Bible readings: 1 Corinthians 3:5-9. (Paul is writing about his work to the fractious church at Corinth.)

John 4:34-37.(Jesus is speaking to his disciples.)

Message.

I wonder if anyone else here listen to “Farming Today” on the radio? I don’t blame you if you don’t, as it’s on very early – presumably so that busy farmers can tune in before they begin their morning tasks.The programme is only about 15 minutes long, but it covers a lot of different subjects and I’ve learned a lot from it. Just last week there was a piece about the exceptional damson harvest they’ve had up in the Lake District – I don’t think that’s been reported anywhere else. Anyway, here’s a few of the topics that have been covered recently: the shortage of rural housing, dealing with droughts and downpours, the price that dairy farmers are paid for their milk, the constant battle against TB in cattle, the expansion of school meal provision and the opportunities this may give for British growers, concern about a shortage of fodder after our dry summer, the need for foreign sheep shearers to be given visas, the danger of bluetongue disease, the changes to subsidies for sustainable agriculture, the impact of border checks … and much, much more.

As I listen to the programme, three things become very clear: farmers face not only a mountain of bureaucracy but also outside forces such as the weather which they can’t control; they are often straddling a knife-edge between profit and disaster, joy and despair; and beyond all that there is the sheer complexity of getting food from the fields (or wherever) to our plates. We may wish for simpler, more bucolic days, but I think they have gone for ever. Farmers, supermarkets, logistics operators, mechanics, computer experts, feed and fertilizer companies, Government ministers and so many more are involved in agriculture. It only needs one link of the chain to break – which may be due to flooding, new paperwork, a warehouse fire, ferries being unable to dock, or rocketing fuel prices – for the process to collapse and for us to complain that the shelves are bare. Everyone needs each other.

I looked at a website which describes the stages of a supply chain that food products go through as they journey from producers to customers and consumers. These chains are often very complex which means that it can be difficult to easily trace food, transported across the world in a long time-frame, back to its origins. Anyway, some key stages in the chain include: production, where the food is grown or developed; handling and storage once the product has been picked or harvested; and processing and packaging, where the food, whether from plants or animals, is converted into an edible form and packed ready for transport. These are followed by distribution and retailing, and finally consumption: we go to the shops, buy the food and eat it!

This complexity reminded me of the Bible passage we read earlier. The apostle Paul was concerned that Christians in the church at Corinth were dividing him and his companions into factions (sounds a bit like the Labour party at the moment) with some people blowing a trumpet for Paul, others waving a flag for Apollos, yet others coming out in support of Peter – and some who perhaps wanted to pull back from the politics or simply sound more high-minded: “We just follow Jesus”, they piously declared. Paul clearly thought that this kind of talk was both ridiculous and wrong; the church was getting so caught up in its internal debates that it was forgetting why it existed: to spread the Good News of Jesus. All that energy should have been used to go into the world and bring in a spiritual harvest.

So, in the snippet we read earlier, Paul makes his thoughts very clear to the Corinthian Christians. “You’ve got it so wrong”, he shouts, “It’s not about me and Apollos and Peter or anyone else getting any credit. No, it’s about God’s work; I don’t care who does what so long as we reap the harvest. As it happens, we’ve all got different gifts: although you could call me the sower and Apollos the nurturer and someone else the reaper, you must realise that we’re not rivals but members of the same team. And, in any case, although each of us may have tasks which we’re particularly good at, ultimately it’s God who sends the sun and the rain and produces the harvest. We all depend on him and we’re all serving him”.

This leads me on to two other Bible passages. One comes later in this same letter to the Corinthians (although Paul more-or-less repeats it in some of his other letters) – it’s where he goes into detail about what we often call the “spiritual gifts”. I’m not going to say much about them, except firstly to say that God grants gifts of one kind or another to every Christian and expects us to use them, there’s no place for “passengers” in the church; and secondly that, while we might regard some gifts as public, showy or even spectacular, there are others such as quiet words of counsel, practical acts of help, and administrative or “back-room” tasks. All – and Paul stresses this – all are important.

The other Bible passage isn’t by Paul but comes from Jesus himself. You may well remember it: Jesus gazes out at the teeming multitude of his kinsfolk, scurrying around without meaning or hope. His heart goes out to them; he thinks of them as sheep in desperate need of a shepherd’s guidance. Then, mixing his metaphors, Jesus speaks to his disciples: “Look”, he said, “the fields are ready for harvesting – but there is no-one to do it. Pray to God that he will send out his reapers”. And, suiting his actions, to his words, he then sends out those same disciples on a mission of preaching and healing. They might well have been terrified by what he was asking them to do – but they did it. The task was too great for even Jesus to do alone; it needed a team.

We’re thinking of harvests today; let’s make sure we don’t just think of wheat but also fruit and vegetables and fish and all the other crops and animals that we grow, rear or catch. There must be no greater joy for a farmer than to see their fields full of ripening corn or the trees in their orchards heavy with apples, no greater joy for fishermen than to see their nets bulging with a record catch. But things aren’t always like that, of course; drought or flood can kill a growing crop of wheat or barley, canker can blight the apples and pears, the fishing boats can return to harbour with their holds almost as empty as when they left it. Producing food is an inherently risky occupation; it’s no surprise that farmers, suffering the stresses of uncertainty and the loneliness of rural life, often cite mental health as their biggest concern. We must never take them for granted; we must pray for efforts to support them.

We in the churches also face challenges. In contrast to what Jesus told his disciples, the spiritual fields of Britain hardly seem ripe for harvest. Although a recent report by the Bible Society suggests that young people are more open to Christianity than they have been for some time, and are returning to the churches, the actual evidence of this is patchy. More and more have no contact with our faith, or even the slightest knowledge of what it stands for. Indeed, recent scandals in the churches, and the link between much of American Christians and right-wing patriotism, may have put many people off from even thinking about Christ. Our job today may not be one of harvesting or even seed-sowing; we may need to go even further back than that and try to prepare unpromising and even contaminated soil. How do we do that in an age when people will believe anything – or nothing? I don’t know. But, if we believe that our message is life-giving and important, we must at least try to get it out.

Well, I’ve probably rambled a bit, and preached a message you didn’t expect to hear today. But we can’t be sentimental or nostalgic about harvest, harking back to heavily-laden horse-drawn wagons trundling into the sunset, or weary labourers enjoying their hearty harvest supper; apart from anything else, that’s a highly romanticised Sunday night TV picture of what life was like. More to the point, we must think of harvest as it is today, in the fields, the orchards, the polytunnels, the salmon pens or wherever; we must also think of the spiritual harvest to be reaped by the churches. How we will gather that in, I do not know – but I do know that, for it to happen, we all have our part to play.