Harvest Festival 28 September
Readings: Deuteronomy 26.1-11; 2 Corinthians 9.6-15; John 1.29-36
Theme: Times and Seasons
The celebration of harvest festival brings to mind often bucolic scenes of rolling countryside and bales of hay gathered together on sun-scorched-yellow fields—a beautiful image of the land that is fortunately still on view in the chaplaincy in the Cádiz Province. It also reminds us that our own lives have seasons and rhythms. These mark the passage of time as we travel through its various stages. The regularity of the seasons, and its patterning in our bodies, reminds us that we too are a part of God’s creation. As the skin wrinkles, the hair loses its colour, and our own teeth may be nothing more than a distant memory, we are given a visible reminder that we are mortal. The cyclical processes of time announce to us each year that the gradual return of our own bodies to the earth repays a debt to nature; the same nature which has sustained us throughout life.
This cycle of human life begins with a bursting forth into the world and a departure from the comfort and security of our mother’s wombs. It takes a long time to be nurtured into autonomy as an adult. Much longer than for many other animals. Yet, sooner or later, the moment of autonomy arrives and we depart the home(s) that we have known for pastures new. Many of life’s twists and turns then follow, but sooner or later, the period of coming to look back, on what our journeys have been, begins.
Our itineraries may have involved decades of doing this and that, of living here and there, of successes and failures, of children and grandchildren, of relationships, of laughter and sadness, and of all the ups and downs of life. As we look back on the journey, we may find ourselves wondering whether the short stories of these episodes amounts to anything more than that. Was there a coherent narrative to my itinerary, or was it simply one step after another with little sense of direction to it?
Lack of a clear sense of direction in life can often be accompanied by an overdose of nostalgia in later life, as our pasts are re-written as a ‘golden era’. Or, then again, we may turn in the other direction. When we do so, we may find ourselves interpreting our lives as a tragic novel that is littered with broken or deceased relationships, wrong turns and missed opportunities.
As Christians, this time of looking back should be one neither of simply a sweet nostalgia for its former ‘golden age’ or of a heroically facing the bitter tragedy of a whole set of wrong turns; though, both of these dimensions may indeed be parts of our own stories.
No, living lives as Christians should make the reflection on the past and our vision of the future much more than these sometimes noble, but deficient, inherited classical genres of interpreting human life. By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the past is revealed to be always open to redemption and the future is written into the resurrection story of the New Creation.
So, while the celebration of harvest festival does indeed invite us to look back and to review our lives, we should also be conscious that it also indicates how we should look forwards to the destiny to which we are called through the death and resurrection of Christ. In this sense, the best times of our lives lie ahead of us in sharing in the glory of the risen Lord. Moreover, the tragic aspects of our lives are transformed by the wounds of the risen Lord into the hope of the glory of the resurrected body of the New Creation.
This Christian understanding of hope thus moves in two temporal directions. It moves backwards as the recapitulation and transformation of all the joys and sorrows, the comedy and the tragedy of our past lives, and it moves forwards to the future life of an eternal now in the presence of the Lord of all times and seasons. In that eternal present, nothing can separate us from the love of God poured out in Christ, Jesus. Not even our own failings and sin can separate us from him. And, no matter how fortunate we may have been in life this will be overshadowed by the abundance that is offered to us in the resurrection. Adopting this Christian approach to the times and seasons of our lives is only possible when our eyes are fixed on the gift of eternal life that is offered to us in Christ.
Though we often fail to perceive it, this gift of eternal life permeates each and every season of our lives and it redeems all time from within, because, like the Lord himself, it is incarnate within us. God really is closer to us than we are to ourselves. This mystery of incarnate divine presence is one we shall only fully comprehend when we meet the Lord face-to-face, but it why, as Christians, we shall finally encounter him with a very strong sense of ‘déjà vu’. The one who has always been there with us, will be the one who emerges from behind the ‘glass, dimly lit’ to greet us by name. This is why our best days lie ahead of us, because the brightness of the joys of the past will be intensified in the divine light of the future awaiting those who are awakened by the Lord. In that time, and in that season, all times and seasons will be gathered together into one great harvest.
Only at that time, will we come to fully understand the meaning of those wonderful words which consummate the climactic events of Holy Week in The Service of Light during the Easter Vigil:
“Christ yesterday and today,
the beginning and the end,
Alpha and Omega,
all time belongs to him,
and all ages;
to him be glory and power,
through every age.
Amen.”