I'm fed up with Harvest Festival being a miserable service in the C of E
Every single time. No, we're not going to celebrate what we have, we're going to put on our hair shirts and be lectured about how dreadful we all are. Couldn't we, just once, have a break to say thank you to God? No wonder people don't come to church, when the clergy spend their time telling us how awful we are.
And, yes, I know that we are sinners, and the world is unequal, and we should do as much as we can to change it. And I agree, and do my best. But, just once, couldn't we celebrate?
We had a bloody awful sermon today, about how we should put stuff in food banks, and use fairtrade (plus an explanation of what Fairtrade is, for the members of the congregation who have been living under a rock for the last decade).
And, yes, I know that we are sinners, and the world is unequal, and we should do as much as we can to change it. And I agree, and do my best. But, just once, couldn't we celebrate?
We had a bloody awful sermon today, about how we should put stuff in food banks, and use fairtrade (plus an explanation of what Fairtrade is, for the members of the congregation who have been living under a rock for the last decade).
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You should have come to Our Place, where a small but very mixed congregation not only gave thanks for the fruits of the earth, but was also encouraged in a very positive way (NOT bludgeoned) to bring forth the fruits of the Holy Spirit in their everyday lives.....
Virtually everyone came forward for Communion, or to receive a blessing, from our very evangelical de facto priest-in-charge - with no pressure, and no ranting.
The many carrier-bags full of Harvest gifts will be taken to our local Food Bank collection centre this week. Some of them may well find their way back to members of the said congregation.....
IJ
I stayed away from our (Methodist) harvest service today for exactly the same reason.
(And welcome to the Ship @FloRoss
Shame on those clergy who use the occasion to Berate The Faithful yet again.
IJ
Is this the new fire and brimstone?
At our place, very much so. Which is annoying in the extreme as our Church is brilliant at social action. We run a town centre soup kitchen 7 days a week, which includes doctors, nurses and hairdressers etc. The minister, who gives the ‘new fire and brimstone’ sermons hasn’t visited once.
In many ways that’s not her fault as she’s very over worked. But still.
Since then I've moved. We had a Harvest Service yesterday on the theme of "God the Gardener" which was both jolly and serious at times. A team of ladies had set up an excellent garden display at the front of the church which included an (artificial) lawn, lots of plants, some gardening tools (including a lawnmower) and even a couple of deckchairs. They thought of having a water feature too but decided that a trickling fountain could have unfortunate consequences! I did stand up at the start and say something of the lines that it was right and good to thank God for his goodness and provision, but we were all aware of the terrible disaster which had occurred in Indonesia and that thoughts of suffering people who could not celebrate must inevitably tinge our praise.
Our evening Communion Service was more reflective, thinking both of the damage which we humans have caused to the world by our greed and also of our belief that Christ's ultimate salvation is not just for individuals or even the changing of society but has cosmic dimensions.
People so easily confuse feast and fast, not just at harvest but at other times as well. And so by the time Christmas arrives, a lot of folk are already fed up with it precisely because they didn't notice Advent; I've even been - once only - to a ghastly Good Friday service with happy hymns and jolly action songs (St. Mike's Aberystwyth, I'm looking at you!)
Feast and fast are both necessary, and we should celebrate both, surely.
Now most of us are insulated from such facts (yes, we see them on TV but that's different); there is both a time to be reminded of them and to recognise our privileged position. But Harvest may well not be the right time for that.
Of course, one could always abandon Harvest Services entirely, as they are a relatively recent invention of Parson Hawker. This is what my wife would prefer, seeing them as an irrelevance in our modern urbanised society. I disagree and feel that we need to be reminded of where our food comes from, both divinely and humanly. In fact I think it's a good opportunity to pray not only for the farming community (many of whom are facing an uncertain future) but for all involved in the production and supply of food.
