crops, but the crops did not always come. Last week, we saw a time of famine in Jospeh’s day. Famines or droughts have been a part of farming history as long as harvests have. If you remember my presentation of our trip to Ireland a few months ago, there was that chapel near collapsing because people were stealing dirt from under it to place around their land for good harvests. It was an old wives’ tale that that dirt could give you a good harvest. Sadly, people have gone to worse lengths through history. Even the people of Israel practiced child sacrifice more often than we want to believe in case they could make the gods happy to give a good harvest.
The harvest is hugely important, so it is strange that it is so removed from our life today when we can go to the market and buy whatever whenever. There are seasonal foods, but there is always food waiting for us – until there isn’t.
There are places right now around the world that do not have the food security that we do. We might complain about an expensive grocery bill, but a price survey according to WorldVision a couple of years ago found that 10 common food items (including a little more than two pounds each of bananas, uncooked white rice, wheat flour, sugar, ears of corn, and tomatoes; one raw chicken; 1 dozen eggs; and 1 liter each of cooking oil and milk) cost the equivalent of ($159.20) in Sudan, ($92.43) in Ethiopia, ($82.93) in Burundi, ($75.41) in Sri Lanka and ($57.69) in the Philippines.
To look at this another way, the 10 countries where that food basket costs the most in terms of hours worked are Burundi (36 days), Central African Republic (25.5 days), Democratic Republic of Congo (nearly 16 days), Sudan (14 days), Mozambique (nearly 14 days), Malawi (nearly 14 days), Ethiopia (12 days), Burkina Faso (nearly 11 days), Niger (9 days) and Guatemala (9 days).
We should not lose sight of the value of a harvest, the value of having food coming in, or the value of the crop. They do not happen all the time. A harvest by definition is the end of a growing season.
This is actually in Jesus’ mind when thinking about us. I have never been considered a stalk of corn or pumpkin vine, but Jesus was considering all the people out there trying to grow in God, and he saw a harvest coming. Some 30 and 40 years after he said this, the people of Israel were decimated and scattered to the wind. The Romans came in and destroyed Jerusalem and functionally ended Israel. Maybe Jesus saw this end coming. He knew that time was short for their growth. Of course, life expectancy back then was maybe 40 years. We do not know exactly what he meant with the pressing harvest. For whatever reason, we are on the clock and the clock is ticking. The harvest, in Jesus’ eyes, needed to be collected but there were few to do it.
What happens if you cannot collect the harvest? It just sits and rots. Animals will get some, but it is wasted. We need laborers to tend to the harvest. Imagine that if everyone over the course of their life just helped one other person in a meaningful, lifechanging way that shared faith and helped them to discover the love of God, the world would look incredibly different. If everyone just blessed one other person with godly grace, the world would feel it and we would see it. That is a pretty good beginning goal. How about those people who touch lives every year, maybe every month, maybe every week? That person is a harvest laborer and delights the heart of God. There is no reason we cannot be more like that, but it is not easy to focus so much on other people when we have so much going on.
It is possible that we might be the crops more than the workers. Notice Jesus does not tell those listening that they need to get out and work. They are to pray for that help. Pray for the laborers. Pray that God send people to tend to the harvest. We do not need God’s harvest to go to waste. We do not need the world to be ignored in the love of Christ. You all know organizations that are working for the good of the harvest. Some of you have been invested in groups living out the gospel with others. Yes, we should be praying for those on the leading edge of helping people discover their place in God’s heart, and we should also be looking for that opportunity for ourselves to help that one person. Time is of the essence.
That is the bottom line for Jesus. The clock is ticking. Harvest does not last forever. There are seasons in life and seasons to the world. We will not be here forever no matter what we might want to believe. As long as we are here, however, we have an opportunity to grow and to help others to grow. We cannot make anyone become faithful or to follow Christ or to commit their lives to the love of God, but we can give others a picture of what that commitment looks like.
We are alive and growing. We are God’s beautiful harvest, even with our ups and downs, and as long as we are here, we can look to tend to the harvest and to love the life we share. To God be the glory. Amen.
To God be the glory. Amen.