Harvest Festival 29 September
Readings: Dt. 26. 1-11; 2 Cor. 9. 6-15; Jn. 1. 29-36
Theme: The First Fruits
The opportunity of Harvest Festival allows us the possibility of returning to John’s gospel for this week and to reflect on its meaning for us at this Harvest Festival. The passage from St John occurs just after the prologue, and the figure of John the Baptist is central. John makes it clear that he is only the one to announce the Lord and not the one who is awaited. And the one who is awaited is to be understood, as we have it in the passage from Deuteronomy, as the first fruits of the harvest. But what does it mean to offer the first fruits of the harvest to God?
In the context of celebrating harvest festival, we have the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the creation and of God’s relationship to it. This relation is one which begins with the account of the creation in the book of Genesis. Here we have the notion of the Spirit of God hovering over the waters and bringing forth light and all that characterizes the creation as we know it. This is the first creation account that we meet in the Bible and it introduces us to the notion that God is the creator and the Father of all. This theme of creation is taken up in our first reading from Deuteronomy in terms of the land given to the Israelites. The first fruits of this land are to be given to the priest and offered as a sacrifice in thanksgiving for the land given to the Israelites.
However, reading this theme of creation through the lens of the resurrection of Jesus, as St John is doing, puts this theme of God’s relation to the creation in another perspective. The resurrection of Jesus has made all things new. It is a second act of creation in which the creation is restored and consummated in the Son of God. The offering of Jesus as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is to be understood as an act of both redemption and of new creation. In restoring the creation to its sinless glory and in consummating this in the very life of Jesus himself, we are drawn into the mystery of God sharing God’s life with the creation in the form of the offering of his son, Jesus.
Such an offering of the first fruits of the creation in the life of the Son is God’s way of bringing the very creation into the heart of God. It is an outpouring of the superabundant love of God that overflows in the very act of generosity that is both the creation and the new creation of the resurrection. This generosity is communicated to us by the Spirit of God. It is the very same Spirit of God that descends on Jesus like a dove and remains on him at the baptism of John the Baptist. This signifies the very act of the new creation in Jesus, the anticipation of the resurrection which will make all things new in him.
This relationship between the resurrection of Jesus and the creation is central for us to understanding the meaning of harvest festival as the offering of the first fruits of the land to God. When we celebrate this festival, we recall the tradition of the ancient Israelites who would gather together in periodic festivals to give thanks to God for all that God had done for them in delivering them from slavery and offering them a land flowing with milk and honey, as we have it in the first reading from Deuteronomy. The first fruits which are to be offered to the priest in the first reading are meant to be the best of the crop. They symbolize that the best which is brought forth from the creation is to be returned to the Lord as a thanksgiving offering.
This same motif is repeated in the New Testament but with a crucial difference. It is no longer the produce of the land which is offered but God offers his own Son as a thanksgiving sacrifice. So, God literally offers himself to us. This motif is symbolized in the gospel by the term “the lamb of God” which is repeated twice in our gospel passage. But this theme of God sacrificing himself for us in thanksgiving leads to a puzzle. Surely, it is we who should be thankful to God and not the other way around? The resolution of this puzzle enables us to enter into the true meaning of the creation and the harvest festival which we use each year as a celebration of the creation. The thanksgiving that we give to God is nothing other than the thanksgiving of God himself. In other words, Jesus. Jesus is the first fruits of the harvest that has been raised from the dead for us so that we can give thanks to God in an everlasting life. This is the meaning of the Eucharist that we share, as did the early Christians, on the first day of the week, on Sunday each week. The thanksgiving we offer, just like the creation itself is none other than the gift of God shared with us in Jesus so that we may partake in the very life of God itself. The resurrection of Jesus makes this possible, and allows us to participate in God’s life and to be a thanksgiving people.
As we offer the produce that we have given today for those in greater needs than ourselves, let us be mindful that the very gift that we truly offer is nothing less than the Son of God himself, Jesus, the first fruits of the New Creation.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.