Pigs, cows and waterpumps - Harvest collections go global

Standfirst: It’s Harvest time of year but you can leave your box of carrots and tinned peas at home. Today’s congregations are more likely to be donating pigs, sponsoring cows and paying for water pumps in developing countries as part of their thanksgiving, writes the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, Rt Rev John Davies.

Whether set in rolling countryside, in the suburbs or in towns and cities, many places of Christian worship will, at this time of year observe Harvest Thanksgiving. Buildings will be filled with evocative smells of flowers, fruit and vegetables and many a specially baked harvest loaf will be take pride of place.

It’s the time of year when Christians celebrate the fruits of the natural world around us and give thanks to God for the wonders, the fruitfulness and the potential of creation. Tied into the agricultural calendar it falls during these weeks of late summer, early autumn, when farmers have just reaped the rewards of their hard work during the year to provide food for us all. It reminds us of our rural roots and the rhythm of the year’s seasons.

Despite the hold which Harvest has on the minds and hearts of many, it is, in fact, of comparatively recent origin. Harvest Thanksgiving in any formal sense only came into existence as recently as the mid 19th century. Sadly a deal of romanticism surrounds a number of the hymns associated with it, not least in ‘We plough the fields and scatter’, a hymn which, if missing from a traditional harvest service, leaves, for many an unfilled void!

While it is fundamentally important to recognise good things around us and give thanks for them, we need, however, always to do so in a grown-up and meaningful way. For many churches these days that means looking beyond the cosy image of an unflustered, plentiful, rural British idyll to the reality of a painful, troubled environment in which many people in the world struggle to survive.

The words of the famous Harvest hymn are worryingly innocent and present an image of God which causes me a problem. They suggest that he seems to choose to feed and water the seed, to send snow in winter, warmth in spring and soft, refreshing rain. This is, the words continue, the same God whom the winds and waves obey and who gives, to his children, their daily bread. It’s a familiar image, comforting even, but, I suspect, a bit alien and confusing to those whose parched lands yield no harvest, whose skies rain down no refreshment but instead constantly produce a scorching, killing heat. Look at Ethiopia again. It’s a damaging image too for those whose livelihoods, homes and loved ones may have been swept away by the waters of a storm-driven flood. Look at the Phillipines this last week. What do the words say to those who have no daily bread? That they are not God’s children? Surely not. This odd image is not true to the God revealed by and personified in Jesus of Nazareth.

So what are to make of Harvest observance? One of the prayers associated with it gives a clear steer. It encourages us to recognise God’s hand in the created order, but goes on to ask that our thanksgiving is characterised and worked out by a determination to use the goodness which we enjoy for the relief of the needs of others.

This is why more and more churches are celebrating Harvest by sharing their wealth with those of our global neighbours who most urgently need it. They are asking their congregations not to bring boxes of fresh food and tins to the altar but envelopes with money for charities working in developing countries where people face starvation if their harvest fails. They are being asked, for example, to donate a pig to the USPG: Anglicans in World Mission pig farming project in Ghana, or pay for taps and pumps to help WaterAid bring clean water supplies to villages, or help Christian Aid transform barren land in drought-hit India into fertile pasture.

As the world around us more starkly and alarmingly reflects its own fragility and as we move restlessly closer to the tipping point beyond which damage to the environment cannot be repaired, a state of affairs looms which could genuinely render Harvest a thing of the past in many parts of the world. A frightening scenario such as this must be at the forefront of the minds of world leaders at the forthcoming Copenhagen conference on climate change.

So, perhaps, we are being called to repackage Harvest, to sing our familiar hymns with wide open eyes and wide open minds which recognise the huge amount of goodness around us and which hear the call to work for its fairer sharing. Surely we are also being called to see and understand the fragility of the planet from which that goodness springs and the damage which we continue to do to it.