For Christians, maybe celebrating the harvest is new. Of course, the Old Testament had a number of harvest festivals, including Pentecost. And in rural communities the celebration of harvest, even in Christian places, began with Lammas and concluded with the new moon festival, towards the end of September to observe harvest home, long before modern harvests kicked in. And I remember the observance of Rogation days (which go back to the fifth century, I think, based on Pagan rituals?) which were a kind of semi-celebration/penitence to thank God for agricultural provision or beseech him for aid where it failed. Perhaps a more realistic approach, but fallen out of fashion in recent decades. To say nothing of the beating of the bounds of the parish still observed by many rural parishes, though maybe not directly related to the land itself. And locally, many parishes have their own customs - long, long established - for blessing farm animals and farmland, perhaps rooted in Rogation observances. So, maybe not that recent after all?
I don't see why we can't have both; celebration for what we have, with the practical part of the 'celebration' being a grateful sharing with others who don't have so much. 'Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works' according to James. And then there's Mary's song assuring us that the 'hungry shall be filled with good things, and the rich sent empty away'. Don't entirely want to be on the wrong side of that equation! But is there a right side?
I agree it shouldn't be a misery-fest, however! But then some people find it hard to enjoy their 'plenty' when they're reminded that others are starving. And want to shoot the messenger, maybe because they feel helpless in the face of great need; or maybe for other reasons. I'm not even sure where I am myself in that scenario!
We were invited to make words out of the word Harvest.
Eat, have, starve, share, heart.......
The message was that harvest is a time for saying thank you for what we have and for sharing with others who have little.
The trials and tragedies of life are not only about lack of resources. Two of our very affluent members are currently going through terrible times, which no money will alleviate.
They most certainly don’t need a misery fest at Church.
(Doesn't that sound like a rustic village in, say, Dickens or P G Wodehouse?)
At its worst it's a new species of pharisaism; at its best it's an exhortation to generous justice. The key is how it's related to the gospel. If it's shown to be a necessary fruit of gospel faith, then great. But if it's presented as the gospel itself, then it's straight up heresy.
I don't know how you avoid further upsetting people who are already upset, but surely that's not by simply pretending that there are no negatives for anyone to think about.
Harvest Thanksgiving is one of my favourite times of the year; celebrating the fruitfulness of this earth and the generosity of God.
We might be thankful we have warm housing and holidays and abundant food. But what does that mean in the context where 6 in 10 of our neighbours don't have the basics?
That's like saying "thank you God that I have all this stuff that you haven't bothered to give those poor saps over there. I'm so pleased I'm me not them."
I dunno, I'm mostly talking to myself: I'm such a hypocrite.
There, even I could come up with that, and I've had a couple earlier.
Might I ask what goes on in the type of Harvest Services people are talking about? Some of what has been posted—hymns in particular—sounds similar to what might be expected around Thanksgiving in the States. But much of what I’m seeing—carrier bags of Harvest gifts, garden displays, and the like—don’t particularly. I’m just trying to picture the kind of service being discussed.
(FWIW, at least around here Thanksgiving services are often prime occasions for ecumenical or even inter-faith gatherings. That Thanksgiving is primarily a national holiday contributes to that.)
For me, it's services and sermons for Mother's Day and Father's Day. Perhaps they've evolved; but they used to assume that everyone had parents, and had a happy relationship with them. Long ago, I figured out I should just skip them.
- without knowing quite what happens at a Thanksgiving service, I don't think that you are too far wrong. Traditionally, Harvest Festival involves farmers and farm workers bringing examples of their successful crops to church, and these examples then being redistributed to the poor of the parish. But these days
(a) your typical congregation is not going to contain many farmers: even in a rural parish, farming has been industrialised so not many people work on the land, and
(b) it's debatable how much the poor of the parish would appreciate half a sheaf of wheat - or even the flour milled from it.
So in practice, to allow wider participation and to give a more useful outcome, everyone is asked to celebrate God's bounty by bringing (probably bought in) food which will be useful for the local food bank. I suppose we are thanking God for our financial situation. Which may or may not continue the original idea of Harvest Festival.
Here is more urban, and the carrier bags of goods don't please all traditionalists, but they are goods requested on the food list for the homeless charity supported by the church (I've been trying to double check if this has changed to the local food bank this year, but the homeless charity receives 90% of its food reserves for the year at Harvest, so I'm hoping not). And the goods requested include clothes, sleeping bags, soap for both people and clothes and the dry food goods to keep the daily meals going.
