Harvest festival

Autumn is my favourite time of the year, even if it does herald the approach of winter and shorter, colder days. I love the shades of brown, red and yellow which leafs turn, giving the trees a majestic beauty. I love the smell of wood smoke that seems to permeate the air at this time of year and the thought of nature’s bounty to come, wild mushrooms, chestnuts, sloes and black berries. Even in the autumn of our lives there is a rich harvest to be had.

This is also the time of year when we celebrate Harvest festival which is one of the most ancient celebrations in the Church and of course originally in the pre-Christian calendar and it’s also one of my favourite services in the year – and I contend that the celebration of harvest should be an important part of life.

In our day and age we forget the importance of harvest festival. Our children are growing up believing that milk and bread come from Walmart or Tesco or whichever and farming in this Country has changed beyond anything that I would have recognised as a boy we are all becoming more and more detached from the food that our farmers grow vegetables pre-washed, trimmed and packed in cellophane, meat served to us on cardboard trays and sealed with cellophane further and further away from the roots of food production and consequently further and further way from the food itself in its natural state. The packaging is convenient, at least sometimes, but it acts as a barrier between us and the reality of the food. Convenient yes .. But also a barrier. In fact it’s even more than just a barrier it sometimes becomes the way in which we make judgements about the product .and Ladies and Gentlemen we all go along with this. It has long been known that if you want to sell a product you have to concentrate on its packaging. How it is packaged directly affects the sales figures. Which of course must mean that you and I are influenced by how something is packaged? What it looks like from the outside. Not necessarily the product itself but what the packaging makes it look like.

Now, I’m sure some of you are now saying to yourselves – maybe other people are influenced by packaging but not me. Well, I can tell you that research says different. It says that very few people admit to buying or not buying a product because of its packaging, but that in reality, whether we realise it or not, it does affect our behaviour. I suppose this shouldn’t really surprise us when you think about it because it’s not only the packaging of food and other goods, which affects the way we see things. You and I do the same thing with people. In some ways we have to – we have to rely on the way things appear to be or life would get just too complicated. When we see a police officer in the street we don’t all rush up to him or her and ask to see an identity card in case he or she is a fraud we make an assumption about the uniform, the packaging, which tells us what they are. Anything else would make life intolerable and there is nothing wrong with that, a practical solution but there is a reverse side to this particular coin. The obvious one is the case of the conman – pretending to be one thing whilst actually being another. That’s how they operate – relying on their packaging to persuade us about the content. Presenting an attractive front when the content is less than appealing. Summed up, I suppose in the phrase All that glistens is not gold.

To return to food and the harvest I bit into an apple last week a Cox ripe and very attractive and as it turned out it was rotten in the core. There was no way to know that from the appearance of its natural packaging before I bit into it.

And there is also a less obvious result to our making assumptions about packaging and one which affects all of us particularly and that’s when the packaging is not attractive when it comes to people.

The very finest example of a man who ignored packaging was of course, Jesus Christ and the people who met him were absolutely astounded by that. In the Gospel there is a reading that was in many ways about a man who tried to insulate himself against the world by wrapping himself up in the packaging of wealth. It became more important to him than anything else and he couldn’t let go. It denied his humanity by dominating him. It took him over if you like it became more important than the human being it belonged to.

But what is it that makes a human being? It’s not whether we have money or not. It’s not whether we have a home and family or not and it’s not what we all ask as almost the first question of someone we meet at a party, What do you do? It’s not what job we do or did if retired. Of course the reason we ask that question is to try to get some idea of what sort of person we are speaking to – what their packaging can tell us about them – but it’s far deeper than that. It’s not the outside of that apple I bit last week that’s important- it’s what’s inside – it’s what a friend of mine calls the heart. In other words the truth, the core, the real person inside the prostitute, inside the tax collector and inside the rich young man. The real person inside me and the real person inside you whatever your particular brand of packaging.

Some people suffer from an often unattractive outer appearance, their packaging causing other people to make judgements about them because of their appearance, their history, their education, their vocabulary, their lack of work and a home in other words status and the confidence that goes with that status. All the things that you and I use to our benefit and take for granted. The lack of these items of packaging, because that’s all that they are, make no mistake, are used by us to make judgments about people. Why don’t they get a job? Why do they talk different to us? Why do they not pray in a Church?

Jesus cut to the quick with the rich young man – go and give everything you have to the poor. Of course he would then have had no possessions, no money and no status. He knew that these things were so important to this young man that he let them get in the way of living.

On the other hand Jesus befriended a Roman Soldier (occupying then His country let me remind you) a prostitute and a tax collector (That last one impresses me most). His criticism was almost exclusively reserved for the church-goers. The ones who appear to be one thing but inside are something different.

Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t believe Jesus was condemning all church-goers that would have been perverse but the essence of what he did do was to look beyond the surface into the real person. So, look past the cellophane and the carefully washed potatoes, the meat injected with red colouring to make it more attractive for us and think my friends, of the miracle of the seeds sprouting and growing into plants. The miracle of cattle giving birth to calves. The astonishing variety of flowers which surround us here.

That is the essence of harvest festival. The truth underneath the surface packaging of tradition and a comfortable warm glow. The miracle of this world and all that lives in it – including its people – the ones we naturally warm to – the socially adept – the people with status – and the ones we shy away from – cross over the road to avoid. Try also to look past the surface of the people who you encounter to discover the real person inside – there are very few genuinely evil people – mostly there are human beings caught up behind some packaging of their own or other’s making Jesus ignored the surface and went deeper – We should all do the same. If you would like to read more articles by Brother Roy Click Here