Sermon for Harvest Thanksgiving
“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth”
It is not often that the epistle reading at Holy Communion is a lesson from the Hebrew or Jewish Scriptures, what Christians know as the Old Testament, and in this case, a passage from The Book of the Prophet Isaiah. It is an especially wonderful passage that deals with the overarching theme of God’s providence at work in creation and redemption and that belongs to a theology of the land and our labours on the land. As such it connects with the celebration of Harvest Thanksgiving.
We are being reminded of the spiritual nature of thanksgiving precisely through the power of the divine word without which there can be no harvest and no thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a profoundly reflective and spiritual activity as well as the freest thing that we can do. The Greek word is one which is somewhat familiar to you: eucharist. The root of that word is charis – grace. Thus thanksgiving is the movement of grace in our souls. It can’t be forced and it can’t be denied. It extends beyond mere courtesy, important as courtesy is. The act of thanksgiving to God raises the character of our duties and obligations to one another to an entirely different and higher level: quite simply to the nature of our engagement with God and his Word and that Word made flesh in Jesus Christ. In turn, as the Gospel for Harvest Thanksgiving makes perfectly clear, it is that Divine Word Incarnate whose “word” is the bread of our lives, the very principle of our existence in, to and with God. It is all a kind of redire ad principia, a return to God as the principle of our very existence.
And while this activity of thanksgiving seems to be predicated and therefore dependent upon our experience of the good things of creation and human labour that we enjoy, it is actually something far more radical and far more challenging because it is about our life with God, summed up, perhaps, in that rich and provocative statement in the great Eucharistic prayer. It is about “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving”. And all because the Word which “goes forth” from God goes forth with purpose and becomes first, the Word made flesh and, then, the Word which is given to us as “the bread of life.”
