Is It Time To Scrap Harvest Festivals?

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The Harvest Competition is a crucial fixture on the calendar for lots of people, though it isn’t precisely fastened. It has been round a very long time. The idea and the symbolism are each easy and are each good. It’s an event when samples of the 12 months’s harvest are introduced into church and given away to the poor as a recognition of our gratitude to God for the harvest, in addition to for the whole lot else that we’ve got, and a recognition of our duties in the direction of one another, particularly these worse off than ourselves. The idea is actually in keeping with the whole lot Christians, and loads of others, imagine. The previous hymn sums it up very properly:

We plough the fields and scatter the great seed on the land, however it’s fed and watered by God’s almighty hand.

What then could be improper with it?

What’s improper is extra within the notion than within the actuality. All the things about Harvest speaks of our rural previous. That’s what many individuals like about it. It reminds us of our rural roots. It conjures up pictures of pleased peasants working in sunny discipline manually gathering sheaves of wheat or another crop. It’s questionable whether or not that picture was ever actual, however these days it’s actually lengthy gone. Not solely do only a few of us work in agriculture, however agriculture itself has modified dramatically for the reason that Olden Days. Agribusiness is large enterprise, is very technical, is much from labour-intensive, is very regulated and entails a outstanding quantity of IT. Even within the countryside, extra folks work in leisure, conservation and mineral extraction than in agriculture.

So what?

Does any of that negate the reality that all of us rely on God for our materials as a lot as for our non secular well-being? In fact not. God is the God of Science and Business, even of Finance, simply as a lot as he’s the God of Agriculture. Is our obligation to assist one another, particularly the poor, any the much less? In our trendy international economic system, the place not solely are we more and more interdependent however the place we could be immediately up to date on crises across the planet, the poor are extra seen than ever.

Why then would anybody doubt the worth of getting a Harvest Competition?

It’s as a result of Harvest gives the look of a Church and God that belongs within the countryside and previously. It could be that a few of us discover that the type of Church and the type of God we’re snug with, however it’s improper. If God exists in any respect, he exists for all folks forever. He’s as related for an internet site designer or a careworker as for a farmer. He’s as a lot the God of the interior metropolis or the Metropolis as of the rolling hills.

I do know that many clergy and others work onerous to make the factors I’ve simply made of their Harvest Competition sermons and different parts of their companies. I applaud them. Nonetheless, their phrases are more likely to have much less of an enduring influence than the general impression created by the sight of recent fruit and greens and the very phrase “Harvest”.

There may be one other difficulty.

My different objection is that it’s an annual occasion, like harvesting itself, for that apparent cause. Nonetheless, it’s too simple to recollect God and our neighbour solely every year. The fact of God’s goodness and the wants of the poor needs to be with us all of the 12 months spherical.

What do I like to recommend?

Maybe it’s time to scrap Harvest Festivals and maintain particular occasions scattered like seed all year long to consider the relevance of God and our social accountability in relation to varied features of contemporary life: science, expertise, well being, training, leisure, service industries, sport, and no matter is most related in your space.

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BY GAHZLY GAHZLY