(An awful lot of joy for a hell thread!)
Our collections go to Women's Aid (that's Harvest, also the Christmas gift bags and some other occasions during the year), and are all non-perishable simply because of the time it takes for us to get those goods down to their offices, and then for their staff to distribute them to women in need.
One year our local homeless charity sent a note round the churches: "NO MORE PASTA!"
Where I lived in West Africa the Harvest services (held, appropriately for the seasons there, just after Christmas) were used to provide food for the Pastors, who received tiny stipends. I vividly remember a service in which a tied-up piglet was protesting loudly, and (also tied-up) chickens were squawking because they wanted to get at the calabashes full of grain! There were, of course, no marrows!
Soon and very soon will be the days when there are no more marrows - we've been eating the blasted things since June.
It's about striking the right balance. Focusing just on how blessed we are could get a little smug. Berating us about how much we have when there is so much need makes us feel guilty and resentful but doesn't encourage us to do anything about it.
We thanked God for his provision, acknowledged those in need at home and abroad then asked God to show how we could help with that where we were. All the harvest donations went to the local food banks.
Then we sang "We plough the fields .." Even though the nearest most of us get is driving past the green fields of the local golf club
It is! But I think the alleviation of poverty is an indispensable fruit of the gospel (the announcement of Christ's kingship and the salvation found in him) not the gospel itself.
I missed our service this year, which was a shame for me as I like harvest hymns. I particularly like 'Come, ye thankful people, come', though on closer reading it seems to culminate in an analogy between harvest and the pre-trib rapture. Or perhaps it's mid-trib. Oh well.
We've just had a similar discussion on the 'victim culture' thread.
It seems to me that you are motivated to act by feelings of guilt, moral responsibility, and an awareness of having benefitted from injustice.
I'm not. I find gratitude to be a far more powerful motivator.
That doesn't make one of us better or worse than the other - it just means we think differently. It would be as wrong for you to call me "sick" for celebrating my good fortune in an unfair world as it would be for me to call you a miserable sod for declining to celebrate yours - provided that we are both putting our feelings to good use by doing more to help others.
And FWIW, my church had Ananias and Saphira as the Lesson, and an appeal for an educational charity in Mozambique in the morning, and a hog roast, quiz and bake competition (which my daughter won [/smug mode]) in the afternoon, which I think was an OK balance.
Heck ... I went on a short holiday last week. Millions of people around the world can't afford to do that. Does that make me a sicko?
FWIW, in my experience there really isn’t a template for a “typical” Thanksgiving service. The defining event for Thanksgiving is the meal, not a church service. For that reason, one thing that is very common many places are community meals for the homeless or others, sponsored by churches, inter-church groups or community service organizations.
Many churches don’t have Thanksgiving services at all, or will simply sing a few Thanksgiving hymns the Sunday before. Some churches will have a service—maybe the Tuesday or Wednesday night before Thanksgiving (always on a Thursday here, unlike Canada)—and as I said earlier, Thanksgiving is seen often seen as prime opportunity for “community” services—either ecumenical or inter-faith. For decades, we did a “rotating” service with the neighboring Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists and UCCers, but for various reasons that has waned in recent years. There has been discussion this year of a meal with Syrian refugees we have done other things with.
/semi-tangent
When visiting my parents recently I saw a flyer had been delivered or they had picked one up maybe saying one of the local churches was having a Harvest of Tools (Tools with a Mission being a reasonably closely based charity) with a list of the items they can take/refurbish from hammers and planes to sewing machines (treadle or electric). I thought this was rather wonderful.
I thought so.
If I bob a tin of soup into the Foodbank collection am I making any difference at all or simply salving my own conscience?
Not having Harvest Festivals because there are inequalities in the world strikes me as similar to not walking to the shops or riding a bike because I'm 'able-bodied' and some people aren't.
Heck, if any of us here opened our fridge or pantry (larder) we'd find an embarrassment of riches.
He said “Yes, but there are a lot of us - the more of us do it, the more significant it will become.”
Fair point.