Harvest Festival - God's great gifts to us

Informal sermon preached at the 9.15am All-age Eucharist at St Alphege, Solihull
Sunday 12th October 2008, Harvest festival, Year A

Readings: [Deuteronomy 28: 1-14] 2 Corinthians 9: 6-15 Luke 17: 11-19

Illustrated with pictures from: www.bathurst.co.za/Pineapples.htm


Today we celebrate Harvest Festival, and at Harvest Festival we give thanks to God for all the good gifts that he gives us in creation. And especially at Harvest Festival we give thanks to God for our food, which grows in the ground all summer and then is harvested at this time of year.
But why should we give thanks to God for our food? We might think, “Our food grows in the ground because of nature. We pay people money to grow it at bring it to us. What has that got to do with God?” But the point is that God has provided all these things for us; the food that we eat, the people who grow it, the ground in which it grows, all these are part of God’s gift to us. And saying thank you to God is very important, because it helps us to realise this and to understand it properly. It helps us to see how deep and wide the love of God for us is.
Look, for example, at all these wonderful harvest gifts. Look at this gift of tinned pineapple.
[Pick up tin of pineapple]
It probably only cost 80 p or something a supermarket, so we might not think that it is very important. But if we pause to think about it, it is quite extraordinary how much has gone into this tin of pineapple; how much of God’s creation has contributed, how many people who God has made have played their part.
First of all someone must have planted the pineapple. Here are some pictures of some people planting pineapples in South Africa.
[Picture of tractor]
Look at the person riding behind the tractor who is placing the pineapple tops in the ground. Here is another picture where you can see it better.
[Picture of woman behind tractor with pineapple tops]
And then God sends the sun and the rain on the pineapples and they grow. Do you know what they look like when they grow? They look like that:
[Picture of man and woman in a pineapple field]
(Do you know? I thought they grew on trees; shows how much I know!)
And then the pineapples are harvested, and that is a big job. Look at all these people involved in the harvest.
[Picture of pineapple harvesting]
So that is how pineapples are grown! So I wonder if we could have someone come forward and stand here and represent all those people who are involved in the growing of the pineapple for us.
[Someone stands up with hoe and pineapple]
And perhaps someone else can stand up and represent the sun, which God sends to make the pineapple grow and ripen.
[Someone stands up with sun picture]
And perhaps someone could come and stand here with a watering can to represent the rain which God sends to water the plants and make them grow.
[Someone stands up with watering can]
But this is only the start of the story. We still have to get the pineapple from the farm to Solihull. Well at the farm the pineapples are all packed into crates so that they can be loaded onto lorries. Here is a picture of them all ready to be loaded onto lorries.
[Picture of crates and crane]
And perhaps someone could come forward and hold up this lorry to remind us of all the people involved in transporting the pineapple.
[Someone comes forward with lorry]
And then the pineapples get to the factory
[picture of people working in factory]
and they are pealed in a machine, and hand checked and then sliced in a machine and the put into tins by hand and look how many people are involved in all that! And that is before we start to think about all the people who supplied the machinery or the empty tins or the metals that the tins are made from. So let’s have some people come forward and represent all the people involved in putting a pineapple in a tin
[Someone stands up with tins]
And we are still not there yet. We have to ship the tinned pineapples to Britain.
[Someone stands up with a ship]
And there is a lot more lorry driving involved the tinned pineapples goes to a supermarket
[Someone stands up with a supermarket basket]
And someone buys it and takes it home and then brings it into church as a harvest gift, so perhaps someone can stand here who has brought in a harvest gift today.
[Someone stands up]
So there we are – amazing how many people and much of God’s creation is involved in bringing us the gift of a tin of pineapple. It is incredible that all this is done so that we can have a tin of pineapple, but it is, and we need to thank God for it.
Giving thanks to God helps us to understand the world as God made it, as God’s gift of love for us. It helps us to realise how many of God’s wonders lie behind a simple thing like a tin of pineapple. It helps us to realise many different people have given something of themselves, so that we can have some pineapple. So let’s praise God and give thanks for his great gifts to us.