Harvest

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ ¹⁴But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ ¹⁵And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ ¹⁶Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” ¹⁸Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ²⁰But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

[Luke 12.13-21]

It’s harvest festival. When I was a kid that meant going to church with whatever we found at the back of the cupboard that we were unlikely to eat, and I know we weren’t alone in that.  The altar was frequently strewn with tins of Marrowfat peas, pink salmon, sweetcorn, fruit cocktail, and Tiptop.

I always felt sorry for the poor buggers that were gonna get the fruit cocktail, it always had those weird white grapes in it. I swear we only ever bought tins of that stuff in for harvest festivals or carnival day.

The Jewish people had several, and there were three major ones: the Feast of First Fruits, which was the start of the barley harvest; the Festival of Weeks (Pentecost) celebrated fifty days after the Passover, and recognised the start of the wheat harvest; and the Festival of Tabernacles, or Booths, when they spent a week living in tents at the very end of the harvest period.

In preparation for this service, in Sunday School last week we made barns, well silos. Well actually we coloured in some toilet roll tubes and stuck a cardboard cone on the top, but you get the idea.

In the reading Jesus tells the story of a rich man who doesn’t do the right thing with his wealth, he tries to store it all away. So our activity was to fill our silos with things that really do matter.

First we asked the question: what’s important to you, and the answers were: Mum, friends, family, happiness, class at school, after school clubs, job, blanket, and Doctor Who. 

Would anybody like to add to the list?

Then we asked which ones will last forever, let’s go through the list…

Happiness lasts forever, and relationships (it might feel like Dr Who does, but I think that’s unlikely).

What should the rich man have done, do we think?

He could’ve used the extras that he had to help people less fortunate than himself.  He certainly shouldn’t have stored it all away, because I don’t know much about farming, but I’m pretty sure that things that grow from the land start to rot after a while, so even if he had more than he needed, it wouldn’t keep him, it wouldn’t last.

So our task last week was to fill our silos with treasures that would last: we drew pictures of the things that mattered most to us and the idea was to keep them inside the silo, instead of material things.

The thing I found most interesting was Faith’s reaction… Can you remember what she did?

Faith drew a picture of herself with her mum and Mayson.  But when it came time to put it in the silo, she had a complete meltdown, she wanted to keep that picture for ever.  I’m not sure where that picture ended up, but I know that by the time we got home last Sunday, it wasn’t the most important thing in the world anymore.

I know, you’re all thinking, oh how cute, she’s six.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you’re six or eighty-six, we all get our priorities wrong. Whether it’s the new car, or the replacement slippers, the set of pans, the cuddly toy, whatever.  We think that if only we had… then things would be better. We give material things far more value than they actually deserve, and she’s six so at least she has an excuse.

The rich man in this parable was exactly the same. Instead of just enjoying what he had, thanking God for the abundant harvest, and sharing the produce, he decided “if only I had a bigger silo (a bigger toilet roll tube with a cardboard cone on it), then I would be happy. Wrong.

The idea of harvest festival is that we give a sample of our harvest as thanksgiving for all that God does for us. The rich man should have given his surplus to help people around him and to further God’s work on earth. 

Meanwhile we should give enough so that we notice the difference to our lives.  At the very least we should give more than fruit cocktail and Tiptop.